Swet'n To The Oldies

I spotted this gem on the way to work this morning. I'm assuming by SWET BMR he means "sweet Bimmer". First I'd like to note that this mid-90's 3 series BMW isn't particularly sweet... It appears to be competely stock besides the euro style tail lights and chrome exhaust tips. There is probably 400 other E36 Bimmers in the area that look just like this.
Secondly... "SWET BMR" hardly resembles "sweet Bimmer". It looks like like "sweat Bummer".

A Different Kind of Different (or Moustache Envy)

In my younger days I had an urge to try to be different. I’ve gone through various changes in style to try to achieve this. This would include the period of time that I would wear black almost exclusively and dyed my hair black. I’m fairly certain that I had my extended family convinced that I worshipped Satan.
Somehow along the way I’ve done a complete 180 of that style and I now wear cardigans almost every day. Though, admittedly I still wear a lot of dark colors. As dashing as cardigans are I still felt a deficiency in my urge to be different. This is what lead me to the next level. The moustache…
To be honest I didn’t know a lot about growing a moustache other than the obvious discontinued shaving of the upper lip. What I’ve learned is that style is everything when it comes to moustaches. Depending on the style you may resemble a motorcycle cop, a French wine expert, a firefighter or even a kid toucher. I’ve also discovered that the handlebar style moustache, aside from it’s ability to bring a dapperness to an otherwise casual style, is the most powerful variety.
Almost immediately after applying the moustache wax and curling up the ends I’ve noticed a change in how people treat me. I receive compliments almost everyday and in some cases preferential treatment.
The first of the examples I will give takes place at the local Albertson’s grocery store with my wife and a couple friends in tow sometime around midnight. Like everyone else in a grocery store at this time of night we were on a beer run. Or in this case a Jose Cuervo 100 calorie margarita jug run. While being rung up at the checkout line, a seemingly buzzed middle-aged woman in line behind me says; “Great moustache! You look dastardly. But in a good way.” Not knowing how to react in this situation I just smiled and said thanks and grabbed my two jugs of booze and split.
Another time Jess and I were at Target checking out at the register and the young man completing our transaction says; “Awesome moustache. I wish I could grow one.” His face turned to a frown and he rubbed his upper lip with an obvious amount of disappointment. This was hard to see. It was like having a woman tell you she cannot give birth to a child. A beautiful baby made of coarse hair.
On another occasion I was grocery shopping at Trader Joe's and encountered a large shopping cart traffic jam in the frozen food section. I needed to get to the frozen rice but I was blocked by a couple of lallygagging shoppers. I saw a Trader Joe's employee ahead who was restocking the rice I needed and I asked him if he could pass me a box of rice over the obstacle of carts. He grabbed a box and squeezed through the shoppers and handed right to me and said; "Anything for a handlebar moustache." This caught me by surprise. I didn't expect him to go out of his way to maneuver through a mess of carts. I thought he'd just pass it over to me. Instead I had a hand delivered package presented to me as if it were gold, frankincense or myrrh.
I fear that my moustache is growing in power as it grows in length. I mustn't let it get to my head. As Spider-Man's uncle had said; "With great power comes great responsibility."

Best. Urinals. Ever.

I came across these great urinals the other day while at Fashion Island in Newport Beach. They are not only appropriately spaced apart, but they are also separated by a wall. No rubbing elbows here.

Where It All Vegan

Today my co-workers decided to take me out for a belated birthday lunch. We usually go to some whatever place where everyone can find food easily. This time they decided to let me go to Native Foods, a completely vegan restaurant. Everyone was a little afraid of the menu and were probably immediately regretting their decision.
Everyone finally made lunch selections and we sat down at a large table. While waiting for our food they were all looking around the restaurant like it was an alien world. Food finally arrived and I dug in. I looked up from my plate shortly after starting and noticed everyone had their cell phones out and taking pictures of their food. One of them said that they had to post it on Facebook because no one would believe that she ate there.
Once they got starting eating they realized that the food is actually good and they enjoyed it. Many sweet potato fries met their inevitable demise. After lunch one of the girls bought me a chocolate cupcake and they all sang happy birthday to me in the middle of the restaurant. It was worth it for the cupcake. It's sitting on my desk right now waiting to be consumed as an afternoon snack.

The moral of the story is; don't judge a book by it's... bla bla bla. I don't care - I got a cupcake out of the deal either way.

Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows: Part 2

So my work is hosting another early screening for the final Harry Potter film. I'm a nerd and I'm excited. I love not having to stand in line for 20 hours to see it at midnight. I get to see it at 6:30 pm before the midnight release.

Musdaaang!

This minivan's owner must either think people would easily mistake his vehicle for a Ford Mustang by putting the grill emblem on there or else he just really likes ponies.

If he put a Mustang V8 under the hood, I'd be all for this minivan.



Bad news body kit

I spotted this poor poor Honda Accord while recycling some used motor oil at Kragen. Looks like someone is in the process of molding a custom widebody kit for this new Accord, but they were using styrofoam instead of molding foam. This is also typically done to a car while it is in a garage and not driven until it's done. This is just sad to see on a brand new Accord.

Dolla, dolla bill, ya'll...

Jess and I spotted this gem in the parking lot of a Costco the other day. Very classy. Nothing says baller like using your Gold Star membership at Costco to pick up a 48 pack of toilet paper and a 50 gallon drum of pickles.



Packing...

Jess and I will be moving into our new home this weekend. We are really excited and I've been in super-packing mode. Last night I decided to tackle the kitchen since that was the most daunting task left. Luckily our cat wasn't in the way at all.

Low mileage...

So I just hit 20,000 miles in my Fit today. I've had this car for 3-1/4 years. That's less than 513 miles per month. Wow, that's really low!

Schwag

This package was waiting for me at the office of our apartment community...  I was excited.

One of my favorite automotive performance parts companies sent me a t-shirt and some stickers. There is a Facebook game called Car Town that I've been playing for a little while. In the game I made a custom paint job resembling one of the race cars they sponsor. They dug it. They sent me stuff. I'm stoked.

Wallgreen's Fashion

I'm not a stylish fellow by any stretch of the term. I know it. But I do at least know that Wallgreens is not the place to go for fashionable duds. This was confirmed over the weekend when we made a stop to pick up some beauty products. There, in neon-burn-your-retina-pink, hanging from the ceiling, dangling like kite stuck in a tree... it was what only could be described as the result of when a steamroller meets an In Living Color Fly Girl. Complete with boxy-robot-wedgie.



I could only imagine this was hung there by the employees as some kind of scarecrow. Perhaps to keep customers out.

Parking Lot Wars

Parking in our apartment community is extremely hard to come by if you arrive any later than 6:00 pm. It will probably be the thing I miss the least when we move in May. Besides the fact that it's hard to find parking, it's also full of cars parked by drivers who must be blind. Or at least they must be being attacked by bees at the time their of arrival. No one can park straight. Maybe they're color blind and they can't see the green lines on the black pavement.

Here is an example:

The driver of this car must have been really thin to get out of their car. I can't imagine them being able to open their door without it touching my car. Luckily it didn't leave any dings in my car, but regardless this is a big no-no. In Sir Cardigan's America this would be punishable by having the doors of your car removed.

Finished Product

I never got around to posting a picture of the finished table I had been working on with my brother.

It's not perfect, but it looks a lot better than it did. Next up is the chairs!

Spotted On The Street

An old Datsun B210. Not a particularly great car... I just took note of it because my mom used to drive one of these cars long, long ago. A little history lesson here. Datsun's parent company, Nissan, decided to brand all cars being shipped to America as Datsun instead of Nissan for fear that American's would not buy a Nissan brand car due to Nissan's involvement with the Japanese military during WWII.

Spotted On The Street

I saw this beauty parked in the parking structure at my work. It looks to be a 1938 Mercedes-Benz 540K. It's a very rare and extremely expensive car. This car was built shortly before World War II. MB certainly doesn't have a squeeky clean reputation for it's actions during WWII... But ze Germans sure knew how to make a nice car. This was a pretty fast roadster in it's time. Schnell!

Spotted On The Street

I saw this Nissan GT-R parked at an AAMCO over the weekend. It's a nice car, but they have probably the most strict warranty rules of any car. I'm pretty sure just thinking about going to an AAMCO would void the warranty. Not to mention the fact that the cost of service for this car is ridiculous. This car requires you to use Nissan GT-R specific transmission fluid for it's special transmission. The price? $114.98 per quart! How many quarts does it take? Ten. It also requires GT-R specific differential fluid at $62.02 per quart. It needs three quarts of that. The labor cost for the fluid change is about $500. That's $1835.86 just to change the drivetrain fluids.

What A Tool.

Lately I've been finding hard to ignore the fact that my job is exceedingly sedentary. The amount of physical activity at my job is limited to the shuffling of bank statements and hammering angrily on the calculator keys like a numeric Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto. I miss the hands-on activity that I had with some of my previous jobs. Clicking a mouse and pushing some keys to get some numbers on a screen to balance is not emotionally stimulating to me. I think what it is that I'm actually missing is using physical tools.
There is something very pleasing to the very mechanical problem solving of a hand tool. For example, my desk chair here at work was a tad wobbly. Yesterday I took it upon myself to flip my chair over and use a handy multi-tool that I keep in my bag to tighten a few screws. Problem solved. This is a very basic undertaking, but the results are immediately recognizable. I've gone around the office making minor repairs with my multi-tool. Re-attaching a plastic edge guard to the corner of the walls from my office and the elevator hallway meet. Tightening the bolt lock on the stall door in the bathroom. Things like this that have been needing repair for months without anyone taking action. This could partially be due to the fact that half of the employees here can hardly take the cap off of their pen without their assistant's help. At any rate, it was self-satisfying and my co-workers took notice and were grateful.

It's because of this self-satisfaction and primal call that I gladly accepted the job of restoring the dining set in our home. Now I don't have any experience with staining or finishing wooden furniture. In fact my wood working experience is limited to my 7th grade wood working class and the pine-wood derby car I made in Cub Scouts in 3rd grade (the story of that derby car is worthy of a post of it's own so I'll save that for another day). Luckily the internet is full of useful information and I did a little research on techniques. My brother and I loaded up on some supplies and got to work. It's still a work in progress, we've been working on it a little every day.

Here is a picture of before/after sanding. The left side shows all of the damage to the old finish. The right side shows the bare wood all sanded and nice.

Here is a picture showing the table leaf with the new stain on it compared to the bare wood of the table.

Yesterday after work my brother and I were able to finish applying the stain to the rest of the table and it is now drying in the garage. Tomorrow after work we plan on applying the satin finish for the final step. Next up will be the chairs.

Spotted On The Street

I saw this clever license plate on a Mini Cooper yesterday. Well done!

Spotted On The Street

This car has a sticker on the back that reads;

"COOL

DRIVE STICK"

It seems that a word is missing there. Perhaps it was supposed to read "cool people drive stick". Not that I'm exactly about to take cool lessons from the driver of a Saturn Vue... But driving a manual transmission is indeed cool.

Adult Hide And Seek Leauge

This needs to exist in real life. I would certainly join the Sherlock Holmies.

Anytime I'm in an elevator and it makes a jerk or sound that is different than normal, I immediately expect the worst. I park on the 6th floor, but I don't normally take the elevator in the parking structure at my work... partially due to the fact that I'm trying to get in better shape so I park all the way at the top and take the stairs and partially due to the fact that it makes all sorts of weird jerks and screeches. On Friday I was walking out to the parking structure and I saw a co-worker of mine with her arms full of empty boxes trying to hit the button for the elevator. I thought I'd give her a hand and hit the button. To further assist her I entered the elevator when the doors opened so I could select her floor for her too. I figured, I may as well take the elevator now since I'm already on it. We got to her floor at level 3, she exited and all seemed normal. The moment the doors closed behind her, BANG, the elevator jerked upwards like it have been hit from below by something. I pass floor 4 with weird grinding sounds. Floor 5. Grind and squealing. As we approach the 6th floor the elevator slows down. Way down. It seemed as though the elevator was scratching and clawing it's way up the last few feet. BANG. The elevator came to a stop and the doors began to open. Very slowly. I noticed that the elevator had not quite made it all the way up, it was about 4 or 5 inches lower than the floor. I jumped out as quickly as possible and vowed to never use the elevator again.

During this adventure, my eyes were affixed to the inspection certificated displayed on the elevator. Yup, it expired 6 months ago.

Culinary Conundrum

The commercial for DiGiorno oven pizzas slogan goes; "It's not delivery, it's DiGiorno." That's just annoying. I don't know anyone who would confuse an oven baked pizza for a pizza delivered from a pizza parlor. I want to open a chain of pizza parlors that cooks DiGiorno pizzas and delivers them. It's DiGiorno AND delivery. I'm pretty sure if that happened a black hole would form the moment the front door was opened.

Have you ever wondered what kind of footwear a Native American would wear on a job interview? Well wonder no more. Here we have the dress moccasin. Sure, you want to use every part of the animal, but that doesn't mean that you want to sacrifice style and professionalism.