the nut house

truly the best

Fri, 25 Jul 2008 14:47:24 -0500

"waving bunnies are the best kind."

IT'S ALIVE!!!!!!

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 12:28:51 -0500

bryan drove his car home last night.

he is planning on taking it to the dyno today to tune it, at least on pump gas. not sure if he'll be picking up some race gas on the way. my guess (hope) is no.

i'm so happy to have my own car back and i know he is too.

this is a test

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 12:04:50 -0500

valette has asked me to fix my RSS feed so it at least shows when an entry is extended, but preferably put the whole entry in there anyway.

]]> let's see what i can do.

valette, let me know how this comes out.

so unfair

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 11:52:13 -0500

the department next door apparently had a meeting this morning and had leftovers. they just brought us a box of hot coffee, a carton of half & half, and a whole big box of fresh panera bread bagels and fresh cream cheese. every bagel is a different flavor and i want them all. jalapeno cheddar, honey oatmeal, sesame seed, plain, cinnamon raisin, brown sugar raisin... omgsogoooood...

use your imagination

Tue, 22 Jul 2008 16:57:29 -0500

things i've recently taken pictures of but decided against posting for a variety of reasons:

- me
- my food
- my car
- the sky
- my hair
- bryan
- bryan's car
- my feet
- our friend's 3 year old son
- bryan's mom's dog
- my office
- my shoes
- bryan's new exhaust
- bryan's incredibly shiny engine bay (seriously, like almost painfully shiny)
- my co-workers (especially the one that looks like elizabeth hurley)
- the campus where i work

gnats!

Tue, 22 Jul 2008 16:16:36 -0500

my co-worker has some flowers on her desk which has been attracting gnats which have started flying around our office, annoying everybody.

i think one just flew up my nose.

gittin' fit

Tue, 22 Jul 2008 12:53:02 -0500

last night bryan signed up for his very own gym membership. he plans on working out with a friend and getting all buff and ripped and hawt(er). guess i better get back to the gym myself, before he leaves me when he realizes he's too really, really ridiculously good looking for us to be seen together.

did you know

Tue, 22 Jul 2008 12:09:40 -0500

cheese loses its flavor when chilled. serve at room temp or warmer for best flavor.

crap dogs

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 15:33:21 -0500

Crap Dogs

"This blog depicts dogs so undeserving of the good name of dog that their proud wolf ancestors howl in outrage and protest from the hereafter."

guess i forgot

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 13:04:17 -0500

back on may 31st we went down to cary, nc to work on a customer car. it's about a 3.5 hour trip one way (2.5 hours if bryan is driving) and we took bryan's car because it can fit all his tools, which mine can't, and it has a much better stereo system than mine.

]]> we made it there without incident, got the customer car all fixed up, and headed home. around 8:30 pm we hit emporia, va, which is just inside the va border and about an hour and a half away from where we live. when you hit emporia you have to get off the major freeway, I-95, and turn onto a rural highway, SR85. as we pulled up to the intersection, the car died.

just that morning before we left bryan had changed out the coil in his car but unfortunately had left the original parts back at the shop. we had his brother come get us and we left the car there overnight.

the next day we came back in my car with all the spare parts we could think of that we might need. coil, igniter, stock ecu, spark plug wires, and even a spare distributor. we tried them all, but unfortunately nothing helped. the car still wouldn't start. we finally did a compression check, praying that that wasn't the problem. hoping against hope that it was a wiring issue that we hadn't been able to address but really knowing what it was.

it read 0 compression.

bryan's reaction was "i must have grabbed the broken compression tester. that can't be right..." but when we tried it on my car, it read 200 psi. that could mean only one thing: it was the timing belt.

we called a friend with a truck and trailor to help us tow the car back to bryan's shop.

changing a timing belt, at least on an mr2, requires basically removing the engine. you can do it while the engine is still in the car, but you have to remove so many other pieces that the engine is basically out at that point anyway. since we would have to pull the engine out to change the timing belt, we figured it was a good enough time to go ahead and change out the engine. bryan had a new engine waiting to go in the car, we just hadn't planned on doing it so soon.

unfortunately, we had a customer car sitting in the shop at the time, which had to be finished before we could get bryan's car in there. then there was a matter of bryan needing to do other work on other cars to make the money to buy the last few parts he needed to finish putting his car together, and before he could have the free time to dedicate to working on his car.

so here we are, more than a month and a half later, and still only running on one car between us, but so close to having his car running that we can taste it. i know that we're both chomping at the bit. this whole sharing a car thing totally blows for all parties involved.

almost there

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 10:10:38 -0500

bryan says he thinks his car should be running by today. probably not on the ground and driveable, but at least running. he just has a little wiring left to do then it should start. unfortunately he still has to drill out some suspension pieces for larger bolts which he still has to order from the toyota dealership, which is a problem because our regular parts person is out of town and his replacement is incompetent. he's also got to put together another axle, but aside from that, it should be ready to go.

]]> we spent all day saturday at the shop working on the car. while there, our buddy miguel wire-brushed bryan's "new" exhaust to get all the rust off of it, then bryan painted it black to keep it from rusting again. bryan also completely disassembled a brand spankin' new, right out of the package, stock engine wiring harness. it hurt me to watch. he then reassembled it in just the configuration he wanted, without all the extra wiring he didn't need, so he could tuck all the wiring in special places so that almost none of it is visible at all in the engine bay. looks pretty slick but was it worth the effort? i'm not sure.

he went back again saturday and did a bunch more work, including more of the wiring work and hanging the exhaust. we were hoping tim would come over to help assemble a new axle but he never showed. bummer. i'm hoping he was able to get the boost lines run as well, and maybe got the new boost gauge installed in the dash, but i don't know.

today he's supposed to get those suspension pieces drilled out for the bigger bolts, then spend the rest of the day working on whatever is left to get it running, including wiring up the new computer in the trunk, and putting the interior back together. can't drive it until the axle gets fixed and the bolts come in from toyota, but at least he can get it running and start working on the tune for it. the idle part anyway.

so tired

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 09:08:46 -0500

overslept again this morning. could barely drag myself out of bed. just wanted to sleep.

not hallucinating

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 09:06:08 -0500

my supervisor came in a little bit ago with the thermometer from her office. it read 60 degrees.

so it's not just in our heads. it's too cold in here.

playlist

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 08:48:03 -0500

songs i sang at karaoke last night:

norah jones - come away with me
(i thought i actually did really well at this one. unfortunately bryan says he couldn't hear me at all so i have no other feedback.)

martina mcbride - when God-fearin' women get the blues
(done basically just to make bryan laugh, i apparently did really well at this one.)

madonna - rain
(i thought i did really awful, but bryan thought it was great. i thought it was boring and flat, but he thought it was sweet and pretty.)

garbage - only happy when it rains
(the opposite of the previous song. i thought this was so much better than the previous song, but bryan thought it was nasal and weird and didn't sound like me at all. in a bad way.)

mastering the 1-handed shot

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 09:25:31 -0500

i have no idea who this guy is, but i have to give him credit for being able to take a really great picture of himself with the camera in his hand. when i try, my face always comes out distorted and pointy in all sorts of weird ways. he almost looks like someone else is actually taking the picture, and i'd think someone was, if not for the way his arm is pointing to the corner of every shot, and you can see the reflection in his glasses of him holding the camera.

maybe i just need longer arms.