Detroit Rock City
So we drove to and back from detroit this weekend... it makes for a long weekend... We left saturday AM, picked up kevin, and headed out...
Traffic was fine aside from a crazy white trash mustache wearing guy in a nascar sticker adorned red lumina who decided that he didn't want me to go faster than he. So as I merge on to the express way, he speeds up to match my speed.... then when I floor it and get in front of him, he gets all mad. At the next opportunity he floors it, passes me on right, and, puts his POS chevy into a gap about 4 feet wide, cause me to brake. So I back off since this guys is clearly nuts. We pass all the traffic, and he sets his cruise at 71 in a 70 and goes back to the right lane. WTF? ALL of that drama, all that speeding, just so he can go 71 mph again? I don't get it. Why would you get all mad that someone would pass you when their cruising speed is CLEARLY more than you are planning on driving ANYWAY? I see it all the time-people drive all dumb and pass on the right or the shoulder but have no intent of going fast. They always pass on in the crazy way, then when the traffic is open and clear, they drive the speed limit, which is less than you were driving when they initiated their crazy maneuvers. WHY? It makes no sense? All I can assume is people are just giant dickheads? Fools? I have no idea... The other nice thing would have been had we been in the audi, I could have walked away from him in the first place, and I would have never had to deal with any of that BS. Faster cars can be nicer. But we got like 28mpg in the Camry, and me in the Audi would have never pulled that off. And it would have been much more cramped for those in the back seat.
So we got to detroit and went to the xmas party. It was fine. The pics are here. Nothing amazing. Mason was pretty well behaved and most people were excited to see him and hold him. He is a good baby. It is odd to think next year he is going to be moving around and what not. It is gonna rule.
This is the first time I have seen uncle kenny since he got in a bad car accident and had had a seizure (I think he had a seizure). (He had the accident in my old subaru). As a result of the ordeal, he had to relearn a bunch of things, walking, talking, writing, etc. Motor skill stuff IIRC. The other negative thing is that he has trouble linking words in his head, basically vocab lookup internally. Like he will be like "hey, I need a couch". He really needs a pen. But when he does the mental lookup for pen, it returns couch. And he doesn't necessarily realize it is wrong until you go to get him the wrong item, or you are like "what are you talking about?". It must be SO frustrating. But I talked to him a bit, or rather hung out with him. He has been living in an assisted living/rehab kinda house that I guess has been really good for him. He has lost a LOT of weight. I am not sure I have before and after pics, but I will check. He is diabetic and he has been keeping better track of that too, which is good. But he was laughing and seemed to be having a good time. I hope so, since he has had it rough.
Aunt Bev brought all these old pictures she had laying around, which is funny cause half of them were from weddings or of people that have since gotten divorced and remarried and were there with their new spouses. Awesome.
We hit the hotel, kevin took the car and got some coney islands from national, and we set up all the babies stuff, watched some TV, and went to sleep. I was damn tired. We got up the next AM, drove a bit, grabbed einstein's bagels, and hit the highway. We eventually caught up with my parents, had lunch with them, and drove into chicago. We dropped kevin off at his house, and we drove to winfield for rebecca's grandfather's 94th birthday. It was chill and nice. I fell asleep on the couch. TIRED. They decorated the tree a bit. Getting old is tough though.
Rebecca drove home, which was nice, since I wasn't driving.
I must be getting old, as I was totally tired, but I used to drive way more. I mean this was a 315 mile trip each way. And we made good time, but I was tired. I have done 1,000 mile days in the past and sure I was tired, but still. I dunno. Maybe I am out of practice at the distance driving. Maybe it was the baby adding stress, or the party, or the fact that I slept poorly in the hotel, who knows.
Back at work, busy busy busy. I am looking forward to a nice 4 day weekend.
back…
so I haven't posted in a while, primarily because I have been busy, and I rebuilt my laptop and didn't put the software back on it...
So what has happened since thanksgiving? Hmmmm... work is going ok, selling lots of stuff on ebay. The ebay thing is getting old, but we do need to move the stuff, and it is my job, so that is that. The boss is out of town tomorrow through end of the year, so hopefully I will catch up on all the little things that haven't been getting done. Not that it is huge, but I have little things I would like to implement that I haven't had time to work on...
I have a website project that I need to get working on... It is a site for a company that does something (I honestly am not sure what) but I am hoping to have the skeleton of the site done soon. There are some admin pages to control the content, so that will be kinda cool to work on.
Car related... the Jetta hasn't been touched, but the Suzuki Throttle Bodies came. Those are cool. I need to order the standalone engine management too. Oh and start building the engine. I have been thinking about painting the car myself, although we need a bigger compressor for that. The Audi is doing fine. Al got me a great deal on the AC compressor that I need, so that will be fixed by summer. I also put snow tires on the Camry, although I didn't replace the valve stems, so they leak air. awesome. Now I have to pay to get them fixed since we are driving to detroit this weekend and I am not risking that...
Mason related... I will post more on his blog, but he is doing good, although nothing super notable. He is smiling more, which is cool, but it is usually when we engage him. Soon it will be in general, which will be neat. He had some shots the other day, but he did quite well, barely cried and was fine since then. I am still waiting for him to be more exciting. It will come quickly.
Christmas is NEARLY here, which is kinda freaking me out cause I am not ready. We put the tree up, and there are pics posted of course... I also built shelves into the wall, which I still need to sand and touch up, but they came out pretty nice. I like them. Pretty modern looking.
I haven't got my shopping done, which sucks cause I haven't had time to think about what to get people. Time is slim now. And I am getting late in the season to shop online as I usually do. Grrrrr.
The xbox is cool. NES and SNES and Genesis games are cool. Old. But cool.
So there are more pics of Mason that everyone should check out. We are ending month 2. Word. He rules.
Emissions
So the audi was supposed to be emission tested in april... but at the time, I didn't have a working transmission, so I filled out the form and said the car wasn't operational, etc. They rescheduled me to august... And I was still putting it off. In IL, if you have a 1996 or newer and have a check engine light, you automatically fail. Since the 2001 Audi A4 is a ULEV vehicle, the cat and it's efficiency are checked pretty hard. I have a high flow cat in there that throws off that reading. I am sure that the car is still well below the state limits, I usually have a CEL all the time for the cat.
About 6 weeks ago, I reset the CEL with the stalk and it hadn't come back on yet. I hadn't been driving it much, but still, it was off. Saturday morning I was supposed to pick up Dylan and some concrete to work on the house... on the way out I decided I would drive past the emissions place, fingers crossed the CEL came off. Since Russ had said that the cat is not checked at WOT (and that had been proven at track events), and the car wasn't all warm, I drove it hard to the emissions place. Pulled in, line was really short, and I was out in 10 min. with a nice sheet saying I passed. Score. Avoided for another 2 years.
The jetta is up for testing this month. And I am pretty sure it won't pass, since it has a freaking beer can on the exhaust and they actually CHECK the exhaust. Gotta fill that form out and tell them it will be ready in the spring. The new motor should pass fine.
back in the saddle…
So we had an autox on saturday... while I thought the weather was going to suck, the clouds and rain kept the temps down. it was very nice. The computer timing went perfect. This was the first time this season that I have actually drove MY audi at an autox. It was kinda of nice to get back in the groove. It was also nice to get back in and kick some ass. You can see the results here. I was the fastest Audi, and only lost to the likes of a viper, miata, STI, etc. Not bad company. It was nice to prove to both myself and the rest of the group that I wasn't that rusty. Sometimes it is really nice to win.
Even though it was hot as hell today in Chicago, we moved a bunch of stuff into the new house. Thanks mom, dad, and kevin. I still need to get my stuff packed and ready to go, but nearly all of rebecca's stuff is over there. It is nice to know we have it in the place.
We also went to the place to get the hardwood. Mind you, the price is really really good, and so there is some 'too good to be true' kind of thoughts going on, but I should know more tomorrow when they call me. Hopefully I will have the flooring before the weekend. It will be really nice to get that in the house and we can finish the move.