Minor Win thread - Life is good!

I made a mojito marinade chicken tonight for dinner, and in the words of the great Guy Fieri, it was bomb-diggity 

Today we held a birthday party for a four-year-old and ten others around the same age. We pulled the damn thing off. Nobody even had hurt feelings! Neither Mrs Monohue nor I are regular entertainers, so getting away with this feels like a genuine win.

I got the only table left outside the mayhem at my wife's HS reunion. Now we and our adherents have a spot to escape to from the onslaught.

Really something to be said about a moonshine buffet at a party. 

I have not updated the build thread yet, but my middle son (he is 15) and I were able to get his project car running on Sunday.  

2 years after my last one just stopped working, I ordered another Fitbit. Really enjoyed the "smart wakeup" alarm feature, and otherwise simple/ignorable interface.

RevRico said:

Really something to be said about a moonshine buffet at a party. 

I'm wondering whether you meant "moonlight" rather than "moonshine", but either one sounds pretty good...

DarkMonohue said:

RevRico said:

Really something to be said about a moonshine buffet at a party. 

I'm wondering whether you meant "moonlight" rather than "moonshine", but either one sounds pretty good...

I'm betting he meant "moonshine".

Duke said:

DarkMonohue said:

RevRico said:

Really something to be said about a moonshine buffet at a party. 

I'm wondering whether you meant "moonlight" rather than "moonshine", but either one sounds pretty good...

I'm betting he meant "moonshine".

 

I very much meant moonshine. And not that stuff they sell in stores that's like 60 proof, proper backwoods shine from across the eastern seaboard. Cherry bounce from Tennessee, black locust honey from the Carolinas, Apple jack and banana foster from the western Pennsylvania hills, port shine wine someone's cousin makes, homemade from grain lemoncello. 

In reply to RevRico :

Ah yes, Western Pennsylvania, traditional home of bananas 

Jokes aside, I would definitely try some. My buddy used to trade homebrew beer for moonshine and the favorite was "pomato," made of course from tomatoes and potatoes. 

I've been on the local news more than our own mayor and city council the last few months. Maybe if they would stop doing shady stuff that can't be defended on the record they could be on the news too. Heck, our own city manager snuck out the back of the building to avoid a reporter.

>2.5 hours in the garage tonight to load the new toolbox, move stuff around, and generally put away things that haven't had a home before. Not gonna solve any problems overnight but it's a lot nicer in there now (to me)

classicJackets (FS) said:

>2.5 hours in the garage tonight to load the new toolbox, move stuff around, and generally put away things that haven't had a home before. Not gonna solve any problems overnight but it's a lot nicer in there now (to me)

I'm almost hoping it rains a lot this weekend so I can't work on anything else outside and can finally start making a dent in the disaster that currently is our garage. -_-

We've had issues since getting The Bat with her trying much harder than The Dog did to get through the fence at our neighbors' two dogs. For their part they also attack the fence to try and get at her- but since the boards are installed from their side of the fence (it's our fence, I don't know why it was installed this way- but it kind of works out...) it's much more of a concern that The Bat will knock a board loose. Plus, there's just the ~1" of wood between them and since the fence is nearly a decade old at this point the pickets have shrunk enough that there are gaps pushing an inch between some of the pickets. We got a quote from a fence company to reinforce that stretch of fence and replace the sagging gate across the driveway, but it was like $5k which was just more than we thought all of that was worth, so got on the schedule with them to just replace the gate and determined to take care of the fence ourselves (or, more accurately, by myself).

Last Friday I went out and got the necessary wood and by the time we left for the cabin Saturday afternoon had gotten the first 3 panels of reinforcement done. It's hard work, and if I didn't already have all of the tools necessary from previous projects it might not have saved much to be doing it myself- but it looks like it will end up costing about 1/4 of what having the fence company do it would have cost (since the 'only' cost is the materials). And we can already tell that it's going to be worth it- the dogs still bark at each other through the fence but don't try and get to each other through it since there's much more separation and they can no longer see each other (in addition to offsetting the pickets on the new layer of fence so they don't line up with the old ones I put a strip of landscaping fabric on the bottom half so there's a pretty much opaque barrier even when the new pickets shrink and there are gaps). It will likely take me a few more weeks to slowly get the rest installed, but it will mean we have less to worry about with her out in the yard on her own so will be well worth it.

We bought a new truck right before going on vacation. We were planning to sell the old one when we got back. My daughter mentioned it to her friend. When we got home her friend came to look at it, took it for a test drive and bought it for what I asking. 

Flattie fired right up after being dormant for at least a year. One step closer to selling. 

In reply to Ashyukun (Robert) :

Have you introduced them?  They might just be looking for company.

After over 1.5 years I was finally able to hire help to work at Dad's place. Went to approach the new neighbor's 20-ish son but ran into a 40 y/o first. Clean the dirt, cinders and debris outta the concrete drainage ditch. I cleaned one section and it kicked my butt. This guy is a real hustler too.

He'll pull weeds too which my new lawn guy has never weed whacked after telling him multiple times. I need a new lawn guy.

These guys can help load the dumpster when I arrange it. I can't count on my brother or sister, their help has been scant.

I'm getting in contact with a painter too. I could do it but that takes me away from other work. Almost ready for the metal scrap guy too, maybe this week. I don't have to touch it, he'll load the truck.

I can't wait to get this place finished, get the berkeley outta here and get my life back.

32 more missing issues acquired to complete my collection Of Wings & Airpower magazine. And only $1 a peice.

Tried to get my c50 started over the weekend. Charged the battery and took 5 whole minutes to swap new battery cables on. After remembering the choke is backwards it fire off with almost no hassle after sitting for the last 4 years! Then I immediately drove it 30 miles to the shop! I forgot how fun this was to drive. Scary, but fun. Pretty sure the tach is set for 4cyl...

Saw Radiant is the Blood of the Baboon Heart last night with the lads and we began making terrible decisions with making Doc Holiday's aka Rusty's Doctails utterly awful drinks. 

The Red Mocho Cooler is like a cherry compote if it had the consistency of 2 year old lawnmower oil, and I got to watch one of my best friends drink Malört and discover why I refused to do a shot of it. Malört is proof that if you horribly berkeley up something in a kitchen, just make an absolutely dogE36 M3 meal, you can claim it's the Chicago version instead of admitting. 

It was a good night 

Chandler comes through again. '98 XJ Sport w/ AX-15. 

Hope he does a build thread.

Streetwiseguy said:

In reply to Ashyukun (Robert) :

Have you introduced them?  They might just be looking for company.

The neighbors have two dogs (at least, I've seen a third but I think that may be a relative of theirs who was staying with them and looked like it could have been a parent of one of their dogs), but I absolutely believe that The Bat just wants to play with them since if they come out when I'm throwing one of her toys around for her to chase after she runs over to the fence with it like she wants to play with them with it. I wondered if introducing them might be helpful, but The Dancer is convinced that would just make things worse when they're out in the yard with the fence between them. We do really need to either get some play dates set up with the other dogs from the rescue we got her from or take her to a dog park (though we worry a bit since she's still a very rambunctious puppy and a 'bully breed' that people might had issues with her) since we know from her fostering time and when we were gone on our trip to Europe for a week and she was staying with the foster place again that she gets along really well with other dogs and likely misses that interaction.

We're also still weighing whether we ourselves might want to get another dog as well so she's got a brother to play with. I think it would be a good idea, The Dancer is more on the fence. The last time we discussed it she was leaning toward the idea of trying out fostering one of the many dogs/puppies that the rescue is always trying to find places to place, since that way if it didn't work out it wouldn't be permanent (though could be if we wanted it to).

I have driven enough miles on my Escalade since replacing the VVT solenoid, actuator and cam position sensor that I am pretty sure it took care of the random miss fire, bogging, hesitation thing it has done since I bought it. It has also NEVER ran so smooth, like if I did this on day one I may not have 1.5 years of hate stored up on this truck. I am going to look at a set of take off 20's from a Denali, that will fix the peeling chrome (and associated leak / balance problems) on the wheels and improve this truck a little further in my book. The entire job (including replacing the water pump because I was there) only cost $250 and took a few hours. 

Win.

My nephew just graduated from college and bought his first car. It's a 2009 Civic hybrid and it needed some work. He took it to a shop and they gave him a list of things that needed to be fixed. I looked at the list and told him which ones I could help him fix. Tonight he came over and we spent a couple hours installing new rear wheel bearings, rotors and pads. He'd never touched a car before and he was very excited about it and made me feel like the cool uncle.