Today it occurred to me… well, actually it almost happened to me, as you see that a lot of the students are coming back to town and the driving gets much more “intense” when they are here… In the past few days I have been cut off, passed by several doing at least 15 over the speed limit (I know that cause I was at the limit), and generally gotten pissed-off several times. Today, when we went to lunch… poof every place in town was packed? I was about to say, what the HELL is going on here but then realized… oh yea… the Sorority girls started back in last Friday to prep for Rush… the guys came this week to watch the girls, next week it will be worse as they start collecting for and doing RUSH… oh well… I do enjoy the activities that the university provide here… actually there are a lot of things that do not include the sports programs, even though we do those too, cause they are here… and we can.
Beyond all that the construction around town and campus is still pretty much in full swing and you never know which streets will be blocked with some sort of work going on… I guess that calls for…
Although I am sure the students will be making more use of that than I…
This week I did finish up the tri-wing airplane for GS#1… it has taken me way too long to get it done but I have included several new options and I had to find just the right parts for some of it… Since I thought I was short a can for the front cowling I came up with two options for that… one with similar gold and strips and the other black with some gold… since the plane is gold… not sure which is better so GS#1 will decide or maybe keep the parts for a change out if he gets tired of one front? who knows… (Note: the cans were from when I worked in Algeria and I would cut some and bring them home every month and save them back for these special projects… we got some gold cans in over there and I found enough for this plane… yesterday I found I have just enough for one more plane so maybe GS#3 will get one of those?)
At this point I had the machine guns on and the rotary engine on… that was about a week or more ago… needed some pieces for the struts..
While open this was a test of the black cowl on the engine?
And the white with gold strips… at this point the strips looked cool… to me?
all finished with a temp install of the white with gold front…?
Swap out the white for the black front… but the black does more hide the black guns? but since I was unsure… I did just make it so we can swap when ever…
…
and yes, this version has a control stick, pilot seat and a control panel with gauges… kind of hard to see but they are down in there…
Probably a lot of lost detail that will never be seen once we hang it from his ceiling… it is not a plane to be played with, just to be looked at and hang out of little kids reach… ha!
Along with the plane work and radio stuff and other small projects I have had to re-establish my inventory of coins… I started a coin collection when I was in grade school… it has grown and I have jumped in with spurts of activity and then long periods of nothing but I figured I better get a better inventory of the whole thing… it don’t have a lot of value but I do have a lot of coins… mostly pennies as a kid with no money can only collect small coins… ha! But is amazing now what some of those pennies are worth to a real collector… I put in maybe a couple of hours a day and have been doing the inventory for over a week… lot of pennies… but I get side tracked at times too, looking for info on some of the odd pieces… oh well… just another hobby that can sure keep you busy…
Yesterday Sherrie called after work and the battery was dead in the car… hum!… I got back in to give it a jump-start and she said the battery was about 3.5 years old… and it was an 84 month warranty battery? So today I took it to the parts store where I got the battery and they tested and said … it appeared my alternator was not working, “bad diodes”… hum! so I took it to the Toyota place and had them test it… they gave me a report that said the alternator was putting out 13.6 volts but when tested off the battery only had about 110 CCA… and it should have had about 750. the really good thing… the Toyota shop didn’t charge me for the test… but they do all the service work or have for several years so they probably figure they can make it up on the next one… I then went back to the battery place and showed them the report and got a battery ( although past the 3 year limit) it was half price exchange… This exercise took all morning… sure glad I didn’t have much planned … oh year, retired… Got it washed and then delivered back so Sherrie has a ride home…
When I got home from lunch and all the running around I got busy working on some Green Chili… I had gotten the meat out yesterday and it needed to be cooked up… so my big afternoon was getting the Green Chili on to simmer for a few hours then tonight I will split it into double serving size bags and freeze it…probably won’t need to make that again for a few months as this time it was bigger than I had planned… but oh well…
yes, I know in the picture it looks a bit red but that is green chili… with lots of chopped New Mexico chill’s and some good 505 sauce…I will sure be testing some tonight…