The Last Refuge is reporting that he took two shotgun blasts to the back.

If so he is Dead.

I fully expect to have that confirmed a bit later.

I fucking love that guy, he’s got huge Clangers.

Wondering what finally caused them to push the button?

This.

Go over and wish him a Happy Birthday.

While yer there, tell him I said Good Job.

👍👍🤣🤣

I only have one.

Do they taste like Chicken?

What a lovely Summer we are having so far up here in the Pacific Northwest.

Here it is July 7th or 8th and it’s just pouring rain.

Next week it’s supposed to get up as far as 92.

Its been wet, chilly and windy with a few nice days here and there.

I just hope when it does finally decide to BE SUMMER that it stays that way until late October..

Right now it’s 8:45.

I need to get to bed and get some sleep, I’m still wore out and sore as hell from my little marathon garage rearranging yesterday.

The second day is always worse so I know I’m really going to be sore tomorrow.

It’s still light outside.

Some asshole neighbor is mowing his fucking lawn at almost 9 at night.

Then the Big Show is coming.

It’s already started, the 4th of July fireworks fest.

It will go until Midnight, it does every year.

I’m afraid to put in some earplugs, I just might sleep straight through both alarms.

That happened twice last week, twenty minutes both times.

It’s going to be a long night.

That would be Les Schwab tire centers, for quoting me $550 for two tires, mounted and balanced.

Remember?

I do.

Craigslist to the rescue again, I just went and picked up two more tires for $100.

That’s going to be all 4, mounted and balanced, for about $350.

They aren’t new but they are damn well good enough for my purposes.

As long as they hold air and stay round I’m golden.

I am just wiped out today.

I near kilt myself yesterday hauling and moving stuff in, out and around that garage.

I didn’t get everything put back until 11 o’clock last night when I finally shut the garage door.

No lunch, no dinner, just breaking my back.

My lower back is completely fried and my legs feel like I walked twenty miles.

First thing was taking the tarp off the Sprite and getting it started.

I put the trickle charger on it a couple of times last week just for fun.

It cranked over quite a bit, it’s been sitting since last Summer but eventually it fired up and ran again.

The throwout is squealing and the valves still need adjusting but it still runs and drives.

Then the real fun began.

I started hauling crap out of the garage into the driveway so I could get that massively heavy work bench out so I could get it mounted on a cart frame I got from work.

You can see that work bench there in the middle.

Sweet Jesus what a pain.

I didn’t take pictures of the process because I was too pissed off and just wanted to get it done but at one point it got away from me when I had one end picked up with the cherry picker and was trying to use a floor jack and a board to pick up the other end so I could take the huge crappy wheels off of it and roll the cart under it and the damn thing flipped over upside down into the driveway.

The driveway is sloped and the whole show kept rolling down hill.

It took me an hour to get the damn thing flipped back over by myself.

It’s gotta weigh 250 pounds easy.

It finally wound up with the cherry picker trapped sideways up against the tailgate of the truck and the end of the table jammed up against it too so it couldn’t roll away anymore.

Then I was able to lift the back and roll the cart under the back.

Then set it down on one end and let the other end down onto the tailgate so I could get the cherry picker out of the way, roll the cart under the legs, center it and then push the whole mess back uphill to get the end of the table off the tailgate and let it drop down onto the cart.

Then let it roll back against the tailgate so I could weld the feet onto the cart.

That table top is 1/2 inch steel plate.

Heavy?

Holy shit is it heavy.

That table is stout enough to sit that Sprite on though.

Then I had to rearrange the garage to make room for it.

Oof.

I forgot how heavy that Snap On Roll Away is.

Because at 10’Oclock at night when I was trying to get the crap out of the driveway and back into the garage, it’s still a mess.

But I will be going through and getting rid of a bunch of crap.

The back of the truck is already full.

It’s not exactly what I wanted but it’s a start.

I need more horsepower to get the rest of it moved around.

I want to get my tool boxes off the wall and out of the corner so I can get to them and move the cabinets back in there.

I am somewhat happier though.

As soon as I can move without yelping like an old arthritic dog, I’ll head back out there and start straightening things up and getting shit off the floor so I can get around better.

It’s a mess like I said but there is so much more potential and eventually it will be much easier to work in.

That table is going to be a game changer.

As long as it doesn’t turn into a Catch All.

Like that will never happen.

LMAO!

That just boggles my mind, sorry.

Even if I made enough money to be able to afford that, I wouldn’t.

The AVERAGE price tag on a new car is now $47,000

Twenty years ago when I was repairing Lincoln / Mercury vehicles for a living,

forty grand bought you a top of the line, all the bells and whistles, prestigious

automobile that most people couldn’t afford.

Now they want forty grand for this,

Now add insurance and $5 a gallon gas.

According to the article linked above, because of the electronic chip shortage, automobile builders decided to build bigger, more expensive models to get the most bang for their buck because they couldn’t crank out as many as they wanted to.

Now as I recall, back in the day, mid 70’s and a couple of times since, when the price of gas got higher than peoples comfort level, the automobile industry still had enough sense to respond to demand by cranking out little Econoboxes by the millions.

Such as,

Now of course these newer cars have way more amenities and still get pretty decent mileage but give me a break, Thirty Five Grand for a Grocery Getter?

Are you fucking serious?

And who are these people who can just plunk down that kind of dough, especially when EVERYTHING ELSE has gone through the roof except wages?

$2000 a month for rent, $600 to $800 a month for groceries, etc. etc. etc..

As it is, credit card use has skyrocketed in the past year as people foolishly try to maintain a standard of living that they are purposely being squeezed out of.

Then we have the ones I really love seeing.

Sweet Jesus, I wouldn’t even be able to afford NEW TIRES on that shit!

I mean, I make decent money but are you kidding me?

It’s not just new cars either, the price of used vehicles has shot way up too.

Now me being a mechanic, I might be able to afford a much older rig, spend the money here and there and REFURBISH something but I sure as HELL ain’t paying what they are asking for what I consider to be a vehicle that isn’t rebuildable BY DESIGN in the first place, let alone some Front Wheel Drive piece of crap with enough useless electronic crap in it to run a small country.

Damned if I know, most folks gotta do what they gotta do to get around but the way I see it, unless you are pulling down just about twice as much as I make in a year, there is no way you can afford to buy a new car.

It just isn’t possible.

Eventually the car manufacturers are going to see their sales fall off a cliff and be forced to rethink their strategy.

I guess they never heard of this before,