Last night I sanded the main bumper down and shot everything with a coat of black semi-gloss.
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Spurred on by endless annoying political posts on the Facebooks, I just donated money to the Obama campaign. We don’t have a whole lot to give, but every little bit counts. Oh, and this handy tip popped up on Lifehacker today.
I’m totally doing this with whatever new car we wind up buying, and definitely with the Scout: How To Turn Your Car's Ashtray Into A Smartphone Dock.
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Last night’s progress: cleaned with Acetone, primered, and bondo’d. While I had everything out, I filled in the holes on the driver’s door, scuff-sanded the softtop hardware, and got as much ready for paint as possible.
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This just popped up on my radar today: The Rodder’s Journal Vintage Speed & Custom Revival, being held at Pimlico on September 28-30. I think I need to bring a camera.
After Finn went to bed, I used the evening to wire wheel the rest of the bumper. This section went a little faster because I wasn’t dealing with as many compound curves, but there were still a few areas I couldn’t reach with the angle grinder. After taking off the rest of the high spots, cleaning it all up with the flap sander and wire wheeling flat areas, I covered all of the welds, angles, and unsanded sections with a liberal coat of POR-15 and let it sit overnight.
Tonight it’ll get a rubdown with some acetone and then a coat of etching primer; while that’s drying I’m going to mix some Bondo together to fill in pinholes and other imperfections.
While I had the POR-15 open I put a coat on worn sections of the soft top bows and hardware. Tonight I’ll scuff it with some sandpaper and get it ready for a coat of paint as well.
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I miss my girls something terrible today.
Sunday morning we hopped back on the Metro and took Finn to the Museum of Natural History. She was excited to see the dinosaurs and animals based on our descriptions of the place, so when we finally got in the door it overwhelmed the three of us. I haven’t been inside in 30 years or more, so what I remember has changed dramatically. The sea life exhibit is an attention disorder nightmare; there are fantastic standalone displays placed randomly along the floor for viewers to ping-pong between. The design is beautiful but it’s hard to connect displays above or below eye-level with their information.
The dinosaur exhibit is breathtaking but a lot smaller than I remember. They’ve updated some of the larger displays but the dioramas are as I remember them, with an added layer of dust. The lighting is more dramatic now. I remember everything under bright white . Finn stood in awe of the T. Rex and stegosaurus displays, but it was hard to talk to her with the movement and noise around us.
I don’t remember much about the ice age exhibit from my history, but Finn seemed to like it a lot. The mammoth and mastodon skeletons were impressive. Jen and I laughed later at the early man display, with three hairy mannequins covered in dust. (There were lots of questions about early man and our ancestors later in the day).
We continued through the museum after a break for some lunch, and Finn did really well up until the gemstone exhibit, when she (and Jen and I) succumbed to overload. There’s so much to see, and so many people there. We bailed at about 4:30 after a snack and she promptly fell asleep on the train ride home.
This should be required reading for anyone stepping into a polling station: Greed and Debt: The True Story of Mitt Romney and Bain Capital. (via longreads)
MMMM. Where two of my favorite subjects meet: beer and design.