Material Issue, Valerie Loves Me.
Watch this little girl, 8-year-old Yoyoka Soma, absolutely destroy Zeppelin’s Good Times, Bad Times.
『Hit Like A Girl Contest 2018』Good Times Bad Times – LED ZEPPELIN / Cover by Yoyoka , 8 year old drummer from よよか on Vimeo.
Check out the kick drum at 2:16. She gets a little out of the pocket here and there, but to watch her bust out in a smile at the chorus and then jump up off the stool to hit all the fills PERFECTLY at around 1:15 makes my heart esplode with happiness. Rock on, little girl.
The weekend was kind of a blur, partially from activity and partially from sloth. Friday night Jen went out with a friend so Finn and I met the neighbors at the ice cream parlor for dinner. Then we got some pizza and headed back to their house to hang out for a while and have some real food before wrapping up the evening.
Saturday it threatened to rain all day, and the forecast kept pushing thunderstorms back throughout the morning and afternoon so Jen and I made the best of things. I was able to mow and edge the whole lawn for the first time since I bought the new mower, and it made a huge difference. We went out for a truckload of mulch and some more soil, and while Jen started mulching the beds I transplanted six cukes to a separate container and transferred 3/4 of a rainbarrel to the one behind the greenhouse. I did a bunch of other errands and yardwork until about 5, and then we had our niece and nephew over for steaks and corn and beer.
Sunday was pretty much a bust; it started and stopped drizzling all day until about 3, when the heavens opened up completely. I was doing work at my desk for most of the afternoon but nobody was very motivated.
It looks like the forecast for camping weekend looks good so far; partly cloudy for Friday and sunny on Sunday. Fingers crossed…
Whenever I take the Scout out for a drive, I’m on the alert. I’m listening to the engine, feeling the brakes through the pedal, gauging the transmission through vibrations in the stick. Does that sound right? Are we pulling to the left? When did that start happening?
Now that the brakes are fixed and I had my misadventure with the distributor a few weeks ago, I’m doubly alert. As it happens, I’ve started hearing a clattering nose at idle that wasn’t present a few weeks ago. Today I had a little time and got under the truck to tighten up the emergency brake cabling, which means I can let it idle with the brake on and know that it’s not going to roll backwards into the garage. After I did that I put a flashlight into the wheel well and immediately found the source of the clattering: the exhaust manifold gasket on the driver’s side is bad, so I’ll have to order two new copper bolts for that and replace it. When the passenger’s side crapped out seven years ago I bought two just to be on the safe side, so there’s still one in my parts bin. Probably after the camping trip next week.
Oh, and I used a Permatex kit to re-glue the rear-view mirror back on to the windshield, which had fallen off about two weeks ago. I hope it works.
→ This is a syndicated post from my Scout weblog. More info here.
Shocking news this morning: Anthony Bourdain killed himself yesterday, at the age of 61. Do yourself a favor and read the article for the New Yorker that kicked off his wildly interesting second career as a writer, explorer, and TV host. (previously)
See that big blue spike in the middle of Saturday? that’s every weekly forecast this spring in a nutshell. My lawn looks like the Peruvian rainforest. How the hell am I supposed to mow that shit? I haven’t seen the picnic table since February.
I did some more repairs to the greenhouse and got the irrigation system back online; a new hose bib to replace the UV-cracked original, and five new 5GPH misters over the tomatoes for backup watering are now in place. But what I’ve been reading is that overhead watering isn’t good for tomato plants–it will promote disease. This isn’t a problem, because I planned for drip irrigation when I put the misting system in years ago, so it’s just a matter of switching my hoses around.
The tomatoes themselves are all doing very well. I restaked and tied all of them because they’ve grown 6″ in a week with no sun, and there are blooms on all but one–there’s even a tomato! I’ve got to go out and manually pollinate them all, and then pinch off the new growth to keep all of the energy in the fruit.
Finn and I snuck out in the Scout during some sunshowers and picked up two more containers, three cherry tomato plants, and more potting soil to start covering the second bench in back. I have to split out the cucumbers into a second container because they’re getting leggy and crowded.
We saw a matinee of Solo: a Star Wars Story on Saturday and the whole family really enjoyed it. Jen made a good observation that in their initial scenes the actors playing Solo and Calrissian did an excellent job of imitation, and then dialed it back for the rest of the movie up until the end. It was subtle but very well done. The story seems to be that it’s a bomb (compared to other Star Wars movies) but I honestly don’t see why.
I got a $7 rebuild kit in the mail for my Plomb ratchet on Friday and couldn’t wait to see if it would work. Disassembly was pretty easy, aided by some PBlaster to loosen up years of crust, and all the guts of the ratchet fell out easily. I found a YouTube link for a rebuild and within about 5 minutes had the old parts cleaned and new parts installed.
The one roadblock was understanding how to attach the selection lever to the cam inside the ratchet, but I read somewhere that you’ve got to use a ball-peen hammer to mushroom the top of the cam nub over the lever. Once I’d done that I used some heavy duty gear oil to lube the whole thing and buttoned it back up. Now it’s ready for another eighty years of service in my toolbox.
The true fallout from the storm has now been tallied:
- Our cable box was fried and needed to be replaced. The Verizon guy handled this for us yesterday. Thank god the TV is OK.
- Our landline phone base station is fried and needs a replacement.
- The HDMI switchbox controlling our media electronics died and has been replaced.
- Our Airport Extreme base station is unresponsive. (I went back to using the Verizon router wifi).
- An older 8-port Netgear router in the basement died and has been replaced with a noisier but robust 32-port Netgear switch I saved from the electronics dumpster at WRI. I have to look into replacing the fans on this unit.
- The RJ-45 cable running from the AppleTV to the basement router is unresponsive; I’ve got to chase this down (or run a new one).
This is probably the worst loss of electronics we’ve suffered since we moved in, and it was only from a power loss. Obviously I’ve got to harden some of our crucial electronics (the server in the basement needs a new UPS unit, for one thing).