This is gold: an exclusive interview with the Arizona Zoo Panther.
MH: So tell me about the attack from your perspective. What was it like to …
CT: Whoa, whoa, whoa! Attack? What “attack”?
First of all, I was chilling at home when some white lady broke in. What would you do if someone came into your house with a weapon? This is a clear case of Stand Your Ground! She was armed and attacking me!
Brilliant.
I put this up on Instagram but I was so proud of what it looked like this morning I took another picture and now that’s here. This is is the result of about 4 good hours of woodworking, which was made up of 2 hours of squaring all of the weird framing and 2 hours of cutting and fitting. I still need a bottom plate for underneath the sill and finishing trim, and I have to recut the rounded trim at the top of the three wall plates (I cut it about 4 inches too short). Once I’ve got those pieces I can assemble the top moulding and put that in–it’s always easier to install that as a whole–and caulk the whole thing up. I also studded out the doorway to the closet to prep it for framing, which I can maybe start next weekend.
Meanwhile Brian is here today to (hopefully) finish the tile on the bottom of the wall, put the top of the bench in, and possibly get the floor tile installed. He should be able to come back and grout the whole thing later this week, and we’ll be that much closer to complete in there!
We went to see Captain Marvel this weekend, which was pretty good but not the best Marvel movie I’ve seen. Finn enjoyed it. There were several places where female empowerment were FRONT AND CENTER, which I love to be able to show her. I enjoyed those messages but I thought the movie overall was somewhat disjointed and rushed. There were several moments of character-building but most of that got pushed aside for PEW-PEW-PEW-BOOM action fights staged in the dark that I really couldn’t see. Grade: C+
I got the Line Set Ticket from the frame serial back from Super Scouts this morning, and, well, the mystery continues. Here’s what I know so far:
- The VIN number on this Scout is for a 1976 Scout, painted Solar Yellow, and sold in Colorado.
- The body on this truck, based on the one-year-only Gold Poly paint under the purple, dates to 1975. I have no real good way of getting a serial from the frame.
- The LST for the frame specified a very fancy Scout (Rallye package, custom interior, A/C, tilt wheel, clock, deluxe trim package) painted Persimmon with a Sierra Tan interior. It was a 345/auto combination with 3.07 gears. It was built on January 17, 1979, and delivered to a dealer in St. Paul Minnesota.
Knowing that, I have to go out and see if I can read the engine serial to see if it matches what’s on the LST (311593) for confirmation.
As is common with most Scouts of its age, it’s a jigsaw puzzle from many different trucks. Maybe someone out west put it together and then shipped it east to sell?
→ This is a syndicated post from my Scout weblog. More info here.
Jen and I got a text from our friend Pete, who informed us that Massive Attack has postponed their tour due to illness. No idea yet on when the new shows will be, but they’re going to let us know on the 14th.
Ah, crap. A new study finds that trying to catch up on sleep during weekends doesn’t really do any good.
…even after having the chance to sleep in on weekends, individuals who went back to restricted sleep patterns during the week continued to experience dysregulations of their body clock.
(via Kottke)
We took Finley out to get a long-overdue haircut on Saturday, which makes a huge difference. I really prefer her with a bob. It suits her face, and her hair looks healthy again. More importantly, I think she likes it as much as we do.
After the haircut we drove down to the LP City to go to pick up Jen’s father and take him to the Hollywood VFW Spring Dinner, featuring St. Mary’s stuffed ham, fried oysters, beans, and potatoes. It’s been a few years since we’ve been down there, and even more since we’ve been to the Hollywood dinner, but it was worth every delicious bite. I think Jen and I emptied one entire heating tray of oysters on our own.
I haven’t set a date to go up and begin cleaning out my parents’ basement yet, but I did find that LensRentals is offering all of the gear I’d need to properly digitize the family slides: the 40mm macro lens, slide digitizing kit, and a Nikon D500 would all be $288 for a 7 day rental as opposed to buying the digitizing kit for $150 and renting the rest. The D500 is seven years newer and has a higher resolution (if I wanted to be anal I’d go with a full-frame body, but whatever) which should be enough to get us the results we want.
I saw an ad on Craigslist (I know, I’m so old-school) for a set of Scout II fenders this week and followed up with the seller. The fenders looked OK from the front but the low price led me to believe they were in worse shape than they appeared. I’ve already got three spare fenders hanging in the garage, so my need is not immediate, but I figured I’d see what kind of shape they were in. I traded some texts and a phone call and set up a time on Sunday afternoon to look them over.
I knew I had the right house when I pulled up and saw a rusty Scout 80 parked in front of a faded Saab Sonnett; clearly this man had eclectic tastes in automobiles. I looked over the fenders in a light drizzle and the seller came out to talk with me; he’s a weird car nerd like me and we talked for about ten minutes before I thanked him for his time and hit the road. They were too far gone for me to want to deal with them; the areas behind the wheel well were all crispy and there was rot setting in at the top corner by the cowl notch.
Meanwhile, I’ve got an order in with Super Scout Specialists for a lineset ticket keyed to the VIN number I found on the frame back in 2009. I figured I’d at least try to learn where the frame (and possibly, the engine) came from, even if the body is a mystery.
→ This is a syndicated post from my Scout weblog. More info here.