How it started:
How it’s going:
Both of the main structures are built. Now I’ve got to attach them both to the wall permanently, build boxes in below the last shelf, bring the kickplates around the boxes, and find a 12′ section of 10″ board for the top shelf.
It’s been a minute since I posted; it’s been a busy couple of weeks. We’ve been organizing for and shooting the prerecorded section of WRI’s annual Stories To Watch, which is always a huge undertaking. Every year we up our game and this year was no exception. For 2023 we found a studio facility in Chantilly to shoot at with a 40’ wide, 14’ high LED background that we had to fill with content. My video team rose to the challenge and built a looping background from an Illustrator file I made, and we produced an 80 slide, five chapter presentation from a rough deck in four days. Our CEO walked in on the first day and was amazed at the LED wall lit up and running the animations; the whole team knocked it out of the park. We booked the studio for two days, so I stayed overnight in a hotel down the street because the commute home is at least two hours—and we used every hour of those two days.
While that was happening, there have been some changes going on behind the scenes in my department. One of my oldest colleagues and current boss is moving on from the organization, and I volunteered to fill in temporarily with another colleague until they find our next VP of Communications. I’m excited to help keep things moving and slightly terrified of all of the things I don’t know, but a new challenge will be good to tackle. So for now, I’m co-Acting Head of Communications. Wish me luck.
While I’ve been scrambling at work there hasn’t been much progress on the bathroom beyond what I did last weekend. All I’ve got to do is sand the drywall and hit it with a cat of paint and then I can screw the fixtures in for good and take a picture for Cousin Margaret.
On Sunday I’m headed up to PA to look at another Scout 800 tucked in a barn; I’ll detail the details on the Scout site later. Monday I’m going to start work on the built in bookcase in the living room for a change of pace.
Fed up with the lighting situation in the master bathroom, Jen put some suggestions for vanity lighting in browser tabs and showed them to me last week. After wading through hundreds of listings—apparently dimmable lights are dangerous and are prone to explode in flames at any point, but most online vendors make it impossible to filter out “dimmable” as a keyword—we found a set that we liked, and got them shipped to the house last Friday. I measured the wall and the mirror seventeen times and drilled some new access holes to mount each fixture on Saturday, hoping I was on the correct side of each wall stud in an attempt to get them to line up symmetrically to the mirror and the sinks. They went in relatively easily, once I identified the correct breaker, and we are now just waiting for a skim coat of drywall mud on the vestigial holes in the wall.
Jen’s done a lot to finish off the bathroom. During her bout with COVID she kept the floor heated for most of the day while she was quarantined, and I think she fell in love with warm toes during bathroom visits. Over the break she framed some artwork we bought in Austin and has been adding plants and rugs to get things to tie together, while I made some adjustments to the closet door to get both of them to close properly and fixed a leaky flapper in the toilet.
This morning I finished my shower, dried off, and stepped out onto a toasty floor. Morning sunlight reflected off the wall through the south windows, and the new vanity lights brightened everything up. It’s nice to have a grown-up bathroom.
I’ve had this rattling around in my head for the last couple of days, after falling down an INXS rabbit hole—mostly reviewing their earlier hits:
It’s hard to overstate just how big this song was in the fall of ’87.
When we were in New York before Christmas, one of the things we showed Finn on our way past Madison Square Garden was the big sign on the corner of 7th Avenue and 33rd Street where I’d designed the billboard for Deutsche Bank back in the day. It was blocked by scaffolding when we walked past—we kind of had to point around all the construction to show her—but I think she understood the scale of the thing.
Over the weekend, while trying to replace a power strip behind our office cabinet, I found a couple of Addy programs from 2009 that had fallen behind other books. Figuring we’d saved it for one of Jen’s projects, I thumbed through it and suddenly remembered that we’d won Silver and Gold Addys for that campaign. I don’t see anyplace on my LinkedIn profile to add awards…
In the meantime, I’m about 75 passwords in to a migration away from LastPass and into Keychain. I’m doing it manually because I don’t want to go through Chrome to convert everything, and also because I have to change all the passwords out anyway. And having used LastPass for 7+ years, I have a lot of old records that I haven’t used in years that I’m happy to delete. It’s a slog but I’m telling myself it’ll be worth it.
I ran down to the dump this morning after we made sure Finn got on the bus for school; I’d filled the back of the CR-V with construction debris yesterday and tried to drop it off, but everything was closed for the holiday.
All nine new replacement windows are installed, caulked (inside) and painted, and the window treatments are back in place. I’ve noticed a drastic difference in the amount of noise pollution they block out in all of the rooms upstairs. I began installing them at the tail end of the cold snap, and then the weather rocketed into the 50’s in the middle of the job so I can’t yet say they are keeping things warmer, but I notice the drafts have disappeared and the light coming in is brighter and clearer. It feels great to have that project complete.
Next up is one of Jen’s Christmas presents: she’s wanted a built-in bookcase in the living room for years, so I came up with a plan to put one in against the south wall around the main windows. It’s going to take some engineering and a lot of specialty carpentry, but I’m looking forward to the challenge. What we’re doing is a floor to cieling built-in with a small boxed section at the bottom to hide (and keep intact) the original kickplates. The biggest wrinkle is the radiator pipe on the left side going up to the back bedroom, which I’ll have to fit the shelving around.
The other thing we’re doing is leaving all of the original woodwork alone—I don’t want to chop the edges of the crown molding or the windowsill off like they did upstairs in the back bedroom. And the radiator cover isn’t exactly the width of the windowsill—it’s slightly larger. So there’ll be a tiny gap between the inner edges of the shelves and the window moulding.
He’s got it in a shed behind his house with minimal clearance on either side to see the driver’s sheetmetal, but the pictures online tell most of the story. It’s an 800 with a 6-cylinder AMC 232 that’s been disassembled for structural body work. He cut and formed new floorpans on each side, claiming they’re 12 gauge, and had a guy weld them in place.
He claims the inner rockers were done, but I couldn’t get underneath to see how the stringers or rockers looked. The rear bed floor was replaced, and the side walls and tops were in good shape, but he welded angle steel on the tops of the corners. There’s also a low bulkhead welded in across the rear bed.
From what I could tell the work was done well; it all looks solid and the welds aren’t garbage. There’s no hard top for it, but that’s not a dealbreaker; I’d put a soft top on it and leave it alone anyway.
The only outward rust I see is on the driver’s side rocker behind the B pillar, and the thought of cutting that out and repairing it doesn’t frighten me. The tailcaps are both bent, so I’d need to pull those dents out.
As mentioned before, it’s an AMC 232, a mid-60’s to late ’70’s engine IH offered as an alternative to their homegrown 4- and 8-cylinder options. I didn’t test to see if it spun, but that would be one of the first things to look at on my next visit. For some people this might be a dealbreaker; I don’t mind as long as it’s not either missing or locked up.
He said he had a bunch of parts to go along with it—a hood, two cowls, two extra doors, maybe a front fender, and boxes of parts—but they were in two other locations. We talked it over a bit and he told me I was first in line; he had family obligations after Christmas break but would be available after that. I told him I was definitely interested but wanted to look over the other parts—that’s a big part of the sale—and that I’d want to see the truck out in the sunlight so I can crawl over it.
I drove up to Mt. Airy today to look over the parts he’s got; he’d returned from York with two spare doors and a grille on his flatbed.
On a trailer in a storage lot he’s got two hoods—one rough, with lights cut and mounted to the surface, and the other a patina’d blue in better shape. Under that was a step bumper in good shape.
Next to those was a tailgate which was pretty well rotted at the bottom—more art than functional at this point.
Inside an adjacent trailer was another tailgate in much better shape; apart from a section on the right side the metal looked to be in good shape.
Next to that was the original 1969 cowl, which was pretty much crap.
It’s definitely a project but a lot of the hard stuff has already been done. It looks like hot garbage but that’s never stopped me before; I’d look at buffing off the rattle-can black first to see what’s underneath, and painting it after pulling the dents later. For the price he’s asking it’s a good deal, especially after being cleaned up and made to run again. However, there’s a saying about buying someone else’s project; you never know what’s going to be there and what won’t. For this truck it’s not like there’s a ton of expensive chrome trim or unobtanium plastic that can’t be found; he might not have the original seats but I’m sure I could source some over the next couple of years.
The biggest question now is that of the VIN plate; it’s not present on the firewall of the truck. He has a title but if there’s no VIN plate, I really don’t want to mess with the DMV to sort that mess out. So he’s looking for that and hopefully he can lay hands on it. We’ll see what happens tomorrow.
→ This is a syndicated post from my Scout weblog. More info here.
We are the parents of a teenager, which means she would rather sit and watch incomprehensible YouTube compilations of TikTok videos instead of enjoying mass-market media with us. It’s not for lack of trying; there have been multiple series we thought she’d enjoy that she’s waved off in favor of screamy narrated speedruns of games she’s never played. So it was a surprise when we sat down as a family for the first time in forever to watch a TV series together: Willow, the follow-up series to the 1988 movie. The first couple of episodes were challenging to get through from a narrative perspective; the writers set up almost all of the main characters as assholes, treating each other poorly and generally being unlikeable. It wasn’t until the fourth episode or so where the character arcs all thunked into place and people began redeeming themselves. The rest of the series is solid: the production values are to-notch, the acting is great (in spite of the writing) and the action is generally OK. We’re looking forward to finishing this series out.
The second series Jen and I have been watching is Andor, which has been absolutely stellar from the opening scenes. It’s sad to say, but watching a Star Wars series written for adults is refreshing; having recently rewatched The Force Awakens for the first time in several years I was struck by the amount of fan service and yuks there were in lieu of real stakes. Andor’s main story is that of a lovable rogue for the first three episodes, pivoting to a study of bureaucratic fascism and a heist story for the next set. Personally, the Empire is scarier to me when it’s depicted as a faceless omniscient DMV with tall ceilings than it is as a bunch of Stormtroopers lined up waiting to get shot at. We’re only four episodes in but we’re riveted and can’t wait to see what happens next.