Knuckle Duster

I finished reading The Stand this week, so updates to the site will probably be a little less sporadic now–not that there’s been much to post about anyway. Although, Bradley finally had one of his teeth poke through a couple days ago. Damn, I thought that kid would be walking before he got any teeth! As it is now, he can stand up on his own for about 10 seconds before either his legs tire, or he just wants to get down and crawl. If only I could get him to take a step towards me while he was standing, he’d be walking in no time after that.
Traci and I still haven’t finished our dining room–we’re just lazy. Having to sand all the old wood trim and window frames has been the most annoying part, but we’re pretty much done with that. All we’ve got left is to clean up all the sanding dust, primer and paint, then install all the beadboard paneling and new trim. Oh, and install the new ceiling fan, which we’ll be getting tomorrow.
We’re heading up to Orem again with the utility trailer to buy tons of stuff tomorrow. We’re getting materials to build a chain-link fence in the back yard, a new swamp cooler (since nobody in Price carries them yet), fabric and foam to recover our couches, fabric and foam to make cushions for the new window seat in the dining room, some ammo boxes (to place a few geocaches in), and I’m also getting some good hiking shoes so I can start hiking more. Hiking is the only thing I’m really looking forward to doing this summer (besides the camping that’ll go along with it), but I don’t think I’ll have as much time for it as I thought I would last year. All this home improvement stuff is taking too long, only because I sit around wishing I could be doing other things…sort of a conundrum.
I found out that the reason the tires on the Mazda are being chewed up so badly is not because it’s out-of-alignment, but rather the shocks are so shitty that the tires aren’t sticking to the road like they’re supposed to. I’ve decided (and gotten Traci to go along with me) that I’m going to get a whole bunch of work done on it at once, which will hopefully save me some money in the long run. I’m going to have Grako’s do all the work, since they’re the only place in town that hasn’t ripped me off at one time or another. I’m having all four shocks replaced, and I’ll have ’em install new coil spacers in the front and Warrior shackles in the rear, giving it a little bit of a lift. I’ll get new Warn manual hubs to replace the broken automatic hubs, and I’ll have new rims and tires mounted. I’ve already got four 31×10.5″ tires, but the rims currently on the Mazda are too narrow for them. I’m going to buy four new American Racing series 767 rims in 15×8″, for that utilitarian look (oh, and because I can’t afford nice chrome rims). It should look very much like this Explorer when I’m done with it. I’ll eventually get a roof rack to hold a full-sized spare tire, and some black fender flares, but those’ll have to wait until my bank account recovers from all the other work.

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