There's too much blood in my caffeine system.

The cold I had while Pam was gone is making an encore appearance. I hold it accountable for anything and everything that went wrong today, and I have plenty to lay at its doorstep.

Which is not to say the day wasn't without modest success.
Gerta has been stumbling on acceleration once she's warm, and that problem has been getting worse quickly. This morning I tentatively identified it as a gummed up distributor plate. The vacuum advance couldn't pull it over. So I got some carb cleaner, opened up the distributor as much as possible and gave it a couple of wash/dry cycles. I'll know more on Monday when I drive it longer, but this afternoon's test drive has me feeling optimistic.
Of course in the process of doing all of that I dislodged the brass inlet tube from the carb, so I made that repair, too.

This morning I also got the Kreg screws and this afternoon assembled the rails & stiles for the kitchen cabinet doors. The nice things about assembly with screws is that if you screw it up you can take it apart and do it correctly. (DAMHIK) Oh, and when I cut the wood to size at the wood shop a couple of weeks ago I couldn't understand why I had two 6' boards left over. Now I know why. I'll be back there Monday to cut the rails & stiles I somehow missed.

Another of this afternoon's projects was printing out the bulletins for tomorrow. If you forget to hit the "page range" button on the print menu and specify only page one you get a lot more than you want or need. (again, DAMHIK)

Stupid cold.

This is like a traffic accident. You know you shouldn't look but you can't help yourself.
Puppets Singing Christmas Carols

Here's a cool New Zealand ad to promote reading
Active Book

And if you have room for one more link in your life, here's this morning's NPR story on flies in urinals.
Ready, Aim...

In a few minutes the Phoenix Greyhound Track down by the airport will hold its last races. Due to declining attendance and revenues it's closing down after tonight's contests. The operators say the proliferation of Indian casinos has cut too far into their customer base.
They did a segment about the track closing on the local news program this morning, interviewing some of the 200 people who will lose their jobs as a result. In another "you can't make this stuff up" and "I wouldn't lie to you" story line, shortly after the news segment began Al came out from his bed in our bedroom, laid down on the floor here beside my chair and started to whine.

I dog-eared the bottom of page 111 in "The Hunchback of Notre Dame."
"They were like those young ladies of ancient Rome who amused themselves by thrusting gold pins into the breast of a beautiful slave girl; or like a pack of graceful greyhounds circling, with distended nostrils and eager eyes, around a poor doe of the forest which their master's look forbids them to devour."