"Many a man owes his success to his first wife and his second wife to his success." -Jim Backus

I was him, minus 150 pounds.

The garage floor under the Rambler makes me think of the Exxon Valdez. Good grief.
The good news: after borrowing Josh's much bigger floor jack and stands I've got the car up high enough that I can see it's not the transmission's rear seal. The bad news? I don't know what it is. I'll do more exploring later but it may be the transmission pan gasket. If it dried up and failed the fix is simple. But why should that be??

I've discovered that one out of four wheels, the right rear, has working brakes. Is that important?

There's a showdown in progress on the other side of the world that could affect our pocketbooks and I think most American's are generally unaware of the drama. Greece is a member of the European Union, uses the Euro as their currency, and is very close to financial collapse. That would be disastrous for the EU, so the rest of the Union, led by Germany and Great Britain, have come up with a plan to pump a gazillion Euros into the Greek economy to keep it afloat. In return they want herculean spending cuts by the Greek govt. that make the word austerity seem like the ultimate understatement.

The Greeks will have elections in two weeks, and depending on how the post-election process plays out (parliamentary govt.) their next PM will be a Socialist. Alexis Tsipris is calling Europe's bluff. He's saying the austerity measures Germany and G.B. are demanding will doom the Greek economy, not save it (those two countries will be sending the vast majority of the 11 billion Euros) . He says if the money isn't sent Greece will go bankrupt, and the next day the dominoes will start to fall. Spain, which has a national debt that dwarfs Greece's, will go next because investors will be scared to leave any money in that troubled economy for fear of the same outcome. From there to Ireland, and....

It will come to a head the end of June. That's the EU deadline for Greece to implement the austerity measures or lose the bailout. The German president, Angela Merkel, makes Margaret Thatcher, the "Iron Lady," look like a wimp. I would not want to got head to head with her. But the Greeks aren't known for calm rational thinking. If the EU begins to fall apart and the Euro collapse, we'll feel it here, no doubt. The world economy is too intertwined for anything else.
So, will the EU decide that Greece is too big to fail?
And is this head-to-head between Greece and the EU a mega-version of the disagreement between the Democrats and the Republicans over our budget in the run up to November?

One of the top tier car shows in the country is the Concours e'Elegance in Monterey, CA. I watched a show at lunchtime about a competing show held in a Monterey park the same week called the Concours d'LeMons. It's for cars that fall below the "beater" category - the ugly, the overdone, the seriously badly designed, etc. Looks like a lot of fun. The judges solicit bribes, satire abounds, and nobody takes anything seriously.
I wanna go!

Who thought two-a-days were a good idea?

30 mph winds all day have filled the sky with desert dust, turned the air brown, and made the mountains on all sides of the valley invisible.

Pam works a 12-hour shift tomorrow, 6 hours Sunday afternoon, 12's on Monday and Tuesday, and then 12's Thursday and Friday. The gal who works the daytime 12's on the three days Pam doesn't (they use a floater on the seventh day) is leaving for another position in the hospital, creating uncovered shifts. She volunteered for these extra hours to help out her boss and to boost the vacation fund.
Wednesday I'll take meals into her. Don't expect her to get out of bed.