"Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it's thinking of yourself less." - C.S. Lewis

How many men does it take to change a light bulb?

Yesterday was a really long day. Sometimes I figure a given task will take X amount of time and it ends up taking 2X or 3X, and that's what happened with a couple of things on my to-do list.

This is why I start at 3 a.m.

I borrowed Josh's truck and loaded up the block, head, crank and cam shaft, and took them to the machine shop. Turns out the cam shaft is in good shape, so I brought it back home. I knew the engine had been rebuilt at least once and the cam shaft looks almost new. The rest of the parts he'll measure with a micrometer to see what work (if any) they need. He'll put in hardened valve seats to compensate for the lack of lead in today's gas, and I'll probably end up putting in new valves.

From there I went to Joe's to pick up an engine just like mine. Why a second? Because mine had been taken out of the truck at some point and many of the parts stripped off. I paid Joe $250 for this one, complete with all the parts, which is less than the total cost of the parts I would otherwise have to buy one at a time off eBay. And I can sell the block, head, and crank shaft to the guy at the machine shop to recover about half of what I paid Joe. This afternoon I got those parts stripped off, so now I'll take the head off, the crank and pistons out.... That way I can take the machinist exactly what I took him from my engine. And if he finds that mine is worn beyond spec I'll have this engine to rebuild.

I was explaining to Pam, who neither knows nor cares anything about cars or engines, why I'm going to change to dual exhaust.
"It's like a breathe-right strip for an engine's butt."
And that an oil bath air cleaner is like a bundt pan filled with oil.

Over the last three days I've been pruning the big orange tree in the back. It's actually a mineola tree but I don't really care. Mostly I hate pruning the thing, a job that has to be done twice a year. I decided I was going to go skin head on it, so I cut the bottom up to about 5' and took about 3' off the top. It was a whole lot of nasty work but it will sure be easier to prune next time.

When I was working out in the garage this afternoon I noticed that many of the cars that drive by slow WAY down as they go by our house. As soon as they're past our garage they speed back up.
It's nice that I can provide entertainment for the 'hood.

Feeling exercised about Sunday's sermon.