"When in doubt, tell the truth." - Mark Twain

Today's dumbest headline, from NBCNews.com: "New York becomes only state to offer free four-year college."
It is not free. The student isn't paying for it, but somebody sure is. As in, the NY taxpayers.

There were certainly exceptions, but the vast majority of my students who had parents paying their bills could be identified with a quick look at the grade spreadsheet, and those who were working 20+ hours a week to pay for their own education were just as easily picked out.

I wonder how long before HR starts asking if that 4-year degree is from a state college in NY.

Passover begins tonight, three days earlier than the year of Christ's death.
The Jewish calendar is lunar and ours is solar. We have to add a day every four years to keep things on track or we'd end up with summer in January. (cf. climate change). The Jewish calendar has the same problem but a different solution. Every few years they add an extra (lunar) month, so there's an Adar I and Adar II.

I spent the majority of the day working on Sally. I started finishing the install of the gas tank and used my gas cans to put about 7 gallons of gas in it. I did that very gradually, checking for leaks every so often. Clear!

From there to the interior, which was very black. Black vinyl seats, black carpet, black door cards, black dash pad, black headliner, and black dash panels. It was like sitting in a cave with windows.

One of the options in 1966 was what Ford called the Pony Interior Package which consisted of wood grain vinyl applique's on the dash panels and center console. I ordered a Pony kit for $20 in hopes of improving the interior's appearance a bit.

I'd read that the adhesive on the back of the die-cut vinyl pieces wasn't all that good, especially for use on the "leather-like" textured surface Ford thought made their all black interior look a little better. (Nice try.) I read a trick though: first put on the foil tape used in HVAC installations 'cause it will stick to anything! So I cut and applied those pieces - a tedious task with lots of razor blade work - and then applied the wood grain vinyl on top of that tape, including more razor blade trimming the vendor said to expect.

I had foil tape left over so I tried putting it on the center console where the sliver plating was corroding. Looks MUCH better.
I'm happy with the way the whole thing turned out.

What I'm NOT happy with is the puddle of gas under the tank I spotted as I was finishing up the interior work.
AAARGH!!!

Methinks the engineers at Ford were drinking their lunch the day when they designed this gas tank setup. How else could they think it was a good idea to put the hole for the gas gauge sending unit and the fuel pickup on the bottom of the tank?? Even my 1959 Chevy truck had it at the top. Can you say, "guaranteed to leak"?

I posted about the issue on the vintage Mustang forum and within an hour had six guys saying, "been there, done that." The O-ring that's supposed to seal the opening when you put the cover on shifts as the locking ring is twisted into place. The most common solution is to pack the O-ring's groove with Vaseline before assembly.

So tomorrow I'll take the gas tank b a c k   o u t (NOT a fun job) and try it again, this time with Vaseline in the groove to help it seal.

She leaks, but boy does she look good.

In the unmitigated good news department, yesterday I used my self-designed collection contraption and got a few ounces of Sundae's urine. This afternoon we took it over to Marta who put it in this special vial with a syringe. Five minutes later it had turned dark blue indicating Sundae is indeed preggo! Marta is pretty sure the due date - 5 months after breeding - is July 11. She was bred three weeks earlier but Marta doesn't think that one took. We'll know as the time approaches because a doe's udder starts to swell about three weeks before kidding. So if she's hanging in June we'll know that 6/20 date is the one.

Old MacDonald had a farm.