"Society is like stew. If you don't keep it stirred up you end up with a lot of scum at the top." - Edward Abbey

I've been watching Wimbledon early in the morning and today's competition included a match between Serena Williams and a French woman, Marion Bartoli. What a kick to watch. Bartoli's emotions are all out there for everyone to see and her body says exactly what her stomach feels. In her last match, during a stretch when she was playing poorly, she got so mad that in between sets she yelled up into the stands at her parents and made them leave the stadium. Kicked 'em out. She explained afterward that it was nothing more than an expression of her frustration. "I could have broken my racket - it would have been the same thing. I just needed to get my anger out." Her father said he understood completely and took no offense.

Later I read an interview in TIME with Renzo Piano, who is apparently a very famous architect who is Italian but lives in Paris.
"Q: Are great architects tragic or nuts?"
"A: There is something about giving everything to your profession. In Italian, an obsession is not necessarily negative. It's the art of putting all your energy into one thing."
That made me think of the way Bartoli plays tennis.

Later in the interview he said, "Architecture is a very dangerous job. If a writer makes a bad book, eh, people don't read it. But if you make bad architecture, you impose ugliness on a place for a hundred years."
That made me think about the preacher's work. Screw up a sermon and (God's gracious intervention aside) eternity is at stake.

I've messed up on the VW. I bought Brazilian wheel cylinders at 1/3 the cost of German made but the fronts wouldn't fit correctly on the backing plate. I've read a lot about the need to trim, snip, file and fill to get non-German aftermarket parts to fit so I went to work on the backing plate. Only after an hour of expanding the two holes did I notice that the layout on the old and new wheel cylinders is different. Then I checked the part number.
Yeah, wrong cylinder.
So, when I get the correct part will I have a problem with my now-altered backing plate? Brakes aren't exactly something you want to get sloppy with.
"Order a new backing plate."
Not only can I not find a supplier for that part, but the spacer seems to be frozen to the spindle, prohibiting removal of the backing plate.
This is not good. And it has not put me in a good mood.