This morning I decided I wanted to make some incremental improvement on Sally's door alignment before I bolted the fender back in place. That was a mistake. Instead, I made it worse and spent the next three hours just trying to get it back where it was when I started.
It's there, the fender is bolted up and the headlight back on.
But I'm not happy. So I'll mess with it a little more, but only on the part of its alignment that can be done from the door side of each hinge, thus making it unnecessary to pull the fender again.
Pam said I had to give her credit for the time she spent holding the fender out away from the car so I could get my wrenches into that very tight space.
So, props to my wife.
We went into town late this afternoon to pick up an impact wrench ($8.50 at Harbor Freight) and stop at Home Depot to look at carpet and paint. When the kids and grandkids come in October Jason and Emily will probably sleep on the floor in our bedroom, and we'll feel better about that if they're on new (clean) carpet. We can get an indoor/outdoor carpet that almost looks like Berber for a very reasonable price.
And while we're at it, why not paint that room? It's the only one that didn't get a fresh coat of paint when we moved in, so it's warranted. Like every other vertical surface in a '78 single wide it's covered with dark paneling. In the living room I filled the grooves with drywall mud to get a flat surface. I'll skip that step in the bedroom, but a coat of paint (Pam's picking the color) will lighten it up a lot. And paint should precede carpet (doh!).
From there to a recently remodeled and reopened Wendy's just down the street. Every Wendy's in the Eugene/Springfield area was owned by the same guy and he went bankrupt so they all closed down shortly before we moved here. This is the only one that's reopened. It's nice on the inside but it's location is close enough to downtown that it's surrounded, and sometimes inhabited by a portion of the homeless community so prevalent here. We agree we've never lived anywhere that comes close to the number of marginal people western Oregon has.
The local Fred Meyer and Walmart don't have bottle return machines because they draw the homeless.
Eugene banned dogs from downtown because so many homeless people have what is almost always a pit bull mix that it kept people from coming down to the shops.
Yet the city does everything imaginable to take care of them, including housing and feeding.
Compassion run amok.
While eating at Wendy's we had an interesting discussion of the change in parenting from our parents' generation to our kids'. In the 50's father's were primarily providers who provided for their families and mothers were homemakers. Today both parents are likely providers and home chores are usually shared. But most significantly, there's now an emphasis on nurturing the children, encouraging them, and being involved in every area of their lives. So were the parents of the 50's (and earlier) derelict? Are contemporary parents doing a better job?
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A few years ago I was at Lowes and checked the carpet remnants (I needed a new carpet or area rug for my basement bedroom tile floor). I found a large piece of remnant, about 12'x 6'2". I had to do a double-take at the price--it was only $12.00. I did have to get a pad, which cost twice as much as the remnant. But it was a great deal, anyway.
We looked for remnants but nothing was big enough for this room. When I rebuild MoHo the bedroom will be reduced in size by 2' at one end. Why do Americans need that much room for sleeping?? I'll add the space to the bathroom which is currently so small t that you have to leave it to change your mid.
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