1998 Jaguar XJR

Another "Random Vehicle Blog".  I've owned quite a few Jag's over the years but the random generator has never spit one out...until now.  

1998 Jaguar XJR

I owned this car a long time ago.  I had always liked XJR's and had come close to buying one on a few occasions.  This low mileage monster had been sitting at one of the dealerships in Houston for a couple weeks and had been extremely neglected.  It was in need of a complete paint job, among other things.  Since these sort of issues don't seem to bother me (as much as they probably should anyway) I snatched it up at what I thought was a bargain price.

There wasn't really any bodywork necessary (although I did replace the rear bumper), but it had scratches all over it.  Since the car had only 21K miles on it I made the decision to go ahead and spend whatever was needed to make it perfect.  

The car ran perfect, which made my decision to throw money at it much easier.  These things put out about 385 horsepower.  Prior to 1998 they came with a supercharged V6, but the big V8 in this one was a huge improvement.  It was smooth when you wanted it to be but would scream when required.

The biggest problem I had with this car was a faint cigar smell that I never could get rid of.  I thought that I could get it out, and after being detailed the cream and black interior looked gorgeous but that damn smell never would go away.  I carried a bottle of Febreeze in the car with me.  It taught me a lesson:  NEVER BUY A CAR THAT HAS BEEN SMOKED IN!!!

After spending about $5000 to paint the car, I still couldn't stand the smell so after owning it for maybe six or eight months I decided to let it go.  I remember the buyer was a local guy who was getting it for his son in California.  

Other than the smell, this was a great car.  I could drive one of these everyday and be quite happy.  Jaguar has always done a fantastic job of producing stunningly beautiful cars, and when Ford took them over the quality and practicality started to improve.

What's wrong with people?....

A couple days ago I was leaving my house and when I opened the garage door I noticed that a garbage truck was stopped in the middle of the cul-de-sac and there was a guy lying on the ground.  I walked down the driveway to discover that one of the three guys from the crew had been hit by the truck.  I'm not blogging about this to relay some bit of excitement that occurred on my street, but rather to comment on what I observed about people as a result.

To set the scene, there was a big truck in the middle of the street, a guy on the ground with quite a bit of blood all around him kind of rolling around in pain, and three other people just standing around him watching.  It's the three people just standing around that I have a real problem with.  Two of them were the other members of the three man crew on the truck picking up our recycling.  The third bystander was one of the ladies that works as a caregiver for my 95 year old neighbor.  The poor guy that had been hit was in a lot of pain.  He was covered in blood around his face and was missing some teeth and his head was already swelling.  He had a puncture wound or deep gash just below his rib cage, and possibly a broken arm at the very least.  The three bystanders had already called 9-1-1, but they weren't doing anything for the poor guy on the ground.  He was literally just rolling around on the concrete moaning in pain while they stood near him and watched.  

I grabbed a towel from the back of the truck and put it under his head and then started to converse with him.  He was actually pretty lucid so I used an old triage trick to get him to be still by getting him to focus on keeping the soles of his feet on the ground.  I checked his wounds to make sure nothing looked immediately life threatening (none did) and generally just tried to keep him calm and still.  

The lady from next door actually just went back into the house!  I know she isn't a nurse, but as a licensed caretaker I imagine she has some kind of medical training but she didn't seem interested in doing anything.

More disturbing were the actions of the injured guys' co-workers.  When I first walked out, before I even got out of my driveway, one of them yelled to me (and I swear these were the first words said to me) "He wasn't paying attention!"  The guy was so worried about himself and what might happen to him that he was already trying to blame the guy who got hit for everything.  I don't know whose fault it was.  I don't care.  The fact that these guys were only worried about themselves when their colleague was rolling on the ground choking on his own blood is the disturbing part to me.  The second guy either didn't speak English or pretended not to.  

When the firetruck and ultimately ambulance showed up the EMTs were trying to figure out exactly what happened and the two guys just acted like they had no idea!  I got annoyed and pressed them for some answers and finally got that he was hit while the truck was backing up.  That's all they would tell us.

After the ambulance left with the guy I went back in the house, washed the blood off, changed clothes, and then headed back out to run the errands I was going out for in the first place.  As I drove past the two guys in their truck, undoubtedly waiting for an incident investigation team from Waste Management to show up, I was just thinking to myself "What's wrong with people?!?"  If you see someone that at the very least is a co-worker in this case suffering and in real danger and the only thing going through your mind is "Am I going to be in trouble or get fired?", there's something wrong with you. 

I've often said that the world would be a much better place if there were a lot fewer people in it.  What I saw today just re-emphasized that point.                 

2000 Ford F350 Lariat 4X4 7.3 (#2)

I haven't written anything since February so as always when I start back up I do it with another riveting "Random Vehicle Blog".  (I know you guys can't wait for these, and I want the masses to know that I have heard your plea's)  The random generator has chosen today.....

2000 Ford F350 Lariat 4X4 7.3 (#2)

I didn't own this truck long.  I used to keep one of these Superdutys around all the time for utility purposes and in early 2006 I found myself truck-less so I headed to the auction feeling like I had to come home with one.  I was high bidder on this one early in the day but I really thought the price was too low and the seller wouldn't take the high bid so I bought another one a little later.  of course, shortly after I was informed that my bid on this one was accepted so I headed home with two trucks.  The other one was a bit nicer so I kept it but I had this one for quite some time before running it back through the auction just to get rid of it. 

 
There really isn't much to say about this thing - they're all tough and do whatever you need pretty well.  I will say that this one had some minor custom painting that was, shall we say, a little "girly".  

Infant Shark Suit

I was sitting around the other day and it occurred to me that if my wife and I wanted to vacation somewhere tropical now that we have a baby it presents a new set of limitations to what we could do for fun.  I love to dive, for example, and would love to take my wife with me, but what do you do with a baby?  Set up a crib on deck and let the seagulls feed her if she gets hungry?  Then I thought "Wouldn't it be nice if I could take little Samantha with us?"  Why not, I've seen dogs and even a cat scuba diving.  Settled then, she dives with us!

Unfortunately, babies aren't exactly the best swimmers.  No problem - I'll just tie a line around her and hook it to my waste and drag her around under the deep blue sea.  Get her neutrally buoyant so she's not bobbing up to the surface like a balloon.   She'll love that! 

Then it occurred to me - SHARKS!  Dragging around a little baby on a 20 foot line would basically be like trolling for sharks.  Oh, I'd feel it if one took a nibble, but by then it might be too late.  What I needed was some kind of shark suit for a baby.  Surprisingly when I went on Amazon to order one there weren't any.  I hit the Googles and shockingly there didn't appear to be one in existence.  Well never fear new-parent scuba divers, now there is!

         
A great deal of though went into the development and production of this suit.  We initially called it the Infant Shark Suit, or ISS, but apparently ISS is already taken.  We are currently calling it the ScuBaby.  Every detail is designed to shark-proof your little bundle of joy and keep him/her from becoming a little bundle of chum while under water:

• The protective kevlar-ish material can easily withstand bite pressures of up to 3 pounds, probably.  I'm not 100% sure what the bite pressure of a full grown shark is, but if it's more than 3 pounds I'll be surprised. 
• It's designed to be completely inflexible, thus keeping the limbs outstretched to their maximum and making your baby look as large as possible to any sharks.
• It's a well-known fact that sharks hate pastels.  As you can see, we have utilized pink as the primary color with blue and purple pastel accents to confuse the man-eaters.  Unfortunately, this is the only color we feel confident to produce the suit in which is great for a little girl but if your little boy has an issue with the color, ask him if he'd rather be stylish or eaten by a shark. 
• The head piece mimics one of the sharks natural enemies, the owl!
• The dangling tassels are designed to simulate snakes.  To be honest, we're not really sure what sharks think about snakes, but pretty much everyone gets the heebie-jeebies thinking about snakes in water, so we're pretty sure it will have the same affect on sharks.
• The zipper is color-coded to the suit to make it hard to spot so even the cleverest of sharks will struggle to find it should they get the idea to unzip the little one for better access.

After we produced the first suit we obviously needed to test it.  Since I would never sell you something to protect your child that I wouldn't use on mine, little Sammy Cat courageously volunteered to be our human test subject.  Unfortunately, we were visiting my mother in North Texas at the time so finding sharks, or open water for that matter, proved challenging.  we decided to test the water tendencies of the suit in the snow - it's basically the same thing from a hydrodynamic standpoint.

Open Water Test - Successful!

We are happy to report that the suit achieved perfect neutral buoyancy in the snow and we have decided that will translate without variance to open water.  It also kept her mostly dry.  We say mostly because there was some internal dampness but we were unable to determine if this was a result of leakage from the suit or leakage from the baby.

The final step was the shark bite test.  As previously mentioned, finding live sharks was challenging.  Once again, Amazon was a complete disappointment.  The local Petco had some rather ill-tempered looking Beta fish, but we decided that wouldn't really satisfy our lofty requirements.  We settled on the next closest thing to being bitten by a shark - being bitten by a large predatory Rescue Panther!

Shark Bite Test - Successful!

Now if I'm being honest, we never could actually get our large predatory Rescue Panther to bite the suit - Gracie isn't really a biter.  However, we did throw mice on the suit and the baby survived the de-mouseing from Gracie without a scratch.  We attempted to get our other cat George to bite the suit, but he only bites when his food bowl is empty and unfortunately he doesn't yet view our daughter as a potential food distribution source so he wouldn't nip her anyway.  

As you can clearly see, this suit has been radically engineered and extensively tested to insure that your little one can safely enjoy the wonders of underwater exploration with you.  Family time no longer needs to stop at the shoreline, now it can extend to even the most shark infested waters on the planet.  

You're welcome world!

Disclaimer:  The Infant Shark Suit is not guaranteed to withstand assault from Grouper, mutated Sea Bass, or sharks with lasers attached to their heads.         

Cattails at Meadowview

Cattails at Meadowview

Kingsport, Tennessee

This is the resort course at the Meadowview Resort and Conference Center in Kingsport, Tennessee.  I was in the area many years ago to attend my Grandmother’s 90^th birthday celebration just over the State line in Virginia so I decided to stay here for a few days and play some golf.  The entire facility, both course and resort, were only a few years old at the time. 

I caught the course at the tail end of winter when everything was just beginning to green up.  It would certainly be more beautiful in the late summer or fall when the colors change.

The course is really two very different nines.  The front nine is flat, and offers very little in the way of scenery or hazards.  After all of the planted trees have had a few more years to mature it should be much better.  I can’t say that I cared much for the front.  The back nine, on the other hand, has spectacular elevation changes and is cut out of the existing mountainside.  I could play this side all day and not tire of it. 

The resort is fantastic, and the golf course is pretty good.  There isn’t much else to do in Kingsport, but if you’re there, for whatever reason, you should stay and play at the Meadowview.  I probably played about 4 rounds in a few days and never broke 80, so it’s a fairly challenging course.  On a side note, the quality of the room service was some of the best I’ve ever had.  I used it daily because there was a clogging convention going on the weekend I was there and I was afraid to venture to any of the restaurants.

1999 Saab 9-3 Convertible

I kind of bought this car out of curiosity.  I had never owned a Saab (and to this day it's the only one I ever have) and at the time of purchase I was without a convertible as well.  This car had low miles and was in pretty good condition so I grabbed it on a whim.  I have to say that Saab made a weird car - not necessarily bad, just weird.

Over the years, Saab produced some really good cars.  Sadly, they have gone under for good.  They could have been saved when they were acquired by GM, but the executives at Saab refused to compromise with regards to build quality and parts utilization as GM instructed and finally the Detroit giant had had enough.

I found the interior to have a kind of cheap feeling, almost like an American economy car.  It was also the first car I had seen with the ignition on the center console.  The convertible top worked well and the car had a functional back seat, but was just OK to drive.  

I wouldn't rule out buying another Saab someday, but only the older classics.

Anniversary Gifts

My wife and I decided early on that we didn't really want to do the traditional "buy each other presents thing" for our anniversaries.  She would probably tell you that if I want something I just buy it anyway and I like to tell her that "every day is her anniversary" with me! :-)  We decided instead that we would try to take a trip every year to celebrate.  We try to do quite a bit of traveling anyway, but we committed to really trying to be somewhere other than home on our anniversary each year.

We got married on September 11th, 2010 (that's right guys - easy to remember).  For our 1st anniversary in 2011, a friend of ours happened to be getting married in Albuquerque, New Mexico, that weekend so it worked out perfectly.  We took 5 or 6 days and just made a really long weekend out of it.  On our actual anniversary we went to Santa Fe.

For our 2nd anniversary in 2012, we got quite a bit more ambitious (and had more time) and headed to Europe for nearly a month.  We drove all over the alp countries and then took about a two week cruise from Venice to Rome and then spent a few days there before heading back.  If I was attempting to raise the bar every year on anniversary trips this was going to be hard to top...and in fact, I haven't even come close.

 
We just couldn't get away in early September for our 3rd anniversary in 2013, so we made the best of it and just headed to San Antonio for the weekend.  Not glamorous I know, but it was still fun.  We did a lot of traveling in August and October and Nel had work commitments so we said we'd do something big for our 4th year.

2014 ended up being a rather brutal year for just about all our travel plans.  Unfortunate events cancelled some big trips we had planned and then Nel got knocked up and was due in late October so we didn't really want to go overseas in September.  We decided to just head to Fredericksberg, Texas, for another long weekend.  Once again, we had a great time but I'm not happy with the trend of our anniversary trips.

Took her to Stonehenge!  Not really - this is in Fredericksberg.

So this year will be our 5th anniversary and I'm planning something really cool.  I'm pretty sure Branelle doesn't read my blog so as long as the only person who does (mom) keeps it a secret I should be OK....oh, and we need you to come down and watch the cats and the kid!