Cars, Kids And Tobacco

... sounds like a public service message, doesn't it?

Cars

My MGB is almost ready to be used as a daily driver. If you've missed the previous chapters in this saga, I have owned a white, 1973 MGB since about 1985. It spent a lot of time in storage in a fellow's barn in eastern San Diego where the heat rotted out the electrical wiring. I've rebuilt the wiring from scratch, wire by wire. I've made a bunch of improvements, upgrading the wire, adding fuses and relays as well.

The engine compartment and the rear lighting and fuel pump wiring is great. I really like what I did there. The cockpit is a total rat's nest. I hate it. The problem is that you don't have easy access to the instruments, so you have to leave a lot of slack in the wires to make sure that when you install the gauges, you can make the connections. The resulting cockpit harness is very sloppy.

In retrospect, if I did it all over again, I would construct a plywood scale model of the dashboard and build the harness to that. I would then simply take that harness and install it in the car. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy.

This is a small portion of the fruit our lemon tree has given us this spring. Believe me, here in the Catican Compound, we know all about lemon squeezy.

Kids

Yesterday, I described an epiphany I had at Mass. I saw Jesus' love for me in the context of my love for my family. It was beautiful. I went to Adoration today. The church where they have perpetual Adoration also has a school. I walked by a group of boys playing outside and smiled. Inside the chapel, I felt that same love again.

Leaving, I saw a boy, 8 years old or so, that was the spitting image of one of our sons at that age, down to the lad wearing a Green Bay Packers sweatshirt. How beautiful this world can be!

Tobacco

After three days of testing, the Momma Daisy Memorial Chamber of Doom Tobacco Fermenter has been declared a success. The temperature inside the chamber was about 25 degrees above ambient and a tupperware container with some water in it kept the humidity well above the required 60%. I'm going to let my tobacco dry for another 8 weeks or so. By then, it will be April, the days will be longer and the sun closer to directly overhead, bringing more heat-giving rays directly into the chamber. We should have no problem fermenting the tobacco then.

That's it for now. Have a great day!