Rust In Peace

The Thunderbird is now gone.

David's donor car, which he spent three hot days torching into small pieces, took its last journey on a trailer behind the van to Black River Recycling, a local scrap yard. I can't say that I miss it. After the city delivered its edict to remove the car, it was moved into the garage until we could secure a trailer.

It's surprising just how much metal scrap can come from a single car. Our garage is supposed to hold two cars, but the pile of scrap from this car was surprisingly large, and with another project currently in progress in the garage, both the cars were parked outside.

On Friday, we piled the whole mess on a trailer. What wouldn't fit on the trailer went in the van after we pulled all the seats out. I hauled the whole business to the scrap yard on my way to work in the morning.

After all that work, the total take for selling 1560 pounds of scrap was $38.30.

Entropy

This used to be a 1989 Ford Thunderbird Supercoupe.

After removing the engine and transmission and several other parts from it, David parked it in the side yard because Deb wanted the garage back. The goal was to harvest any usable sheet metal from it, then take the rest to a scrap yard to be recycled.

I told David it had to be removed by May 8. Last week, we got a letter from the city telling us that it had to be removed by April 20 or we would be guilty of a civil infraction. We got the letter on the 15th, giving us five days to remove the car. I was in California from the 15th until the 18th, so David was pretty much on his own for removing the car.

He spent quite a bit of work cutting it up in pieces and was nearly done when he ran out of acetylene gas. The last two big pieces are in the garage, waiting to be trailered to the scrap yard, along with all the other smaller pieces. Deb can't park her car in the garage, but at least the city is happy again.

David framed the letter from the city and hung it in his bedroom.

Tales from the Front Pew, Chapter 10

It's been many years since Chapter 9 of this series was written. I think as children age they become better behaved in church and so provide less fodder for interesting stories. Either that or they just save their behavior for some other time. It's probably too embarassing for a teenager to act out when sitting in the front row of a crowded church. A 9-year-old has no such inhibitions.

We have had several comments from members of our choir on how Abigail seems to enjoy singing so much. People have remarked that she is so good in church, that she loves her daddy, and that she is radiantly trying to sing with the congregation, even though she may not know the words. Since we sit in the front row, we are readily visible from the choir risers.

The choir usually sits down after the first set of songs, however, so any observations beyond that get missed. Perhaps they would have a far different picture if they kept their positions during the entire service.

This past Sunday morning was fairly typical for us. Abigail sat well for the first 15 minutes of the sermon and then wanted to sit on my lap for the last half. She usually loses interest in following along in her Bible, turning to the children's bulletin. She can't read well enough to decode what's going on in the chilren's bulletin, so she pesters me for a while, asking how to do the puzzles and word games, until she finally figures out that I would really like to listen to the pastor. She will spend some time copying some text onto her writing pad. Sometimes it's from her Bible, other times it's the advertising text on her pen. Then she will start to fidget and yawn, sometimes going into a full body stretch that raises her hands high in the air.

When all this is happening on your lap, it can be a little distracting. Taking notes has been out of the question for the past few months.

Yesterday, just before the end of the sermon, she did her squirming and stretching and then blurted out in a loud whisper, "He talks TOO MUCH!"

This is the kind of stuff the choir never sees.

Radio Silence

It has been a long time since this blog has had any posts. The reason is that our family has been essentially consumed by the adoption of Abigail which took place in November. You can read this entire adventure on our adoption blog at abigailcomeshome.blogspot.com