Bugs Palace!

D’oh! In case you were wondering, my domain name expired yesterday, hence my page being down. I have renewed the subscription and am back online. Sorry for any delays or what have you. If you have sent me an email within the past 24-36 hours, odds are its been returned to you or simply sent into oblivion.  Email should be back online soon as well, if its not already.

Nothing much new to report around here. Life is quiet and boring when you are trying to get bills caught up. Hopefully by March I will be back on top of things and not paying interest on credit cards. I hate credit cards.

Satellite dish is being a bitch. Although being Super Bowl weekend, I expected it to go down like a whore in the ghetto. It doesn’t bother me too much, but if its not back up in time for kick off, I’m sure Shannon will have something to say. Marriage counselors will be called, as well as the police for a domestic dispute.

Shannons car is getting its biggest modification to date. A new engine :-   Due to a problem with her current motor, VW decided it was best to simply swap the entire thing instead of trying to fix the problem. Sucks, but at least its under warranty, and her car should be back home early next week. On the fun side, we got a little beetle to drive around for the time being. Automatic, and slow, but fun just the same.

GTI still has a mondo dent in the door. I’m not gonna fix it till March at the earliest. I don’t like fresh paint in the middle of winter. Other then that, she aint gonna see any money put into her until the credit cards are sitting at -zero-.

Not much else going on. Think I may go work on the beetle for a while.

If this is 2005, you can have it. To say the year has been sub-par would be putting it rather lightly. Start off with work. Nothing bad. Things are actually going fairly ok. But I still feel like nothings getting accomplished. Work orders which should be done in 2-3 days are taking 5-6. Waiting on this, that or the other thing. Just feel as though time is moving fast, but work simply isn’t.

Speaking of work. I was at ALNC last night for my typical Wednesday night shift. I parked RIGHT outside the door at Mountain plaza, basically leaving only one parking space to my left. Wouldn’t you know it, some asshole who can’t drive decided to try and make his mini van fit in the parking space. Guess what. He didn’t fit. Instead he used some of the space I was using and crushed my drivers side door and part of my rear quarter panel with his fender. That’s right, I am not amused. Not only is this a major piss off since they didn’t leave their information or anything, but this is all happening to my 6 week old car. I haven’t even changed the oil yet, or given it a proper hand washing yet, and now she’s got about a 1000$ in damages. Now I have to decide if its worth going through insurance and paying the 500$ deductible, or just anty up the rest of the money and not mark up my insurance record. Needless to say, 500-1000$ is money I would much rather spend elsewhere. Pictures of my latest piss off are HERE.  

I have decided to drop my ‘mod a month’ and simply aim to have certain things done. This year is suspension (either FK or Eibach kit with a Neuspeed Rear sway), Turbo back exhaust (APR, GHL or Techtonics) , tint and possibly chip (APR).   This should leave plenty of money for beetle and the house. Have my cake and eat it too if you will.

Been busy this week. I’ve got about 12 hours invested in the car. (6 with Kevin, 6 on my own). On my own time through out the week, I started stripping the foot wells, center tunnel, and dash board. Id say I’m about 75% of the way done. Hard stuff is done. Should only take another 1-2 hours to finish up. Kevin spent most of today with me laying out the wiring. We have so far ran both headlamps, front turn signals and parking lams. We have also ran a few lines back to the battery area in the back. Finished up by covering all wires in either 1/2″ or 3/4″ plastic tubing. Once done, this will look stock. Well.. Not 1974 Stock, but 2005 :-). We are now looking into fabricating a bracket to hold the fuse panel, and relays.  Next up, is to finish the wiring up front. Need to mount the ground panel, and also fabricate and install the fuse panel holder so we can cut the existing wires to length. Then onto the tail lights, and engine wiring. Amazing how quickly some stuff comes together when you are equipped with time and tools to build what you want.  Pictures from the week are HERE.