Merry Christmas?

Blogworthy email spam 🙂

For My Democrat Friends:

“Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit, our best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low-stress, non-addictive, gender-neutral celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice, or secular practices of your choice, with respect for the religious/secular persuasion and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all.

We also wish you a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated recognition of the of the generally accepted calendar year 2007, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions to society have helped make America great. This is not intended to imply that America is necessarily greater than any other country nor that it is the only America in the Western Hemisphere. And without regard to the race, creed, color, age, physical ability, religious faith or sexual preference of the wishes.

By accepting these greetings you are accepting these terms. This greeting is subject to clarification or withdrawal. It is freely transferable with no alteration to the original greeting. It implies no promise by the wisher to actually implement any of the wishes for herself, himself, theirself, or others, is void where prohibited by law, and is revocable at the sole discretion of the wisher. This wish is warranted to perform as expected within the usual application of good tidings for a period of one year or until the issuance of a subsequent holiday greeting, whichever comes first, and warranty is limited to replacement of this wish or issuance of a new wish at the sole discretion of the wisher.”

For My Republican Friends:

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

It’s always something isn’t it?

Today I had the joyous task of putting a new alternator, and while I was at it a new serpentine belt, on the Excursion.

All in all this was simple as pie.

It all started a couple weeks ago. The battery light would come on every once in a while but only during harsh acceleration, like getting on the freeway.

Last night, Claudine got stranded on her way to the gym. The battery light came on and stayed on and the battery didn’t last nearly as long as it should have.

Seeing how everything was original (110,000 miles and 6 years old), I figured it was time for a new battery and if that didn’t do it, an alternator too.

I picked up Claudine and we went to NAPA and grabbed a new battery. This got us home but didn’t take care of the underlying issue, the alternator.

I did a little digging on the web trying to figure out just how much of a pain this was going to be, and honestly I couldn’t tell. There were reports of needing to cut the fan shroud to get the serpentine belt out, and/or loosening up the radiator and moving it around. Oh joy.

The alternator on the beast wasn’t cheap either. $208 for a new one as no remanufactured ones were anywhere near us.

Popping off the serpentine belt on the modular 5.4 liter v8 was simple. Loosen the tensioner with a ¾ ratchet and cheater bar and it slid right off. The way this thing is routed didn’t require me to cut anything or mess with the radiator or fan.

Replacement took about 40 minutes total, 25 to get things off, and 15 back on.

It’s ready to go for another 6 years of service.

Bengals jump on Raiders, move to 8-5

I’ll admit, I was pretty worried. If there was a game for Bengaldom to rear it’s ugly head it would be this one, similar to the way it happened in Tampa Bay.

But the Bengals escaped, it was never as close as the 27-10 score would lead you to believe.

In other news however, YANB (yet another Bengal) was arrested. I believe the count is now at 8 players. Deltha what were you thinking? It’s not like you didn’t have plenty of bad examples of people who went before you.

C’mon fellas. Nobody is perfect, and we all make mistakes but come on. Take a look around you. Your an elite athlete playing in the NFL. Grow up for crying out loud.

Maria’s first Meet (CRT Level 3) @ TWIGS

Maria competed in her first meet today in Dayton/West Carrollton, Ohio at TWIGS.

DSC 5137cropped

As meets go, it was definitely the smallest we’ve ever been too. TWIGS does have a very nice facility. However they don’t have any level 3’s so we took our troop up there to compete against themselves. TWIGS had gymnasts in other levels, just not level 3, and I think we (CGA) brought 50 girls? (Doesn’t really make sense too me, in all my life playing sports, we never traveled somewhere to have our own team play themselves)

I think there should be a rule; if at least one other team in our level isn’t there, we don’t need to go, just send us the ribbons.

Any way, photos are in the Google Gallery. Same thing if you need/want a photo that’s more high-res than what is up there let me or C know.