We spent Thanksgiving in Connecticut with my uncle’s family, and I asked Eilene’s father for his blessing on our marriage. It’s an odd situation since I haven’t officially proposed to Eilene yet. But with the asking-the-father coming first and her father living 1800 miles away, I can’t exactly pop over on a weekend.
Our wedding process is probably going to be a bit nontraditional, as we are nontraditional individuals. Her mother and my father are both deceased, so we spoke to our remaining parents about rings. Her father gave us a few of her mother’s rings including her engagement ring. My mother gave us her original engagement ring from my father, which would make my sister blow a gasket if she knew. We’re going to talk to a jeweler to see the best way to go about joining the rings into something with heavy sentimental significance.
Eilene and I flew to upstate New York on Friday morning to spend Thanksgiving in the northeast. Neither of us are from upstate, but my mother has retired to Saratoga Springs, roughly an hour outside Albany. We’re going to try to make it down to lower Connecticuit and the city to see our friends and our old stomping grounds.
I get in fake arguments with Wes all the time about redneck Texas idiots and how people in New York are “more cultured”, “intelligent” and “don’t think that way”. The truth is that everywhere has the equivalent of rednecks, and I’d want to live in upstate New York about as much as I’d want to live in Beaumont, Texas.
We’ve seen some really minor snowfall since we’ve been here. In fact, when we hit the lower level at the airport to wait for our bags, the double doors slid open and it was snowing sideways for a few minutes. None of it stuck.
I’ll try to take some pictures while I’m here. We’ve not really done anything so far besides relax and be on vacation. The past few weeks were really overwhelming to say the last, and I’ve got that bone rattling fatigue only a burned out busy person can understand.
Lots of sleeping and doing nothing is on the agenda.
I’ve debated selling the 240 off and on, and spent ages not working on it. I was honest with myself and knew this project needs to be seen through. It’s a hobby that makes me feel like spinning records used to. I can start at 1pm, look at the clock after what feels like an hour and it’s nightfall.
I’m still debating the fate of the engine. I can’t compete in orgs like SCCA because the engine is swapped, so I’ve thought of doing a solid cheap build on the old motor. I’ve also thought of selling both motors and shelving the project to save for a Corvette LS1 swap (cheaper, legal, and more powerful).
I’ve decided for now that I need to get it on the track with the engine that’s in there. Since its street days are over, I need to finish stripping everything unnecessary. A/C, heater core, side windows, cut out the door innards with an angle grinder, all that shit needs to be gone. I just ordered 5 lug hubs from a 95 240 so I can buy some wheels that actually fit the car and run better brakes. I need to finish the stainless steel lines and relocate the oil filter.
This is not a quarter mile car, but just for comparison sake the first thing I’ll do is get this car to Ennis and see how it does. In the meantime I need to start researching some the HPDE and NASA races to find out about classes and see if there are any mods that I need to do or avoid.
This thing was meant to eat Porsches, and I was meant to have a hobby. I want this happening by springtime.
Seven large computer boxes, comfortably.
Eilene and I have spent awhile now actively discussing the idea of getting married.
I know that males mature way more slowly than females do, but I’ve finally realized that I’ve stayed a child for far too long. Despite parts of me growing up too fast, more parts of me have stayed roughly sixteen trapped in a thirty-one year old body.
I’m terrified of course, these are all new ideas for me. I just know that at some point a switch was thrown. I’ve looked around at our house, the furniture and crazy colors, the dogs roaming the yard, and wanted to create a homestead.
Somewhere along the line we’ve become adults, unbeknownst to me. We’ve become “That nice couple who moved in down the block”.
Most importantly, we’ve become adults and still retained individuality. I’ve operated most of my life under the assumption that growing up meant that I would start wearing a certain color tie and become my parents. This hasn’t been the case. It’s possible to have the same talent and taste in art that I’ve had, the same taste in music, the same critique of the world’s geopolitical arena as an individual human has, and still be grown and responsible without sacrificing any of it.
So we’re planning on getting married. I’ve seen that there’s no waiting for “everything to be perfect”. Everything is not ever going to be perfect. This is, hands down, the most productive and rewarding relationship I’ve imagined. We still have our fights. I am still selfish and don’t listen enough. She still is too OCD about the way the towels are folded. We’ve done a ton of work to comb through our individual past patterns and leave them in ancient history where they belong. People are under the assumption that guidebooks for relationships are instinctive and that just isn’t so. Everything is not ever going to be perfect, and Eilene is my best friend and partner in crime above all.
This is Tucker, our latest rescue from a month ago. We spent a long time doing some digging for his owners, but they’ve jump shipped and it looks like he was abandoned.
As of 2 days ago I’ve begun trying to place him, starting with craigslist. I’m really surprised at how difficult it is just to deal with people. I already don’t like craigslist as it is.
Since Tucker is a pit I’m trying to be insanely careful about who I talk to in these listings. With everything from dog fighting to medical research, there’s a ton of people looking for dogs for fucked up reasons. I just got hit with a huge feeling of responsibility, that basically the way this pup lives out the rest of its life could rest entirely in the decision Eilene and I make in the next three days.
I’ve not even been able to find a pit bull rescue that’s still in operation in Dallas. It seems they’re all defunct, probably due to the bad publicity surrounding this breed.
