05/31/2009

A Productive Saturday

I had a pretty productive Saturday. I mowed the yard, front and back. I replaced the front brake pads and rotors on the minivan, changed the oil, and cleaned up the battery. I also went to WalMart and got some essentials. Then, I noticed the ground was soggy from all the rain and thought it would be a good time to tackle digging the holes for the fenceposts I had hoped to install in order to fence in this yard and keep the dog from escaping. Well, I ended up finishing the fencing, too. I am pretty tuckered from all that, and there are the blisters and oil-stained fingers, but hey, that was a lot of things on my to do list.

I've never replaced brake rotors before. The first time I replaced brake pads on a car, I just looked at the rotors and thought, 'meh' and left them as they were. But this time I let the brake pads go too long and the back side of one of the rotors had a really bad gash in it. These rotors have been turned once before, so I just went ahead and bought new ones. I think I'll save the old ones in case I want to make a windmill someday - on a lot of the alternative energy sites, people use rotors as a platform for bolting on their fins for windmills.

I can't imagine what a brake job would cost. The parts alone were about 100 bucks. The good thing about taking your car to a shop is that they're eager to find other things wrong with it and they look at everything to see if there's more that needs replacing. That's also bad too, because you often get socked with crazy repair bills, but it is nice to catch things before they get bad. The weird thing is that the driver side rotor was worse than the passenger side. I'll have to research and see if there is some reason why that might be.

When I fixed the battery, I was basically just cleaning the terminals - there was some blue stuff around the positive terminal, even though I use those little chemical treated felt thingies. So I went by the book and cleaned the battery off with water + baking soda. Worked like a charm - the basic soda mixes with the acidic accretion and you end up with a clean battery terminal and a neutral run off. That's the theory anyway. But I had a blister on my left hand from mowing the yard earlier and some of the blue stuff got on the blister. Yikes. That was some sharp pain. The next cup of soda water went on the hand of yours truly.

It was a pretty day today, though it started out with unforecasted rain. St. Louis weather is a bear to predict, I'd imagine. This afternoon, when I ran to the hardware store to get some Quickcrete for the fence posts, I heard Prairie Home Companion and they were in St. Louis! I don't know if it was a taped performance or live, but it was neat to hear St. Louis get its props. I hardly ever go downtown, but I hear that good things are happening down there. Man, if you went to that performance, you got a good deal. It is pretty expensive to see Chuck Berry perform at Blueberry Hill, and PHC had him + all their other normal entertainment. And it was at the Fox Theatre downtown, which is a beautiful theater. I saw Wilco there one time (and Blue Clues Live many years ago). As an aside, they totally had "broadway Steve" and not the real Steve at that show; so lame.

Alright, gotta run. Have a good Sunday, dear readers.