The grass is in....

So my wife and I are enjoying the fruits of our labor,....our new backyard lawn...and it only took us 6 frickin months to pull off. Here's how we did it:
1. Pull out 300 square feet of well established ivey. That stuff grows roots down into the earths mantle BTW.
2. Move 100 cubic feet of clean landscape rock from the backyard to the side yard one frickin bucket at a time.
3. Prune 4 trees and transplant a 6 foot avocado tree to the side yard.
4. Replace sprinklers and sprinkler control unit.
5. Amend our existing crap soil/sand with 30 cubic feet of super dark top soil.
6. Till it all by hand!...and with one pick....my poor lumbar.
7. Rake and roll, rake and roll, rake and roll,..etc.etc.
8. And finally lay out 50 rolls of 90/10 fescue blend Pacific Sod.
9. Water the sod 5 times a day for the first 2 weeks.
10. And just yesterday, mowed the lawn for the first time.

I must say, it looks pretty good. I'd like to lay on it and walk across it in my bare feet good.

I'm off to breakfast...

The Search for Riesling

So my wife and I spent Thanksgiving in Napa Valley. We splurged and did the whole B&B thing. The Ink House B&B is beautiful!...check out their crappy website. Our room was tiny but "cozy" and we were pretty much the only people who were staying at the place who weren't a part of some wedding party (the rest of the guests were from Iowa). Both of us were recovering from major nasal leakage and a hacking cough...I pitied our next door neighbors. We had Thanksgiving dinner at a gorgeous Calistoga restaurant: Brannans. My fish was cooked perfectly and the butternut squash soup was like butter, but my wife's meal was disappointing...which really sucked because we spent a rediculous amount of money on that meal. After a couple of days to mull it over, I am a little pissed that they surprised us with a Fix Prix menu that offered no leaway in terms of cutting costs.

But the real fun came the next day with our tour of several winerys. We had a blast. And the whole process was simple,...you stop at every winery, park your car, take in the pervasive scent of ripening cabernet in the air, walk into an always quaint and rustic tasting room and drink your ass off. Now you have to understand, I have little to no understanding for the whole wine fascination thing nor do I have a particular liking for it's taste,...but it simply does not matter. At the end of the day, you end up with a supreme appreciation for the process,.....and a big time buzz.

About Riesling, my wife's uncle bought me my first glass 2 years ago. He gave me a bit of an education about the grape. Very interesting stuff this wine business....so, the Riesling is a grape that flourishes in colder climes, which is why it does well in Germany. That country simply produces the best Riesling in the world. Now the Napa Valley is renown for it's Cabernets; Big and Bold reds. There are some 200 winerys in the Napa Valley and only 3 (as far as I know and learned) grow the Riesling grape. Two of the three grow them in coastal valleys outside Napa valley but only one actually grows them in the valley. Now you have to understand, Napa Valley winerys are known for their technological innovation; these guys will try anything, and it appears that Trefethen (a small family run winery/vineyard) has been growing the Riesling in some dark little valley or on the northern or southern slopes of the Napa Valley, who know what...but they pulled it off and I bought a bottle of Trefethen Dry Riesling! They also poured me glass of this "late harvest" stuff,...now check this out: they leave the grape to continue to ripen on the vine. As it does, the sugar concentrates and the grape raisinizes. When they finally harvest the bunches, each grape will yeild ONE fricken drop! I swear, it looked like syrup and tasted like heaven...as it should considering it's price.

Anywayz, I gotta go,...but any of my friends who might be reading this, we have to get together as a group and spend a weekend afternoon in Napa Valley...we'll have a blast I guarantee.

Tim's Supra is dead.

Tim's car is a wreck. It's sitting dead in my driveway. So, lets look at the pro's and con's of this purchase,....and sorry Tim if I come across a bit harsh.

PROS:
1. The car's exterior is in IMMACULATE condition. Not one scratch, ding, rust spot, etc.etc. In fact, usually and even under the best circumstances, you might find a couple of dings on a car's rear bumper...the woes of parrallel parking. But in this case,...nothing. Just perfect....and it's the original paint job....which means it probably never got into a majot accident, meaning a straight chassis and no frame damage.
2. I've read the 7M GTZ motor bottom-end is a keeper. Pretty strong and accepts top end mods quite well.
3. Its one of the few Japanese rear-wheel drive cars to be produced.
4. The aftermarket industry is MASSIVE and parts are cheap and readily found everywhere on the internet.

Now the CONS:
1. The interior is thrashed....which may be a PRO BTW. It would be a good reason to completely gut the interior, spray can the bare metal, slip in some racing buckets and a roll cage and a five pointer.
2. The bottom-end might be bullet proof but unfortunately everything else attached to it sucks. Typical turbo bullshit; pressurized hoses everywhere, way too many sensors, a billion clamps, tubes and tiny hoses, etc.
3. It has 215 thousand miles on the motor...eeeck. Which basically means everything that can be replaced needs to be replaced. Lets just hope the block, crank, and heads are okay. And even if you replace everything (and I know how this is having owned an old Z-28) something else somewhere else in the car will need to be fixed nearly every month.
4. The suspension is gone.

Tim splurged and bought some bad-ass coil-overs, but for crying out loud Tim, spend that money on getting the car in good running order. Meaning:
- Fluids: oil, diff, brake
- Radiator: check for leaks, flush, replace fluid
- Tune-up: plugs, wires, oil/air/fuel filter replace, replace belt (it looks BAD)
- Cooling: replace water pump and thermostat
- Big Hoses: the large turbo hoses look good, but we haven't checked the 3 under the car in and out of the intercooler.
- Little hoses: replace ALL of them. They're all cracked, split, and hardened.
- Have the ECU diagnosed and errors checked. If any of the sensors are dead, they need to be replaced. Also, while your at the shop, do a pressure test AND and compression test...and pray your compression is 10.5 or whatever is spec.

THEN we can actually do the FUN work. As for the immediate issues, i.e., the car dead in my driveway...the AMM looks bad. Criminy...did we actually break the thing by just cleaning it? We'll have to check it out this weekend. If it isn't the AMM, then we can check the charge on his battery, though it looks good to me. And we need to check if fuel is being properly delivered....somehow. Anywayz, more about the SUPRA later.

Laguna Seca...Astounding....

Whoops, been a while since my last blog. I have to catch up on certain events. Namely, LAGUNA SECA. Holy Jesus...what a track. A couple of my buddies drove down to get rides. My buddy, due to his ThePerfectline connections managed to get a free track day out of it as well!

The track is flat out gorgeous...and at the track were 2 Ariel Atoms. And unfortunately, as much as I respect it's technical prowess and sheer ludicrous performance, my love affair with the car is now dead. It simply looks like crap to me now...why? well it looks like a damn kit car. One of them had duct taped heat wrap to the frame due to heat from the exhaust...that's just stupid to me. Also, I've heard so much about it's supposed "astounding"/"face-ripping" performance, but I saw none of that. A driver in a tracked prepped Evo VIII, with no engine mods and a passenger, kept ahead of a hard charging Atom for several laps. Okay, Okay, I ABSOLUTELY KNOW these track days aren't about racing and that skill is the ultimate equalizer,..but for heavens sake!...there's NO WAY an EVO should out pace an Ariel...unless the Atom driver is an absolute schlep...and he wasnt. Talked to him and he had tons of track time/seat time. I don't know, maybe he wasn't pushing it or maybe my eyes deceived me. But none the less, the love affair is officially dead.

As for some other cars. There were the usual: M3's, 4 S2K's, a few Z06's, a ton of Porsches, and even 1 S4...and something I'm seeing more and more of, Caymans. So I got a ride in my buddy's rediculously tracked prepped EVO. As an example of his complete obsession, an ongoing joke among my group of car friends has been about how he recently "re-valved" his near new Ohlins in order to achieve better performance. I realize that most people just don't get the joke but I find it totally hilarious. Anywayz, he's real fast....much, much faster than I am. He seems quite precise lap after lap save turn one..."should I single or double apex this turn?", and one other turn I can't quite remember. And I didn't feel sick this time too, woo hoo! BTW, Laguna looks NOTHING like Playstation. It seems soo narrow...it's walls soo cavernous...and the damn carousel!! Holy Shit!...when dropping in, you can actually LOOK DOWN into a cars moon roof in front of you! What a ride.

So, I have more to write about...my sod, our groups GoG this past weekend, and my buddy's new (actually used/new) 87 Pearl Supra Turbo....which is currently sitting dead in my driveway.

My wife's brain kicks ass.

Sorry I haven't blogged in a while. For the last several months, my wife has been studying like mad for a very important exam,...her "boards" I'll call it. She's been on the computer taking on-line practice tests nearly every night for the last 3 weeks. Her studying has been steadily increasing in severity clearly working towards a mental peak for the day of her exam, which was yesterday. And with as much relief as with delight,....she has PASSED! As of yesterday, her mind was bristling and fit to burst with as much information as any brain can manage to digest. I'm sure that most of the info. has been categorized, memory stamped, and filed away as "crap you'll probably never need to access in your professional career".

Cramming is an interesting phenomenon. You realy don't acquire the studied info...in fact most of it is held for immediate acquisition only for a brief period, some 4 hours, by some research estimates. Most will know that after cramming and taking an exam, the information is gone....simply lost.

As for other matters, work is work,...alot of very disturbed folks, extremely sad predicaments, stories of triumph and recovery, tragedy and trauma, and public health policy politics. And it never ceases to amaze me how many times every week I come across a patient's story that has me scrunching my face in disbelief....life in the "Naked City" they say.

Also, I've read on another blog about my old Japanese Strat. My buddy Steve asked to borrow it. Little did I know he meant to take it apart and rebuild the damn thing. I'm soo looking forward to playing it again cause he actually worked to get it properly intonated! Number one, I didn't think it was possible (not to mention I had no idea how to do that) and number two, I've had the guitar for over 20 years and it's NEVER been intonated. He mentioned; cleaning the frets of 20 years of sweat and finger goo, fixing the locking neck (it's been snapping strings instead of keeping them locked in tune), and adjusted the Floyd Rose floating tremelo so it actually floats! I'm jacked to say the least...and I'm totally grateful for all his work. I'm still coveting his American Strat Plus....I want one bad.

So thats it for now, gotta go to a meeting that I just realized is in 3 minutes and I still have to drive across the city to get there...ARGH!