Return to Blogging

Wow, it’s been a long time since I last posted. I hope everyone had a good Easter/Pascha, and I hope y’all are having a good Eastertide (i.e., the season between Easter and the Feast of the Ascension; also, “everyone” and “y’all” refer to my theoretical readership). Christ is risen!

As usual, a lot has happened and little seems to have happened since my last post. Obviously, the biggest event to occur was Easter. My last post was just at the beginning of Lent, expressing my hope that I would manage to keep my focus on Christ and the real reason for fasting and so on. Well, “the best laid plans of mice and men,” I suppose. But, isn’t that, to some degree, a part of Lent. For me, at least, it always serves as a reminder of my own weakness; it always seems to be a magnifying glass on my own shortcomings. And I am reminded of Christ, and His mercy and grace.

Anyway, of course, Spring has come, which brings me back out onto my front porch to enjoy this Saturday morning with a cup of coffee. The trees are all already full of leaves, the weather is warm, if a bit humid, the birds are singing, and the dog has more to do during the day than destroy our house from the outside. On the downside, it seems to rain almost every day lately.

I have also decided to start doing my own mainenance on our cars. Both of them are around 10 years old, and are starting to require more frequent trips to the shop. After an unexpected visit to the shop (and coming out almost $1000 poorer) for my car, a friend of mine put a bug in my ear about doing the work myself. And, so, when the rotors on my wife’s car seemed to be warped (again), he helped me change them and the brakes out. After that, I went out and bought the basic tools I’ll need, and started cleaning up some in the garage (it’s still largely full of cardboard boxes from when we moved in). My next project was changing the oil on my wife’s car, which went pretty well.

Then I decided to tackle the brakes on my car. I’m going to be replacing all four, but to be safe, I’m just going to do the front together, then the rear together. However, when I went to follow the instructions in the Chilton manual I bought to life the car, I ended up denting the crossmember with the jack. So far, it doesn’t look like I’ve done any serious damage to the car, and now I know (after doing more research) that this car is not built to be jacked up by the cross member. However, I’ve been a little hesitant to try working on it again.

If it weren’t for the fact that I have already both both sets of brake pads, I would actually be inclined to giving up for now and taking it into a shop to get the brakes done. However, I’ve spent the money on the pads; I’m going to try again. If I have to, I’ll just lift one wheel of the car at a time.

This was my original plan for this morning, but I ended up sleeping in instead. Also, considering that it’s actually nice out (not raining) right now, I couldn’t resist the opportunity to sit out here and enjoy the morning. I’m debating on whether I’ll have time to do the brakes this afternoon (when it is supposed to be raining) before going to church for Vespers. I’ve missed the past couple weeks, and would hate to miss 3 weeks of Vespers in a row.

Well, I suppose that’s enough for now. The battery is almost dead on the lappy, and it’s getting near lunchtime.