Christmas weekend [s]

I took a brief trip to NorCal. Ted's place is looking good, too bad he can't decide on a railing.



Jon's place has a nice-looking concrete pad and some derelict steel girders. We'll see what happens.



Kaf got a truckload of rawhides and pig ears, but didn't get the chew toy he most wanted. He slept the whole ten hour drive back.



Food was the focus. Deeeeelish. If the above image doesn't turn you into a vegetarian then you're not a pansy.

The annual football game didn't go so well for the noble d'Brickashaw d'Brawlers. It wasn't a shutout, but it wasn't pretty.



Everything's pretty quiet back down south. Jes painted a Serengetiscape that currently resides on the mantle.

Settlers II [s]

There was more Settlers tonight. I did a short time-lapse.

Said the now-older one, 'You always go for the longest road. I know your game. I have your 411 down.'

Wintry activities [s]

San Diego was too cold so I flew north. Virgin is a pretty sweet airline. I played Doom all the way up, no credit card required. On the subject of video games I'm considering this one for the chilly January nights.

The North Bay is the same as I left it. It has an xr now so I took a quick tour of the empty lots near the new property. Apparently Tuesday nights are for the Petaluma poker tournament. I managed 10th out of 60-ish and payout of fifteen duckets. Jon and I grabbed Mark on the way out as he flipped quad kings.

A fine weekend [s]

I tried the other angle and Jon found a football. And then a 2x4. The conflict started with sponges and quickly escalated.







Victors of poker were Jon and Rob.



Quoted:
Floors and beer? I happen to be an expert at one of those. Tune in this weekend to find out which.
I do what I can. And in the least biased manner possible.

Please tell me Renault will bring these to the States.



It's quite eccentric, but from the company that marketed the original mr v6 in a hatch the Megane could be a sharp touring car.

Diversions [i]

What do you do when it's unhealthy to go outside and network television is an incessant stream of yellow journalism? Fun in the garage of course.

I picked up some carbon fiber weave and epoxy resin to see if compression could make up for my shameful lack of an autoclave. Additionally, I tried curing the resin at 500F.



The resin runoff cured in the oven within minutes and turned a deep amber; neither of these things is desirable. I removed the bake assembly from the oven and let it cure at room temperature, surprisingly it turned out to be visually identical to the full room temperature cure (seen below on left and right). Nonetheless, my procedure will hence be room temperature curing.



Straight out of the press, the composite surface is a bit hazy on account of the mold release. With a bit of wet sanding and a layer of clear coat it looks pretty good. I have a two layer carbon-carbon that is rather flexible. I also created a carbon-glass-glass-glass-carbon-carbon that is quite rigid.

A chain guard is currently drying in the garage, we'll see how it turns out.

Regarding the fires, I was out checking on a friend's house and decided to skirt the perimeter of my area to see if I'd need to worry. The one blaze I saw was pretty small, particularly in comparison to what I shot three years before about a mile west.



Apparently the most significant damage was done farther north in Rancho Santa Fe and east in Ramona.

Uh, would that be the hot pants, sir? [s]

Aye, the hot pants.

Short story short, I incinerated some of my pants today whilst calmly drinking a latte. I did smell and see the smoke for the duration of my biscotti, but assumed it was coming from the nearby kitchen.



Lessons learned:

1. Jeans don't ignite, they smolder.
2. Headers are hot.
3. Nothing contradicts your sweet 'Cafe Racer 4 Real' tattoo more than being told your pants are on fire in a cafe.

Update:
Now I'm being cautious as evidenced by this shot Erik snapped this afternoon.