Charlie’s Haus

Well to start, I figured out why my truck was running rough.  It turned out to be a big headache.  The fuel line was rusted bad and leaking fuel.  I ended up having to drop the gas tank and replace all the fuel line from the fuel sender in the tank to the throttle body.  Talk about expensive too.  Oh well, Ill never have to worry about it ever again.  I just finished that today.  All I have left now is exhaust and figuring out how to rig the radiator hoses.  Not too much left, but some work still. 

Christmas was busy.  Logged way way too many miles.  In a week, we must have gone around 800 miles.  Its insane and Im so tired of it.  It makes christmas almost not fun with all that running around.  I got a lot of cool stuff that I wanted though.  Im almost setup for making my own beer with the stuff Mandi got me, I cant wait to start that. 

We rang bells for the salvation army on the 21st outside of walmart (thats where are xmas pic was taken inside our xmas cards).  It seemed like not nearly as many people as normal were donating.  I heard a few days ago donations were down this year too.  It was a little disappointing, but at least we helped as much as we could. 

Other than that, getting ready for chistmas kept me real busy.  That and all the snow we have gotten.  Its been a crazy year for snow.  I dont remember getting this much snow since I was a kid. 

I hope everyone had a good christmas and have a happy new year!

I finally got the truck fired up for the first time this week.  I dont have it all together…just enough to actually make it run.  The headers sound mean on it too.  It runs rough, but I can figure that out once its all together and ready to go….it hasnt been run in a long time…so it could be just clearing itself out.  Im hoping to have that done pretty soon though…lots of stuff needs that fixed so I can use it.

I picked up a new cordless drill yesterday.  I bought an adapter to use my ice auger with a cordless drill.  The only problem is that my drill is actually an impact driver.  So it tries to impact instead of turning the auger.  So as usual, I went overboard and bought the best.  Picked up a sweet 20V Craftsman Lithium Ion version.  I figured with the cold temps the li-ion will help me keep up the voltage and get more holes out of a trip.  Its a really really nice drill.  It will be very nice to use around the house too.

I finished up the majority of my xmas shopping this week.  I have 1 thing left for my mom and for my grandma, but thats it.  Hopefully I can finish that up this weekend.  It will be nice to be done with it.

Im getting real eager to get out ice fishing.  From what I have read, the fishing isnt good yet around here.  It still is pretty early really.  As soon as the truck is ready I can go out though.  Im spoiled using my ice shanty these days.  I do still have my crappy old 1 man one, and we actually have enough snow to use it.  I may have to resort to that if it comes down to it till the truck is ready to go.

This weekend not too much is planned.  Mostly just working on the truck, and maybe a trip out to my buddy Scotts property to pick up the exhaust I am going to use on the truck.  Hopefully it isnt too cold and windy.

Wow…I cant believe its been a week and half since I wrote here.  It seems like just yesterday.  Lots of stuff going on.  Last Friday we went to the Badgers hocky game.  We got to see a good one.  It was against St. Cloud State, and the Badgers were down 2-0 at one point.  But they came back to beat them.  Its been awhile since we have seen them win!  They ended up sweeping St. Cloud too.  So cool. 

Saturday was the first day of many snow storms.  We ended up with around 8″ of snow.  It was terrible out since it switched to rain at one point.  The roads were a mess.  We were supposed to go to a birthday party, but after getting in the car we decided not to.  Mandi nearly fell a couple of times on the way to the car.  That was enough to say we need to stay home.  She was made to feel really bad about not going, and that really pissed me off.  Its not like we just decided not to go.  Yet they didnt understand that.  A little selfish if you ask me.  We probably should have gone though.  Since we didnt go we decided to watch a movie.  So Im walking down the steps in my socks and got a ginormous transformers cup full of water (its the large plastic cup from the theater that holds like 64 oz) and I get to the 5th or so step from the bottom and both legs suddenly slide out from under me.  My rear plants right on the corner of the step and my giant water glass goes everywhere.  I wanted to laugh but it hurt so bad.  I was lucky to land where I did instead of on my back or something.  I was sore until about wednesday.  My back was just killing me.  Having to shovel with my back like that really sucked.  I lived though

This week I have spent like 8 hours or so already trying to mod a wii.  I will never do it again.  I screwed it up already and am hoping I can fix it.  Too much time and money has gone into it.  I even bought a new soldering station to do it.  Crazy.

Yesterday I had to take Greta to the vet.  Shes been constipated and not eating much.  They said she was dehydrated and that her red blood count was off the chart.  They had to send out her blood to be analyzed somewhere else.  We should find out tomorrow if anything serious is wrong or if maybe she was just to dehydrated and that complicated things.

I am so fed up with work.  Its the typical cant win situation.  I set up a wiki so we could all edit pages instead of one person (makes everyones lives easier) then was basically told to just tell the guy who does our pages what to change.  Yet if New Guy had suggested it, we would have completely moved to that system already.  I know why people go postal now.  Its just like office space says “it makes you do just enough to not get fired.”

I leave you all with a funny clip from a movie about a grand prix.  I <3 my grand prix.