Spike

Will be interesting rest of Silly Season as rumor has it SHR and Ford want to move Cole Custer up to cup but there are no empty seats at SHR yet and the only Ford seat available is the one David Ragan is vacating in the #38. Would be interesting if they aligned with SHR for even a year with Cole Custer.

Thanks I needed a good laugh Roger Wish Car company's would just stick to the K.I.S.S. principle when it comes to vehicles. I looked under the hood of the wife's car to check the fluids yesterday and man I tell ya you can't do anything other than change the air filter and add fluids. Everything is on top of everything else. The mechanic probably had to take half the dang hoses and crap just to get to the upper radiator hose and you can't even see where that goes into the radiator without removing the air filter hose and box. Wouldn't surprise me if the wife comes home today proclaiming she's selling it because this morning when she started it up it was loud so it looks like another trip to the muffler shop in the morning.

Well yesterday was fun Wife and I were going to the local Farmers Market only to pull into the parking lot and see steam coming from under the hood. Hose clamp broke and upper radiator hose bursted and left a few gallons of coolant under the car. So in the past 7 days we've spent over another $200 in car repairs and towing on the wife's car, last week it was the exhaust flange that broke. Luckily the tow truck driver gave us a ride home yesterday. Figures we just started putting money back into savings after paying down some bills only to empty it all again .

Paul Menard retiring at the end of the season and Matt Dibenedetto is taking over the Wood Brothers #21 for 2020 season https://nascar.nbcsports.com/2019/09/10/ryan-paul-menard-gives-nascar-a-happy-and-predictably-quiet-ending/ Elliot Sadler is retiring after Saturday's Xfinity race https://nascar.nbcsports.com/2019/09/10/elliott-sadler-to-end-nascar-career-with-late-model-scheme-crew-chief/ The latest Silly Season Scorecard https://nascar.nbcsports.com/2019/09/10/silly-season-scorecard-matt-dibenedetto-finds-new-ride-for-2020/

smelling salts

I forgot to put the oil cap on my car once, didn't notice it till the oil burning dodge I was behind finally turned off and I still noticed the oil burning smell so I pulled off to the side of the road and popped the hood to find the cap still sitting next to the hood latch Not sure why the hood was able to close with the cap right there. The only reason I'm worried about my dads car is the Cruze has a weird PCV system that has to always stay under pressure. At least GM is backing up their cars nowadays though, he got a letter from them last week alerting him to a possible issue and they extended the warranty on the part that could possibly fail. Only thing we noticed after putting the new cap on is there was a lot of blue smoke for about the first minute but it hasn't done that since so I guess that was just some excess oil burnoff from the pressure not being correct with the cap off. That sunflower is the tallest one I've ever grown. Here's some pics of my garden Sunflower https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/48667116998_c8da0541a0_b.jpg Sunflower https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/48667118883_29810afbf0_b.jpg Butterfly on Mint https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/48667118398_4b253e4b81_b.jpg the big leaves on the left are the 12 foot Sunflower Lillies at my other garden at my dad's https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/48667465631_8650e1eb3f_b.jpg https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/48667466476_6353e4d880_b.jpg Asian Lillies in pot on my patio https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/48667620762_16a3bce615_b.jpg Prickly Pear Cactus blooming https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/48667121723_e9a4dccaa2_b.jpg I'm waiting for the Asters to bloom which are really late this year but the plants have gotten 5 foot tall so far, I'll take some pics and upload those soon. I picked a bunch of tomato's the other day and a few cucumbers, Pumpkins have become bee magnets so will probably have a bunch of those soon. Enjoy the rest of Labor day guys

That wreck could have been so much worse, thank god everyone escaped with only minor bruises. Here's the Retro paint schemes to be run this weekend at Darlington https://nascar.nbcsports.com/2019/08/28/retro-rundown-2019-southern-500-paint-schemes-3/ Some good looking schemes this year, even a few movie ones. Remember you can watch the Xfinity Darlington race Saturday @ 4pm est on NBC but the Southern 500 is once again on NBCSN

booze

Those are some neat cars. You'd think with the Sterling they would have used a different windshield than one that looks like it came from a truck or van. The annual british car show we have here there's usually a few MGB's towing the back half MGB trailers. Haven't been to a car show yet this year, they've either got canceled due to weather or I've been catching up on work due to the weather. I spent the morning finding an oil cap for my dads car since he forgot to put it back on when he topped the oil off this morning. Surprisingly I had to call a few GM dealerships before I found one that had the cap in stock. I just hope he didn't do any major damage to the engine since he drove it till he got back home instead of pulling off somewhere knowing something was wrong with it since it was acting like it was going to stall and smoke was coming from under the hood. Wife said we need to move to Alaska or Hawaii that way our parents can't keep bugging us with every little thing . Don't get me wrong we love them but every time something goes wrong with a car or this or that we're always the ones to drop our plans and come to the rescue. Tallest sunflower finally bloomed, dang thing is 12 feet tall, think I'm going to need to borrow a ladder to get the head off when the seeds are ready.

From what I've read about them they're everywhere east of the Rockies though they are really prevalent in areas with sandy soil. They are so small you only notice them when either they are crawling on you or you notice that the floor is moving. Some heavy thunderstorms dumped over 2 inches of rain and quarter size hail the other night which brings our local total rainfall for the year into the Top 5 on the record list, one local meteorologist thinks we'll set a new record this year. Counted 6 new small cucumbers on the plant before the rain but I can imagine they had a big growth spurt.

telescope

Silly season is starting to heat up again... David Ragan to step back from full time season in 2020 https://nascar.nbcsports.com/2019/08/14/david-ragan-stepping-back-from-driving-full-time-after-the-2019-season/ Matt Dibenedetto out at LFR # 95 Camry https://nascar.nbcsports.com/2019/08/15/matt-dibenedetto-out-at-leavine-family-racing-after-one-season/ This isn't shocking news as a few weeks ago Joe Gibbs Racing said they were looking for a Cup team to put Christopher Bell in till Denny Hamlin or Kyle Busch retires so it looks like Bell will be driving the #95 next year. Rumor has it Matt Dibenedetto will take over the #38 Ford at FRR. Ford has revealed the changes to the Xfinity series Mustang for 2020 https://nascar.nbcsports.com/2019/08/15/ford-reveals-2020-mustang-model-for-xfinity-series/

Well things are starting to return to normal for us here. Turns out the ant infestation we had was Pharoah Ants. Tenacious little suckers, they are relentless until you get an exterminator. There is no spray you can buy at Walmart or Lowe's that will keep them out, trust me we've tried several with 0 luck. Finally complained to the manager enough that they hired an exterminator to come out on Jul 27th. Bad news is the exterminator said it's pretty likely the whole building is infested and the manager didn't want to set it up for the rest of the tenants in our building to be out so the exterminator could have sprayed and fogged the rest of the building. I told that to the manager what the exterminator said and they pretty much didn't give a . So I'm going to take it upon myself to let every new tenant that moves into our building know that they probably have these little suckers crawling around in their walls. For what good it did the exterminator laid some poisoned bait around the building to try and draw them out and kill the nests but not 5 days later the worst lawn crew to ever have blew most of it away. I even told them twice not to use the leaf blowers where they see the bait piles but I just wasted my breath. Jack neighbor we've been having issues with thought we were moving out and got so giddy he had to tell one of the other neighbors of course we took the wind out of his sails when we cam home to clean and bring the cat stuff back in . We wished we could've moved out but since we blew over a grand in car repairs this year that's not gonna happen for another year. Garden is doing good. Brought in 3 of the 4 carrots I planted and since it's still early enough in the season I planted some more carrots. The Swallowtail caterpillar that was on the carrots turned into a butterfly and flew away a few weeks ago. Bees finally pollinated the tomato's, got over 3 dozen waiting to grow and be picked. Got 4 big cucumbers off the plant so far. And got a couple of pumpkins on one vine. Was hoping we'd have more monarch butterfly's on the milkweed I planted at my dads house but it looks like carpenter ants are taking the eggs off the milkweed before they even hatch. Hope a few survive to become a butterfly. Scarecrow Festival, that is a good idea, wonder if any place in Ohio does one...

Yeah funny thing is you never hear the word racism thrown around when racist things are done to white people. The high school I went to was 40% white, 40% black, 17% Hispanic and 3& other. White students could be called anything by the other students but if any white student used the N word or other disparaging word automatic 3 day in school suspension. When I was called honky or white bread or redneck trash I just laughed about it and went on learning, wasn't worth giving them boneheads the time of day. I will say majority of the students there no matter what race they were just wanted to learn and graduate so for the most part everybody got along and had good friendships, the bad apples from all the races there eventually dropped out so by the senior year it was kind of enjoyable.

derrick