Modern Vespa

In meticulous detail, please.

Thanks for the tip. I'll try some chocolate in a trap or two.

Say, do you rent out your cat?

With obscure but airtight references that definitively prove your point, even though your point conforms to the letter but not the spirit.

So, repacked the second of my trailer bearings yesterday after replacing a seal. Highly recommended if you like playing in grease.

Anyway, last night had this brief moment of panic. "What if I reassembled one wrong?" and imagined sitting at the edge of the freeway with traffic buzzing past. Logically near-impossible, but doesn't stop the brain. I told my wife, who recounted a dozen moments of panic when on her way to work thinking she left the garage door open. A few times returned to find it...closed.

Why do we do these things? Or is it just my wife and I are excessively neurotic? On the flip side, people can drive all over heck with their wallet on the roof and never give it a thought....

SUCCESS!!! I finally got the bastard! He did clean out one trap without tripping it, but the second one got him!

I used some old M&M peanut candies. The shell didn't take well to the drilling, but the peanut worked well. I tied them onto the trap trigger, and it worked.

I'm resetting the traps to see if there are any more.

I tossed the carcass outside, so some critter will have an easy meal.

The plan was for my Tech to take the Blue RT to the Engineers so that the exhaust studs could be drilled out of the cylinders and then helicoiled.

After a two days worth of chin stroking The Engineers requested that the cylinders be removed from the bike so that they could get their very accurate drills into the metal.

This would mean the bike would have to be collected and then the cylinders removed only to be returned to their workshop and then collected again.

Wouldn't it just be easier to replace the cylinders I suggested ? Yep, was the answer.

Motorrad in Germany has just done me proud

Got two more overnight and this morning. Total so far = 3, probably more to come.

Doctors appointment requested for the Hernia.

It still pisses me off.

A Ladyfriend of mine recently returned from vacation and took great enjoyment in telling me what a great time she had.

Later in the conversation she told me that I hadn't asked her about the aforementioned vacation.

I answered that she'd already told me that she'd had a great time so why would I ask when I'd already been told.

Pedantic.

Normally, I try to be less bothered by things. However, this discovery particularly annoyed me.

Looked up Kymco USA on Google Maps to see if they had the same address. The pic that came up for the building didn't match my recollection of it, and since poking maps for the Where In The World Is ______? had piqued my interest, I decided to investigate.

I found that some bum had simply added their logo to 320 E. Main in downtown Spartanburg to look fancier. Couldn't find any tenant listing for them ever being there.

I'm still a bit peeved about their current US management screwing up a serviceable dealer network, so I did something uncharacteristic and reported the false image to Google Maps. Petty? Indubitably. But a current street view of 5 Stan Perkins Rd is far more representative of their current state of US operations and I don't appreciate this effort to put lipstick on a pig.

Info: Kymco owner who generally likes the products. Also a Cubbies fan. Disappointed that they didn't get or didn't heed Joe Maddon's memo...

Try Not To Suck.

What's pissing me off today is that I am drowning under a pile of my own possessions and I can't find anything when I need it.

Owning this much stuff is unhelpful if I can't actually find anything I need.

I am going to set it all on fire tomorrow.

i was about to suggest that

You could stick it all on eBay as seller JessMerch2025 🤔

Oh oh oh, can I have that hammer?

Sure.

It is a first world problem, but a problem nonetheless.

The trick is having a lot of stuff in an organized manner. Which I am terrible at doing.

I do have over 300 CDs in alphabetical order by artists. That's nice.

Last night I received my Prima windshield for the Sprint 50. I bought this one because in the image it showed it fitting with the North American pod style blinkers.

I figured it would be a ten minute job. I'm old enough to know better.

No instructions, of course, but fairly easy to figure out. Except that it's like a Chinese puzzle box getting everything together in the right order, because you have to do this before you do that or you wind up taking it apart and starting over, etc, etc. Which I did probably three times.

In the course of finishing it, there are Allen head set screws for the bar clamps. The top two I could easily get with my driver and a Torx bit, but the bottom two I could only get with a small L shaped wrench. Not even a blade style set would fit in there.

So, I'm digging around in the bottom of my toolbox for loose Allen wrenches, because I didn't have one in the little drawer where I keep all of my loose Allen wrenches that fit, and suddenly I'm bleeding. I keep a box of razor blades in my toolbox because they are handy. It's one of those safety boxes where the used blades slide back inside, protecting you from sharp edges. Well, the back end had fallen off, exposing the sharp edges.

So, now I am sweating AND bleeding looking for a way to clamp down the windshield, which I finally did with the same small Torx bit and a 1/4 box end wrench, so the install was complete. After only an hour.

This morning I was anxious to see how much difference the windshield makes - it's a shorty ... that's about all that was available to accommodate the blinkers that are right in front of the moon holes - and noticed that the right bar is tight enough against the blinker pod that when I tightened it down last night it broke the blinker stem, so now it dangles flaccidly against the leg shield.

I rode the Stella today. And typing is harder with a fingertip bandage.

I feel your pain, truly. My way out of it may be moving to a house half the size we have now. I'll be closer to my granddaughter and it has a separate garage. Good enough for me with the bonus of getting rid of all this stuff we don't need.

We did exactly that last year (move into a house half the size of our previous one). You need to be ruthless in your unburdening. There are only two categories for keeping stuff: Do I need it? Do I love it? (Same two for buying new stuff.)

And you have to accept the fact that very shortly afterwards you will need something that you just got rid of. Then you just have to ask yourself whether still having it would be worth the cost of still having everything else.

Another help is to consider things that are still good but that you rarely wear or use. Wouldn't it be better to sell or give them to someone else who really needs them rather than have them continue to be in your way?

Finally, there is that sense of lightness you get from having fewer possessions. It's real and feels good.

2+1+1=4 mice so far.

When I moved from a 4-bed detached house in the UK to a 2-bed flat, I got rid of nearly everything that had accumulated over forty years. I persuaded a charity to come and collect all the 'possibly sellable' stuff (that filled a LWB Transit to the brim) having given most tools away to friends. The residue filled two huge skips.

A huge catharsis!

I know pretty much how that feels. Though I had started the process as I left London for Ireland. The more you do, the easier it becomes. Just starting to do it is the hardest bit!

We moved to a new build , but it wasnt ready so we went into renting. We rented a five roomed bungalow plus a storage unit. Then covid hit. So what should have been 6 months was 14. During this time we critically reviewed everything we had in the unit and started weekly trips to the charity shop. The bungalow had very little storage. We probably gave away 75% of the unit's contents.

Being in a unit and two miles away was the first step away from" I might just need it , so Ill put it away"

Four years on, do we say " I wish we hadn't given away X. " not at all.

So go for it

I generally keep up with possessions - in the garage (my domain). It's actually a fairly simple system taught to me by my favorite uncle with just three steps to figuring out what stays and what goes.
1) Is it something you use fairly often? If yes, keep; if not onto>>>>
2) only used occasionally, but expensive to replace? Keep
3) Does it have strong memories tied to it (and hopefully, doesn't take up much space)? This is a keeper as well. Example; I have some of my fathers, grandfathers, great and great-great grandfathers plastering tools, mostly of Irish manufacturing. Anyhow, if it does not pass these tests - it's gone.
I truly wish I could apply this to the rest of the house. That day, however, is coming.... if I live so long.

For me, most projects involve notes. Not always, but generally.

This is going to be a big project. So I started a new notebook today, just for this. I had a whole color palette of notebooks to choose from (I am fanatical about this specific A5 dot-grid notebook) and red seemed like the appropriate choice.

Well, first thing to do is go out and buy a brazier.

My little 'Art & Music Room' two years ago....and now....

Got any recommendations?

But... where are all the guitars?

I got one a few years ago (christmas or birthday) that I know if I unpack I'll use exactly once and then it will forever take up a corner of the shed and the junk in that space will migrate to any currently usable space.

Three in the first photo are still in the house, but their fate is uncertain. The amps are all gone but one, and that's only because nobody bought it yet.

The living room upstairs has eight guitars hanging around, but they are unplayed production samples and several one-off prototypes. I have to keep them, but I don't have to, or want to, play any of them.

There's loads of choice on Temu..

D'oh

Thinking about cross-dressing, Jess?

Wait...

What?

Never mind.

Being asked to use the QR Code to order food in a Restaurant.

Won't be going back.

That will probably improve their fortunes, actually. Restaurants full of grumpy antisocial curmudgeons don't usually have good ambiance.

Your seat will quickly be filled by millennials and zoomers who aren't fussed about such things.

Yes, so why have Waitressing Staff who don't actually Waitress ?

Nothing funnier than watching a table of 8 not talking to each other because they are all focused on their phones.

Apparently I also work at the Supermarket.

I mean, that might have nothing to do with the menu.

It's perfectly fine if they're browsing MV.

Actually what's actually funnier is watching customers press icons on a screen in fast food outlets when there's an employee standing about 5ft away.

It would be quicker to just ask for what you want rather than stand there looking vacant with your tongue out.

Still, it's the future.