PLEASURES AND PAIN IN THE NECK

It took a full week for my neck to get right again to really start 
doing things again, so typically I went mad doing all sorts of 
physical jobs that were digging at me all the time I was stuck 
propped up in positions of slightly less discomfort on the couch. 
Now a few days later of course it's sore again because I've been 
busy doing all the things that probably hurt it in the first place. 
But such is only to be expected. It really is frustrating because 
I've been getting more determined with my many and varied DIY 
projects lately, and with the weather warming up and drying out 
it's finally practical to attempt more of them. But then trying to 
do that is exactly what breaks me. I called my father to see if he 
could give me a hand with something yesterday and he couldn't until 
Friday when the weather looks bad, so I even ended up moving 
another one of those heavy sleepers on my own again, which might 
well be what's set my neck off again. It's like I always say, the 
only peace in life is to sit on your bum and attempt absolutely 
nothing, trying to achieve things is hopeless, but I keep trying 
anyway.

My weekend time limit doesn't help. I kick myself about doing 
non-money-earning things in work hours during the week, then 
Saturday comes and I'm too tired out to be bothered, or distract 
myself with something silly on the computer like writing for this 
phlog (which I've been trying to cut down, this morning I woke up 
early so I have some extra time). Then it's suddenly Sunday and I 
have a year's worth of things to rush into, none of which quite get 
finished, but a few things get close enough that I get distracted 
trying to make them work or packing up on Monday, which I kick 
myself about for the rest of the week.

At the same time there's a certain peace to just 
making/packaging/posting things to sell when that's what I'm doing 
during the week. When it's not another thing making my neck sore, 
there's something enjoyable about just doing the same basic task 
without all the failures ever-present in attempting to design or do 
something new. Yet I manage to stuff up doing the same basic tasks 
often enough too, in new and innovative ways, and that's even more 
frustrating. I mean how _can_ you do something litterally 2000 
times and then suddenly start stuffing it up completely one day? 
Like I keep yelling at myself in frustration: "I know what to do, I 
just don't do it!".

Mind you there's also my other little motto of frustration muttered 
to myself: "there's a solution to every problem, and a problem with 
every solution". Last sunday I did finally get around to finishing 
replacing the fuel injector hoses I talked about before. First step 
was to cut the ($40/meter!) fuel injector hose to length. So I 
tried to measure it against the hoses I'd removed. But I didn't 
match all thje bends in the stiff old hose quite right and cut them 
all too short, which I only discovered after installing all six. So 
I pulled that all apart again and set to with my much-smarter new 
solution of bolting the fuel rail in place first, pushing one end 
of the new hose onto the injector, and cutting it off at the length 
required in-place. Much smarter, and it worked great until the last 
hose which was a smaller one looking just like one of the spark 
plug leads. No worries, hold the leads all out of the way and cut 
the one that's left. So I went ahead and cut through the lead to 
the ignition coil instead. On Monday I thought I'd quickly rig up a 
new lead from an old spark plug lead from another car, but I eneded 
up spending about half an hour just trying to get the old one out 
of the distributor cap where it had corroded in place with a 
strength that superglue would envy, and ended up making rather a 
mess of that distributor cap too. So that's off until this weekend, 
if my neck's not out of action again then.

On the up side the vehicle I'm working on is all very exciting. I 
think I mentioned that for years there's been a promise that I 
might be given an old Jag by a relative of one of the few people I 
know, and amazingly enough it actually happened. It's the model 
earlier than mine, which was actually the model I originally went 
looking for when I ended up buying my first car/Jag a decade ago, 
but far fewer Km and apparantly with a fairly recently rebuilt 
engine. But of course, a few faults, the first of which being a 
preference for spraying fuel out of those injector hoses which had 
hardened and cracked over the years it spent sitting after its last 
real owner died. The body and interior are actually in great shape, 
so it's just a case of working through mechanical issues and 
braving all the bureaucratic hoops of the roadworthy process. The 
latter is really what I fear most since it was an expensive and 
annoying run-around for my other Jag. But first I just need it 
running because it's taking up the place where I was already meant 
to work on solving a mystery knock sound from the suspension on my 
other Jag, put off over winter when the floor of the shed floods 
(the solution to which is of course another slow work-in-progress 
weekend job).

I've also been trying to learn MIG welding, which was going well 
enough (in spite of a dodgy wire feed motor on the cheap welder I'm 
using) I thought I'd rent a bottle of gas to use to try sheet metal 
welding, with the eventual aim of more Jag-work - patching up the 
bits of bodywork that are rusting away. Of course since then I 
haven't had time to use it at all and now it's $120 down the drain 
in monthly rental fees for the gas bottle I haven't even used.

It's not all car-related stuff I've been doing, but I'm tired of 
talking about computer things here for one thing. Out of time now 
anyway.

 - The Free Thinker.