This morning is needlessly stressful, meaning I feel more stressed than I am. Ever have those mornings before a big test where you go to bed anxious the night before, sleep uneasily, and wake up with an almost overwhelming case of nervousness, which subsides in an hour or two, regardless of whether or not the test had actually taken place? I used to. That first half-hour after I got up was brutal sometimes, even if I knew the nervousness would calm down in a little while. This morning’s been one long extended “first half-hour,” inexplicably so, but that’s the nature of it.<\/p>\n
The weekend was wonderful. Most of Saturday was filled with car stuff. I fixed the Audi’s fuel system problems once and for all by applying the goop (utilized a couple of posts down for more nefarious purposes) to the welded seam at the bottom of the fuel tank. I replaced the fuel pump and the plastic pre-pump filter as well.<\/p>\n
Ran into a bit of a snag with the fuel pump, one that almost ruined my Saturday night plans for the second consecutive week. The outlet for the pump uses a banjo bolt which feeds into a rubber hose that connects to the fuel accumulator (and from there through the high pressure filter and on up to the engine bay). The banjo bolt is placed on the pump such that it’s very hard to loosen without putting pressure on the plastic-shrouded electrical terminals. Being the genius that I am, with the pump off the car and loosely grasped with the bench vise, I surmised that it might work to hold the barbed outlet for the fitting with a wrench whilst I loosened the bolt. Being brass\/copper or some equally soft alloy, the fitting’s outlet promptly cracked and nearly snapped off while I held it. Brilliant. I tried to use some of the goop to repair it, but there just wasn’t enough time to let it dry sufficiency to withstand the ~60-70 psi from the pump. The Audi was thus incapacitated for the night and I had to call Paul to come pick me up and drive me to my parents’ house, where I borrowed my mom’s Jetta for the evening (parents are in Portugal\/Spain for a week and a half).<\/p>\n
Sunday I searched high and low through all the bins at Advance Auto and Autozone for the obscure German fitting that I would need. Didn’t find it, as expected. As it turns out, though, both carburetors on the 240Z use banjo bolts with the same type of fitting that I would need. So I came home and checked it out. It fit perfectly (what are the odds?) and I went back to where the Audi was, got it all buttonned up, and drove it home. The fuel pump is much quieter now and there’s no raw gas smell inside the car either. Car life is good.<\/p>\n
The pops concert on Saturday night was fantastic. Art Garfunkel is such a gracious performer. He obliged the audience with great banter and little stories about his songs at every turn and gave an unheard-of amount of credit to his bandmembers each chance he got. As I understand it he was the one who would converse with the audience during Simon & Garfunkel shows back in the ’60s (where Paul would just hang back and not say much), and I can see he’s definitely honed his craft. His voice is getting old, I could tell–there’s a bit of breathiness there where there used to be clarity, but the timbre, intonation, and pitch are as spot-on as they’ve always been, and he belted his way through “Bridge Over Troubled Water” in glorious fashion. The funniest moment in the concert came during his performance of “Mrs. Robinson” when he substituted “John Edwards” for “Joe DiMaggio.” That elicited a huge laugh and applause from the audience. For my money, though, the best number was his performance of “Kathy’s Song<\/a>.” I never realized what a beautiful song it was until I heard his exposition of the song’s origins and heard his rendition of it. I think the ability to stir a new appreciation of a familiar song is the hallmark of a great performer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This morning is needlessly stressful, meaning I feel more stressed than I am. Ever have those mornings before a big test where you go to bed anxious the night before, sleep uneasily, and wake up with an almost overwhelming case of nervousness, which subsides in an hour or two, regardless of whether or not the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/846"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=846"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/846\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}