andrewlighten.com

My cousin and his ukelele.

I bought some new tyres for the Falcon yesterday. I was running the Dunlop SP3000A (an excellent tyre, btw) but opted for the new Toyo Transas TEO. Two reasons: (1) the tyre shop had 4 in stock (but none of the Dunlops), and (2) they’re $50 cheaper per tyre. I could have waited for them to get some of the Dunlops but I really needed new tyres (one word: canvas).

All good and well. And boring. So why mention it?

Well, when I hit town this morning, I suddenly noticed a subtle vibration in the front of the car. It had to be tyre related because severity was relative to road speed, and it disappeared totally when I brushed the brake pedal. Only one possible explanation: loose wheel nuts.

I pulled over, and sure enough, three of the nuts on the front left wheel turned easily with my fingers. I got the tyre wrench out and found all five were pretty loose. I tightened them all up and checked the other wheels. The rears were fine, but the front right wasn’t really all that tight either, because I got a further 1/4 of a turn when I tightened each nut.

New tyres are good, because the car always feels better, but I actually kind of like it when the wheels are put back on the car properly. One of my personal quirks.

I’d already done 180km when the vibration started, but that was all 110km/hr freeway driving, and the front wheels of a rear wheel drive car do very little work on the freeway. It’s only when you start turning corners and braking that you actually put any load of any significance through the front wheels, and that’s probably why it took so long for the loose nuts to show themselves.

That aside, I’m actually pretty impressed with the tyres. They’re still very green (as you’d expect with only ~200km on them) but they’re already very responsive on turn in. They squirm around a little if you lean on them, but that’s to be expected when they’re so fresh.

The Baby is one year old tomorrow! To commemorate she’s managed to get her second cold, so she’s feeling pretty crook right now. The Kid got her a present and insisted The Baby get it early to cheer her up, but right now, as they’re playing on the floor, it’s pretty apparent that The Kid chose the present more for herself than The Baby. Not to worry though; they’re having fun playing together and the cold appears to have taken a back seat.

She’s probably got some teething pain too, because she’s now got two top teeth that have come through.

There’s photos up on SmugMug (and will be more in the next hour or two) so check your URLs.

I’ve got another aerial on my car now. I’ve wanted to fit a phone car kit for a while, and when I bought my new phone I picked one that had decent support for a hardwired kit. I got the guts of the kit at the same time as the phone, was given a 6.5dB broomstick aerial a week or two back, and finally put it all in last week.

Signal strength is fabulous; at least one or two extra bars everywhere. Places where the phone used to drop signal altogether now show at least two bars of strength. The only downside is that the aerial is little bit noisy (wind noise), but I was warned about that when it was given to me and it’s not really that much of a problem.

Given that I’ve now got at big broomstick and the UHF CB aerial on the front I figure I’ll go the whole hog: next come the bundy rum and caterpillar stickers all over the back, then the Kenworth mudflaps (or maybe the classy ones with the chrome ladies on them), and then I’ll add another two aerials that are at least 30 feet tall and serve no purpose whatsoever. I’ll finish up with a pair of ram horns on the bonnet.

Or maybe not.

I took The Kid into Brides & Blokes to get her fringe trimmed Saturday morning. She was talking at the hairdresser and the conversation came around to her birthday.

Hairdresser: What did you get for your birthday?
Kid: I got a Wii.
Hairdresser: You need to go to the toilet??

The top of the right hand column of this blog now includes a list of pages. Only two so far: the ‘about’ page that’s pretty standard, and a new entry called ‘Wii accidents’. I’ll use this to keep track of all the stoopid things we’ve managed to break, destroy or maim while playing with The Kid’s Wii.

We had a lovely mothers day yesterday. We (being me and the kids) got Lisa some rose scented mood reeds and Ainsley’s latest book. The rest of the day was spent doing very little except for an hour or two of all cooking together in the kitchen, which was great. We prepared a couple of things to take over to Lisa’s parents for an evening dinner with the Peter & Eve, Peter & Diane, Fred & Sue. There’s some photos up on SmugMug; check your URLs.

We were planning to call Mum in the UK (Hi Mum!) but by the time we got home Adelaide was almost asleep and it was getting pretty late for us. We’ll call tonight.

I’ve got 10 invites to Evernote – ping me if you’re interested.

I’ve just spent a whole weekend on an SES search and rescue training course. The weekend was all about how to search for objects and people and doing as little damage as possible in the process. We covered the way people go missing (it’s amazing how different people go missing and get lost in different ways), how to methodically search for them, how to preserve evidence at crime scenes, etc. It was a real eye opener.

Lisa did a champion job (as usual) looking after the kids and the house while I was away.