Engine Swap, part 1

ot that I’m new to the whole engine swapping experience, but this was the first time I’ve ever taken pictures during the process.

So, without further ado, here’s the “Before” shot of the engine compartment of my 1968 Mustang (which I’ve had for about 13 years and plan to keep forever–maybe even be buried in it!)…

There’s not much to say about it other than when I’m done, it’ll look almost the same–only much faster!!!!

Remember, my car is not a show car. She’s a plain Jane daily driver and therefore, I need not wear a lab coat and sterlize everything. Hell, I can accidentally scratch paint, leave wires out of looms and use bolts that don’t match if I want to.

Of special hinky driver note, yes, there’s a rag plugging one of the holes in the firewall on the right hand side. It’d be plugging both holes, but it has fallen. No, this is not stock and yes I prefer the rag…otherwise, I’d have to get off my lazy ass, measure the holes and hunt down grommets–waaaaay too much work for a driver! I’ll bet there are several car enthusiasts fuming right now. Sorry guys, I’m just a dumb girl. I dunno anything about cars.

This was day one and my hands were still clean:

I dunno why I put the bandana over my hair. It seemed like a good idea at the time even though I had yet to be in a position to need my hair covered. Whatever. I was working on my car, for goodness sake, not going to a gala.

It was my job to get everything off of the engine so that it’d be ready to pull over the weekend. I started easy: Disconnect the battery, the ignition, pull the alternator and set it aside, empty the radiator, pull the heater hoses, pull the radiator hoses…and most importantly, try not to make too much of a mess because I was going to end up crawling around under the car at some point and there are few things worse than automotive fluids to get in your hair…thus perhaps why I put the bandana on my head prematurely.

My new motor

It’s looking like I might have the necessary spare time to get my new engine into my old Mustang…

Ain’t it purrrty?! And the real beauty of it is that the car it’s going into doesn’t have power steering or power brakes, the fuel pump is electric and therefore doesn’t bolt to the motor and the fan is electric thereby keeping further drag from the motor…and making for lots less work when swapping! Yay!

I won’t even have to swap carburetors. I did, however, get new headers which’ll go in when the engine does–this’ll be the first time I’ve put headers in with a motor. Last time, the engine was already in and me and a buddy had to muscle the darn things in and around…good golly that sucked, but I gained noticeable horsepower by going from stock manifolds directly to full length headers.

This is gonna be tons of fun…

And my convertible Mustang will get the hand-me-down so that it’ll no longer get smoked by 6-cylinder TransAms from the mid-80s. Granted, the convertible is all about cruising, but come on, right now that poor car can’t even break its peg-leg loose when I stomp on the gas…unless I’m in a puddle. Sad. Really sad.

Here’s me and my two ‘Stangs…

Funny, how just a few posts down, I was talking about sewing and now I’m talking about cars. Makes me think I should round out by mentioning antique doll restoration just so I can have all of my hobbies covered!

Duh…

I did have something newsworthy to report and I have no idea how I neglected it!

Okay, other than that I hadn’t been sure which day Jason had a book signing with Tim Powers until the day was upon us…which had made it very difficult to mark my calendar and mention it here ahead of time. And with the constant flow of life’s activities lately there hasn’t been much time to dwell on events past.

Over the weekend, Jason Stoddard got to share a signing table with Tim Powers. And good golly, I had a wonderful time with Tim and his wife, Serena. They’re a hoot!

I’m still kicking myself for bringing my camera, but forgetting to snap pics. Duh. Duh. Duh. Duh. Duuuuuuuuuh.

Next time, of course.

The store, Bookman in Orange, CA, was phenomenal! I scored some Jude Devereaux titles I’d been needing to replace since a rather unfortunate spring cleaning accident a few years ago in which a bag of ‘keepers’ got tossed because it was next to a bag of ‘giveaways’. In most cases, I even managed to match the old covers, too.

See, it’s Jude Devereux’s fault for hooking me on romance. I was in either 8th or 9th grade–perhaps the summer between the two–when my best friend (the other half of Ashleigh Raine) loaned me KNIGHT IN SHINING ARMOR–which actually belonged to one of her friends and she was worried she’d get in trouble for loaning it to me without asking first. Well, I got it on a weekend and gave it back the following weekend. From then on, I was hooked. Time travel. Romance. I was soooooooooooooooo into that!

A few years later, I discovered Virginia Henley–who at RT 2005 judged my costume as one of the winners! Needless to say, I was in absolute awe.

Oops! I digressed… Sorry, I got a little excited. Books take a person to more places than just the fictional worlds therein.

Anyhow, the signing was fantastic–got to meet a lot of people and then talk amongst ourselves over pizza afterward. That was tons of fun.

…And I’ve already learned a thing or two from the big fat sewing book from 1972 that Jason sprung for. I swear times have changed so much that I get more use out of old sewing books than new ones!

Derailed!

And I’d thought the shirt patterns were tops of my list for when I got my sewing room shovelled out. Ha! Instead, I …uh… ‘merged’ a shirt and dress from the late 60s/early 70s and created a coat. Perfect for spring!

I really wish I had more to report. Life’s gotten busy, but mundane and boring. By the end of this month, I’m sure I’ll be wishing for mundania, but in the mean time, I hope all is well with everyone!

Digging out, and it

In effort to get organized, I’ve begun cleaning out my sewing room. It’s a very long process because the room has been neglected for years–lots of writing instead of cleaning or sewing.

Anyhow, as I worked to the bottom of the heap of detritus I called “sewing projects”, I discovered three patterns I’d purchased and obviously forgotten shortly thereafter.

Inspiration and motivation come in strange ways.

The sooner I get the room straightened out, the sooner I can make those patterns, the sooner I can wear the shirts–most likely to conventions and signings, too!

Plus, making those shirts will create some free space in my stacks of fabric, and good golly I need it!!!

Sometimes it’s the little things…

Learning about myself

Here I go again having recently had something happen but yet I was lame about blogging. I honestly have no idea why I do that. It’s not like stuff’s a big secret or I’m afraid or whatever. I mean, I’ll shamelessly wear my geese with stripes shirt in public. Hell, ya’ll should see what I wore over the weekend at the two book signings in Northern California.

[Wow! I just accidentally segued into what I’d set out to blog! COOL!]

There’ll be pictures up soon at ashleighraine.com but I’m not quite ready to post them yet. They need to be resized and stuff. Plus, I’m digging out from the pile of other, older updates that still need to be done.

Anyway, over this last weekend, Jennifer and I (and our great friend Donna) went up to Northern California for book signings in Monterey and Santa Clara. Special thanks to Borders Express because they’re awesome for having such a huge group of authors signing those two days!

Jen and I used those two signings as an excuse to stay at my parents’ house and visit with as many of our old friends as were around.

I could go on and on and on and on about how much fun we had at the signings and getting caught up with friends and all that excitement, but that’s not what I’d intended this blog entry to be about.

I wanna write about what I learned. I was rather surprised, too.

Y’know how you’ve got friends that you don’t see all the time, but whenever you talk to them it’s like you’d never lost touch…aside from all the ‘so whatcha been up to?’ catching up stuff? Then there’s the friends that are always around, but they tend to call you before you call them… And then there’s the friends that you always call first–whether it’s because you need their help or they’re just the person you need to talk to right then.

Well, all of the friends Jen and I were with fall into all of those categories. Our friendship range was diverse and we were all wishing the whole crowd was there, but happy with the crowd who made it.

Anyhow, at the end of the first night, my old friend Carrie was making a run up to the corner store for a few things and in passing, I’d thanked her for letting me tag along because I needed to “decompress”. She questioned what I meant and I replied that there are certain expectations of me when I’m out with Jen, etc. and that when I’m out with Carrie, those expectations aren’t the same.

At the time, I didn’t really ponder that thought, but later on, I totally did…And started to realize just how many personalities I have in certain situations–which got me realizing that it’s not conscious…and that they go along with the company I keep.

From there, I realized that I hang out with the people I hang out with–when I hang out with them–because of what they bring out in me. Seriously, if I want girltalk, I call Jen. If I want tomboy, crawling around at the junkyard, I call Eddie, the best man at Jason and my wedding. Obviously, I choose to hang out with my husband Jason the most, but still. I found the whole thing rather fascinating. Just in those three examples, there were three almost completely different ‘me’s. They all intersect, but are not limited to the same list of traits–some are louder than others.

Everyone probably does the same stuff without realizing it, but then I started wondering if there were facets of me I should put forth more often; which ones do I like more? Would it work to mix those facets…say, drag Jen to a junkyard or girltalk with Eddie? Probably not. And that’s what makes them unique and my friendships with them so wonderful. I dunno. To me, discovering this kind of stuff about myself is fascinating.

Of course, from now on, I’m gonna be analyzing the characters in my writing to see if they’re true to life in how they operate with other characters in their stories…see how they mesh and dive a helluva lot further into what makes them who they are and why. I geek on characters already, but this quantification will only make me geek harder and I think that’s awesome.

Dungeon Majesty!

At the time, I hadn’t realized what I’d gotten myself into–other than a lot of fun–but as half of Ashleigh Raine, I was interviewed for a show called Dungeon Majesty.

After receiving an email about a screening they’re doing on March 23rd in Hollywood, I checked out their site again…it had been awhile since last I’d visited. In fact, it’d been so long that I didn’t remember what it looked like last time I was there.

Anyhow, on this trip, I discovered two of their episodes and zowie-wowie, I can’t wait to see the other ones. They’ve got something like 8 done. Only 2 are up on their site, though.

All I gotta do now is start planning my outfit for the screening next month. You see, when they interviewed me, I was wearing the infamous swirl dress and I need to make sure I’m wearing something as…uh…stellar.

Or at least barbaric or magical!

Jason and I in Locus Magazine!

A few posts down the list, I mentioned that I was pouting and sighing because my issue of Locus had yet to arrive…

Well, it finally showed up and I scanned the shot of myself and my wonderful hubby, Jason Stoddard!

And what a fitting shot for the first one I’ve put up here on my lovely blog…

Look! 2 in 1 day!

I love making the best of what I’ve got…or taking a nothing and adding elbow grease until that nothing sure is something.

On Christmas Eve, I’d gone thrift shopping and picked up a handmade tent of a dress for about $2. Hell, it might’ve even been the one I got free in the buy-one-get-one-free deal. Anyhow, over the weekend, I dove into it. The lady who’d made it–probably some time in the late 70s-early 80s judging by the fabric and the cut of the collar and cuffs–had thought she was making a dress.

Well, me being itty-bitty, I often buy big $2 dresses to make them smaller or salvage the cool fabric or whatever. In this case, when I pulled out the dress to really look at it, my first thought was “The lady who made this got it all wrong. It’s not a dress. It’s a jacket!”

Roughly 5 hours over three days later, I have a damn kickass jacket which I was going to post a picture of because it turned out a million times better than I’d expected, but darn-it-all straight to hell and then some, I can’t find my camera! I have no idea what I did with it.

Ugh.

But on Saturday, I’ll be at the BookLadies, signing as half of Ashleigh Raine and I’m gonna wear it there…so someone’s bound to get a picture of it somehow.

Good golly, I hope so at least!

Getting louder, I hope

Yes, this is going to start as an apology post because I’ve been so quiet lately. I assure you much has been happening…

For starters, as of January 13th [yes, that was a Friday the 13th!] I have an agent. Deidre Knight of the Knight Agency.

I have no idea why I didn’t announce it sooner…even in a two line post. Perhaps, I wanted to spend more time on it. I dunno.

Anyhow, she picked up Ashleigh Raine and by default, me, too. Pretty nifty stuff. We really dug in and the ride is full of excitement so far.

I’ve picked up a project I’d dropped for awhile. Y’know…having an agent now, I feel like my hope has been somewhat renewed. See, there are only so many rejection letters plus comments that I can get before the “almost there”–as the pros excitedly say–turns into “that’s nice, but it still means no.” I was starting to reach that point…and that’s doggone sad.

But this blog has never been about ranting and grumping and various icky stuff like that. I’ve tried to keep it about nifty life-happenings…things I’ve learned, etc.

So, that being said, let me get back to having hope and picking up that project I’d dropped. Oh. My. God. Lots of fun. I hope I can keep up the pace!

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