It feels so good to finally finish the car project. When there's an overall feeling that life is out of your control, aided by a lawn that has grown to epic proportions while your garage looks like a car bomb went off, you're low on sleep and have a baby who just learned that crying beats sleeping 9 out of 10 times in a recent baby survey, just getting to check one thing off feels like maybe it really will get back to normal someday.

This on top of the fact that I've always loved my car, and every time I spend a significant amount of time working on her I feel like we've bonded more. The new transmission feels noticeably better than the old one, even before it started grinding its teeth, though I remember changing the transmission oil made almost as much of an improvement when I did that last time. Either way she's doing great, and it makes me happy. I've added a cable to connect my new ipod to the stereo too, which is great. The list of car repairs itself is not finished, I have also purchased the full set of rear suspension bushings which need replacing which will necessitate an alignment, I intend on replacing the differential fluid and changing my oil this next week as well, and inspection is due this month, but the car is running, which for almost a week wasn't the case.

I'm feeling exhausted at work, not sure if I can make it another 5 hours, but I still get a little emotional boost looking out the window at my baby. The 2200 pound one.

The hard part is done! I took my time and used some silicone gasket maker stuff to put the rear housing onto the new transmission, greased all the appropriate bearings and surfaces, and figured why not try putting the thing up in there by myself.

So I got out my floor jack, jack stands, and proceeded for nearly an hour to do it the half-right way (I'm supposing here the right way is to use a transmission jack), balancing the transmission on top of a wooden block on top of my jack. After catching the falling transmission for the third time and letting out a few more choice words, I recognized that I was now in what must be very close to the same position Jeremy was in when he completed the first transmission swap on this car. I decided to give that a try, and I must say, I can't recommend any other option now. He ended up hurting himself, which leads me to believe that I had the car at just the right height and my legs are longer, making this maneuver so easy for me.

With the rear of the transmission on my knees and the front grasped like a medicine ball in my hands, I was able to lift it into place and carefully rotate and try several angles. It probably took about 5 minutes total for me to lift it, position it, and get four bolts threaded through to make sure it stayed in place. I felt like a rock-star and semi-pro mechanic at the same time. As always, when I succeed at something, I envision myself to be the expert, so I feel like I could work on Miata transmissions all day, I even think I could try a re-build. Silly how my mind works on stuff like this.

Next up, re-attach the clutch slave, put the cat and appropriate braces back in place, and we should be off and running!

After missing several autocross events due to having a baby and all that goes with it, I went ahead and put my new Dunlop Star Shines on in anticipation of the next event. This was a good thing as I had passed the wear bars and then some on all four of my Azenis, and inspection is due this month. On the way home I noticed some faint clicking sounds, leading me to believe the guy who put the tires on must have messed something up. This grew louder and louder, and I finally noticed it was only occurring in 2nd gear, leading me to believe the transmission was finally getting tired after about 240,000 miles (it was a replacement transmission Jeremy put in with over 200k on it when he got the car).

I hunted down the cheapest transmission within 50 miles, which was listed at 134k miles at a junkyard, and prepared myself for the biggest repair my Miata has required in my 5 years of ownership. With the help of C4 and Jeremy, I got the car up and transmission out, which is when my help had to leave.



I then found that the rear oil seal on the junkyard transmission was completely destroyed, and that there was a curious difference between the new and old transmissions.



This caused the oil seal to bunch up when I tried to put it in and would not allow the drive shaft to fit, due to that raised center sleeve. After much swearing and dismay, and hours of investigating on the internet and finding nothing, I took picture in hand and transmission in trunk of Brooke's car to the Mazda dealership in Richardson. Steve at the parts department graciously looked over it, had the mechanics inspect the pictures, and finally helped me realize it was some sort of bushing, and that only some kind of extreme high mileage or drive shaft failure could have caused it to be raised like it was.

The good news is that the rear housing of the transmission is remarkably easy to remove and replace, and afforded me an opportunity to learn a little bit more about how the transmission works.





In taking apart the old transmission I also found two gear teeth over half an inch in length floating around, which makes me extremely thankful I didn't suffer a complete lock-up, especially since I'd been driving it with a self-imposed first to third skip-shift for nearly two weeks as I was investigating and procrastinating.

So now the old rear housing is on the "new" transmission, ready to be put back in the car. Now I just need to find a friend to help me put the thing back in, as I don't want to repeat Jeremy's back and leg impairing feat of one-man re-assembly.

In an attempt to write more, and in so doing perhaps become better at it, I'm trying my hand at writing using my new toy, the iPod touch. I don't like the fact that I can't very easily add pictures since the iPod doesn't have a camera, but now that I've figured out that the iPod guesses what you're typing even when you fat finger it, I'm compelled to try writing on it.

I've always loved gadgets of all kinds, particularly electronic ones, but I'd say this is by far the coolest, and so far looks to be the most useful ones I've purchased so far. I've got a bible reader, ebook reader, skype, as well as my calender and email always with me now. It's also been really handy to use when I'm feeding Jacob a bottle and only have one hand free.

Today was rather boring, which sounds bad to me right now because I feel like I should have somehow seized some opportunity and made it awesome. I had to wake up at like 4 to drive in to Connecticut to fly to Baltimore to drive to Hanover, PA. Which was all done by like 11 this morning, but like a loser, I hung out at a Starbucks in a mall fielding phone calls from work, and then took a nap at the hotel.

I've been thinking about my dog all day due to a stupid article I read on reddit about shelters and it was railing against dog breeders, and I always get all worked up when I think about puppy doggies with sad eyes at shelters....yeah, so I'm dumb for clicking on that one. It's curious to me the feelings I have about animals, and trying to gauge the validity of feelings. Is it right or wrong to feel emotional connection with an animal, and are they capable of reciprocal feelings. They can have what we call separation anxiety, so I'm prone to believe they've got something close to it. I'm basically turning into a tree hugging hippie, I can feel it. It's Dexter's fault.

Lafayette was everything I'd hoped it'd be and more, which isn't saying much since I expected a po-dunk Louisiana town. The hotel was more of a disappointment than I'd expected, looking like something out of a horror movie, but with all the friendliness and charm of middle America.

I enjoyed an early dinner thanks to the generosity of my boss sending me in early to enjoy the Cajun cuisine, and I wasn't disappointed there. Blue Dog cafe had mediocre art for which it's apparently locally famous, but also featured decent cajun inspired food, whatever that means. I think around here the concept of Cajun is held in high regard, much as East Texans revere their own heritage as such. I don't discount it, I just clearly don't understand it. They love Community Coffee, believe Abitas beer to be something special in the world of brewing, and extol the values of Cajun music, which as described to me is Blue Grass sung in French. We each need our own identity.

I think homebrew is God's gift to man-kind, Miatas represent a masterpiece of automotive engineering, and that dogs are not just man's best friend, but are in many ways superior to man. Understand that my sarcasm does not equal a sense of superiority, I'm an odd-duck too.

I think all of us are completely bizarre, and it makes humanity all the more amazing. I think I underestimate the beauty and complexity of people I don't understand too often. I mentally cut down people who don't drive the way I think they should, or grow up in cities bigger or smaller than my own, and it's wrong. I'm probably suffering a bout of post-business trip introspection, combined with a lack of writing, which for me is a creative outlet, no matter how base or unimaginative it may be. There's a whole host of people I disagree with and seek to debate with, hoping to prove my way of thinking, and I think part of that is a healthy search to define myself, while I also think I need to seek to understand how others see the world.

I'm simultaneously re-engaging Orthodoxy and trying to understand that perspective, while reading through Velvet Elvis, what has been described as a Post-Modern treatise on Christiantiy (or at least nearly aledged to be). I feel in many ways I'm coming to see Post-Modernism as being simply a dose of common sense, while perhaps taken to extremes by people as many good things are. I've always felt that absolute truth, while it exists, is in many cases un-provable, which nearly equates to unknowable. The next step for the post-Modernist might be unbelief, whereas for me the next step is to have faith in what I can't necessarily prove.

What I don't see is a serious affront to Christianity, as some of my fellow Christians see, in the belief that there's truth in nearly everything. Even the most effective lies of the devil wrap truth in them, and I don't think we should be scared to pick anything apart and accept what aligns with what we see to be true. While I treat very positively the thing I hear from those I "trust", nothing should escape scrutiny because of its source, and everything I believe is, and should be I think, open to question. It may sound like I hold nothing sacred, but I don't think that's the same thing. I think child-like faith is open to all possibilities, not blind in it's lack of critical thought. A child still questions, he just doesn't have the history of being burned to make him overly skeptical of things which may very well end up being the truth.

Lest there every be any confusion, I love dogs. I think I've always loved dogs, or at least always felt an affinity for them, and after bringing Dexter home, interacting with all the other dogs at the dog park, and seeing my wife become a dog lover, too, it's become part of who I am. We now watch every dog show that comes on TV, we recently made a trip to Tyler and stayed longer so we could go see an appearance by one of the dogs on Greatest American Dog, and both Brooke and I are excited about decorating our little boy's room with a puppy theme.

We've gone through some very frustrating times with our little boy, such as when he was really young and thought that playful meant biting. Currently he still has a tendency to get excited and jump up on people when he's not supposed to. He's coming along with training though, and seems to be paying heed a lot more when we ask him to do things. He's very nearly housebroken, except when he's been given unlimited access to water. He has no concept of limiting his intake, and I really think he'd explode if we gave him enough water.

He's also become a rather frequent part of my dreams. The first couple of times I dreamed I had to kill him, once because he was a demon's dog. It was rather disturbing, and more recently I just dream about losing him and trying to find him again. He's my precious boy, and I hope he loves our more precious boy once he gets here.