Day 3280

 After all that worry today turned out pretty well.

I woke up at 6, fed the cats, and started to get ready to go.  That included having Ellen squirt water up my ass.  It did what it was supposed to and we left about 6:45.

Traffic was already building up on Loop 1.  It was slowed down, but not stopped, at Slaughter.  I got in the William Cannon exit lane and cruised because it was empty.  The closer I got to the exit the lighter the traffic.  That allowed me to pull back on just before the exit.  WIN.  The rest of the trip went smoothly, almost no traffic.

We got the the imaging place about 7:15.  I expected to wait.  No, they open at 6.  I did have to wait almost an hour to get in though.  That gave me plenty of time to go to the bathroom.  The instructions said to take the laxative 12-16 hours before the procedure.  I chose 12.  I should have chosen 16.  I had diarrhea at least twice while waiting and felt like I had to shit all the time during the procedure.

The procedure itself went fine.  I changed into the medical PJ's and got put in their noisy tube.  I was in the tube for 28 minutes.  I even fell asleep momentarily.  This time I didn't feel the contrast at all.  Last time it made me want to pee.  The tech said the images were of good quality.  I waited in recovery for a little while and then got dressed and left.

We immediately went to the Dutch Brothers a mile or so away.  There was a Whataburger in the same parking lot.  It turns out they have a really good pancakes and bacon breakfast.  We took our coffee there and had breakfast.  ANOTHER WIN.

The next stop was the post office.  There were 3 Amain packages there.  Traffic to William on 290 was really light.  The last stop was HEB.  The laxatives were still working on me.  I had diarrhea three times while I was there.  After that I was dry for the rest of the day, but it was hours before I quit feeling like I needed to take a shit.

When I got home I opened the packages.  There were some batteries, parts for another build, a 1/24 truck, and a motor/transmission for it.  It wasn't 11 yet.  I decided to mod the truck.

It turns out that replacing the motor and transmission involves disassembling a lot of the truck.  I got that done and then ran into a problem.  The coupler between the transmission and the rear drive line had a misaligned hole for the pin.  That was no problem in the original, but the new transmission had tighter tolerances.

It should have taken a minute to connect the drive line.  Instead I spent over an hour in the garage with a drill expanding the hole in the coupler and the one inn the transmission output shaft.  I barely got everything to work.  Then I went back to the house to put everything back together.  LOSE.

I had a hell of a time putting the thing back together.  The parts blow ups weren't accurate and I'd forgotten how some of it went together.  I spent a lot of time trying to get the front drive shafts to stay in place as I was doing the assembly.  I also got the gear lever wrong.  I didn't find that out until everything was together.  That meant taking it all apart again.  Finally, I had one screw left over.  It took a while to find where it went.  On the other hand every time I dropped a part I found it immediately.  Also the motor connector on the new ESC matches the one on the motor/transmission (different manufacturers).  PART WIN, PART LOSE.

It was after 5 when I got the truck put together and everything put away.  I'll probably mount the new electronics and change the battery connector tomorrow.

I didn't have lunch because I wasn't hungry.  Ellen fixed hot turkey sandwiches for dinner.  After dinner it was videos for the evening.