Daily Archives: August 18, 2013
Storm Shelters and Brake Jobs . . .
When we were driving over from Breaux Bridge, LA last Thursday, we came across this ‘Instant’ Storm Shelter. Just dig a big hole, drop in the shelter, cover it over, and you’re done.
The company, called Survive-A-Storm, makes a whole line of shelters from small panic rooms to community-sized shelters. If I was living in Tornado Alley, I’d want a shelter buried in the ground like this one. After all, it worked for Auntie Em.
Brandi sent over this photo this morning.
Apparently Landon’s just sure there’s one more birthday present at the bottom of the bag. Kitty just doesn’t care.
About 1:30 Jan and I drove down to Chris and Linda’s for the afternoon. Chris had ‘volunteered’ to do a front brake job on our truck. A week or so ago, I started hearing a scraping noise from the front whenever I was braking, but since we were on the road pretty much constantly, I decided to wait until we got back to Houston to take care of it. The fact that Chris would be here to help out was strictly ‘coincidental’
Dropping off Jan, Chris and I drove over to O’Reilly’s Auto Parts to pick up some ceramic disc pads. I wanted to use ceramic because although they’re a little more expensive, they last a lot longer and won’t damage the rotors when they wear down. But all they had were the metallic brake pads so that’s what we went with.
As I had hoped, the brake job itself didn’t take too long. Jack up one side, put a jack stand under it, remove the tire and wheel, unbolt the caliper unit, retract the calipers, remove the old pads and install the new ones, and then put everything back together. Then rinse and repeat on the other side.
Easy-Peazy!
Of course, Chris was the one doing all the work, I just handed him tools and ‘supervised’. The only real problem was a balky hydraulic jack that didn’t want to lift the truck high enough to get the jack stand underneath.
I was happy to find that both rotors were still in good shape and didn’t need to be turned or replaced. I figured they would be since they were replaced during my last brake job three years ago.
After we (Chris) finished up, he got a shower, and then we entertained ourselves for a while watching P.J., their Black Lab. chase squirrels back and forth across the yard.
Finally about 5pm we headed right outside the subdivision to Barcenas Mexican Restaurant, one of our favorite places. We ended up spending a couple hours just catching up on everything. Nice. Then by 7:30 we were on our way home for the night. It was sure nice not to hear the noisy brakes anymore.
Tomorrow morning we’re going over to Brandi’s to pick up Landon and his other grandparents, Sonja and Lendell. We’re all going to have lunch together and then take Landon to a play area at Katy Mills Mall. Should be fun.
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Thought for the Day:
When asked what quality he most wanted in a wife, Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, said that he wanted a wife with the ability to spring him from a third-world prison.
Sounds like he’s lead a much more interesting life than I’d imagined.
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