CrushedVamp

I will not say anything more about the old muscle car as a work in project as I understand how these things can be. This may not be the case with you regarding that car, but I know a few times I have spoken about projects to people online and then it takes on a world of its own. They are not doing so for nefarious reasons, but rather the opposite; to be congenial and in trying to converse with you on something they know you like. But then the project is not done for the right reasons. Its hurried because I want to show that its something I am working on, or money that should not be diverted to the project is because of external pressure. Ultimately it just ends up not being fun because the best part of some projects is just working on them… being in the moment instead of being so focused on the end result. It took me a long time to figure that out. I do a ton of woodworking projects, but slowly learned I was more pleased slowing down, doing things by hand like making hand cut dovetails instead of cutting them via machine, not only made the woodworking more enjoyable, but they came out better because I was not rushed to get the project done, start the next one; then rinse and repeat. No need to feel pressured about telling us car stories as I hope its a project motivated by a father just to be with his son. In fact, that is the novels theme I am writing about now. It is about an orphan who is a Cabin Boy in 1792 America. As the Captain of the Revenue-Marine, the boy and the captain's love interest (Abigail) take on a ruthless pirate, the orphan (11 years old) feels like he was never loved until the end of the novel when he realizes people love him so much, they will die for him. It is a true father/so story with its own nautical project; the son just happens to be an orphan. It sounds corny in a brief write-up but is a VERY powerful story about a father's love, just not the boys birth father, but father nonetheless.

That is great to hear. My co-worker just bought an old car to drive around and restore as well. I don't know what it is, but I know it has a 455 CID engine in it! My daughters are all into Theater which I have always supported. There is so much too it, from breaking out of their shells, to public speaking, to the creativity of making the costumes and scenery, as well as engineering for some of the sets, and obviously not getting into trouble after school because they are so engaged in theater. So there is a lot to it than just what meets the eye and so we support them. So much so that we went to a Broadway show just to keep encouraging them. Great to hear your son is also stepping up while you're at work so much. Sounds like you are doing well as a parent!!

I think that got carried over for the police as well, at least in the United States. Typically, when they enter a person's home to talk to the occupants, they remove their hat before entering. In a similar situation, but different I watched a woman talking on her phone, absentmindedly doing heel play with one of her heels. All was good until it fell off... and she was on a bridge over a river! The look on her face was priceless when she realized she had to walk home with one heel on and the other lost to the watery abyss. It was the look of pure shock!

I do not judge anyone on what they take in their coffee... My tastes in coffee have really swung wildly over the years. Like most young people I started out going light on the coffee and heavy on the sugar and cream. Then somewhere in the middle I was using that French Vanilla stuff that has more sweetener in it than a sugar factory. Seeing that was not good I switched to half and half, and finally now just a splash of whole milk. Myself, I wish I never started drinking coffee. Granted I have never drunk alcohol, ever smoked, have ever done any kind of drugs, or ever gambled, so in light of those vices, having coffee is relatively minor. But when I think about all the money I have spent on it over the years it is pretty disgusting. Granted I have never broken into an elderly lady's house and smote her over the head just to get a good fix of java, but I am not sure anyone would want to be around me in the morning without it! I also commiserate with you on your Saturday work. I had an emergency call-in Friday Night and had some work yesterday to do that took an hour. It sucks, but when you work on the largest machine in the world (the grid) people expect electricity to be on 24/7/365. As the Blackout of 2003 proved, people die when there is no electricity.

I am in no way the Ankle Bracelet Police so who am I to say how they are to be worn, but I would think wearing them rather obscurely seen under pantyhose or stockings would mute the point of wearing them, not to mention them snagging and laddering the pantyhose or stockings more often. I will concede though that it would keep the ankle from bouncing around as the person walks if that proved to be bothersome to the wearer. It would certainly prevent that. But I am not sure there is another form of jewelry that is as roiled in conflict as that of the lowly olde ankle bracelet. There are supposedly so many differing meanings for a person wearing them, from meaning the person is in an open marriage, to be married or not depending on what ankle it is worn on, to challenging social norms. For my wife… she just likes how they look on her ankle. We are not into wife-sharing or any of that anymore. And for whatever reason she prefers silver over that of gold feeling as if silver is more casual then the gold ones, although she owns several of both. She also wears her on her left ankle because she is married and that is the same side her wedding band is worn. And finally, typically her ankle bracelets has a pendant of some sort to them, usually a cross, but also dolphins, and the initials of our children. The company I work for really got caught up in large data centers, really banking on them for future growth and now is losing a LOT of money because of it. It stems from AI Data Centers consuming a LOT of electricity, I mean some were going to take nuclear power plants powering them like Three Mile Island being taken out of moth balls and fired back up just to run them, and all behind the meter!!! But the Chinese figured out a way to do AI with a fraction of the electricity needed, so now everything is out the window. No one should make assumptions like that though, that the only way to do something is this way, because you just never know how innovation will change things, and especially if you think you can corner the market on something. That just makes people innovate that much more to get out from under your controlling hand. I never liked hot tea, always preferring hot coffee until I went to Ireland for the first time. We were staying at a farmhouse and the couple that lived there offered me tea, so to be polite I accepted and that was when she asked how I took it, with sugar or cream. My grandmother was a tea drinker, but always had hers "black" so to speak, so it never occurred to me that it could be tamed with cream and sugar. After having some cream in it, I have grown to really love hot tea. Call me what you wish but I take mine as I do my coffee, just a splash of whole milk, so not flavored creamers, or creamers at all, and no sugar. Just milk.

You are not alone in that! 🙂 I was once on a flight sitting in the first row where ahead of me a flight attendant sat, but in looking back at the cabin reversed-too so to speak. Its odd I know, but I like ankle bracelets and she was wearing one, but it was the first time I ever saw a woman wear them UNDER her stockings. That took me by surprise, but when I looked up, she was looking back at me like I was some sort of pervert. I am not, just at that time I had never seen anything like that. Since then I have seen others wear them that way, under their pantyhose or stockings, but still can't figure out why. My wife wears her on the outside. As for me, I have been thinking about a new job myself. As a guy I think a lot of my identity is in doing what I do, and it does not help that it is kind of unique what I do. It always paid well, but over the years the pay has leveled off and other jobs are increasing. Part of that is working insane hours, like literally being on-call 24/7/365 days a year. My wife even says "it feels like we live here" whenever we have to drive to my job for something. Now I am beginning to wonder if "having a cool job" is actually worth it though. I could work a job for the same money, 5 miles from home, 4 days a week, its just a boring every day sort of job. I do have a job interview there next week, so we shall see how that goes, then make my decision. As for high heels, maybe it is because it is early mud season here, but I have not seen anyone wearing high heels, even at church. It is one of the reasons I have not been on this site much myself.

You are right, and that is because it specifically says for men to not wear hats, and this it is okay for women too, directly in the bible. Some today say that it was for very specific reasons why AT THAT TIME the bible says to do that, and so they dismiss it because they feel it is not relevant today, while others strictly abide by it still. I am not sure because there are other specifics on how to dress that are ignored routinely. An example is make-up, as it says for a lady not to wear it. Well, back in that day, the oldest profession advertised what they did by wearing bright red lipstick so I could see where it might be forbidden to be worn, but today it is general practice, so seeing a woman wearing lipstick does not mean she is a prostitute. Myself, I just feel do as you are lead. Myself I ALWAYS wear a hat, but not in church, taking it off at the start, but I have seen others wear it all through the service. I have seen others take it off just during prayer. That is up to them though as I can't judge them, my life is hardly perfect...

Myself, I do not care what people wear for the most part. I say "most part" because if I am in a bad part of town, and the only other person on the street is wearing all black, with a hoodie and it drawn over their heads, yes, I'm flipping my firearm off safety. That is not judging, but being situationally aware and prepared. If nothing happens, so be it, but how a person is dressed can be indicative of future behavior! But I have seen the opposite. Some of it is region and certain society, but I remember being in church and a some were upset that this guy came in and did not remove his ball cap. They seemed surprised, and I was like, "just be glad the guy came. who cares that he wore a hat through the whole service". But just so everyone knows, if we are going to talk politics, I won't be on this forum at all. There are plenty of forums where people can do that without stating rhetoric on her no matter what side their perspective is from. I have not read a newspaper in a decade, and chose to read books instead of watching television for the past seven years, and generally like to be blissfully unaware of things I cannot change.

While I know we are not supposed to judge others, myself I see it as inevitable and more so, is even logical to do. It is how we are wired to operate. We see things, we experience things and then we remember patterns. That can be both good and bad. On a plane which is the exact same situation repeated and repeated again, with clothes people are wearing being the only thing that really changes, oh for sure you are going to make associations with behaviors and how people are dressed. As a writer it can be fun to choose to work with these associations or write the opposing for contrast in my characters. For example, if it’s a minor character and my novel is already approaching the word limit, I might just have the typical alpha male so I do not have to describe the character as much and focus on the plot because people have experienced that combination a lot in life. But the plot might alternatively be about a nurse who kills patients by giving them lethal injections and thus also kills the stereotypical a “nurse is always caring” rationale. Part of that can be what the characters are wearing too. I once wrote a mystery where the killer walked through blood because she was wearing high heels and left triangular prints behind. It ended up being a false clue though because while seemingly it was the suspect that always wore high heels all through the novel, it was actually the hipster who typical wore sandals who did the murder. She only wore heels that night because she was going out on a dinner-date with her husband and was uncharacteristically dressed. But I could have easily changed the gender... what detective would ever think the killer was a MAN wearing high heels?

A lot of excellent rulings came out of the 1960's on First Amendment Rights so I am not surprised that it started there. My Father in Law had a case go before the Supreme Court in 1970 on First Amendment Rights that he won which I thought was pretty cool because so few attorneys can say they had cases go to the Supreme Court and win them. There are some excellent ones coming out now too, so this is another era of importance in the history of the Supreme Court. Like the overturning of Chevron Deference that went widely unnoticed but is going to have MASSIVE implications moving forward. It should have never been allowed in the first place, but just the same, once the lawsuits start simmering down and case law is established over the ruling the United States will be in a much better place where we can derive strategic planning on numbers instead of whim.

It is a tough question for sure. As the Judge in the Larry Flint trial once said, “I cannot define what art is, but I surely know the difference between pornography and art when I see it”. While different, the idea is the same here for me. I cannot define what is inappropriate, but I know it when I see it. I fully understand freedoms and have always said, “Freedom is indeed scary”, but kids… kids is where I draw the line. They should not be subjected to seeing anything inappropriate; they already see that enough without my sense of “freedom” adding to it. I thought your reply was spot on. I love the human figure too as I LOVE art, and in fact as I type this have a large lithograph of John Collier's Lady Godiva above my desk, but there are places to appreciate art... and the human form, and places that should be sanctuary from seeing that. Just because YOU CAN do something, does not mean YOU ALWAYS SHOULD!

For us flying is a little different because we got private planes. Because of clients my wife's family carts around for real estate sales, they keep the planes very clean, but they are also very small planes. Since we are not "out in public" and usually flying into camp via the float plane, we seldom are dressed up. And... as sad a reality as it is, small planes are known for not always flying so we like to be ready for a swim or night stay in the forest after a plane crash. A lot easier to do that in jeans and a t-shirt then be dressed up nicely. But as much as I like high heels and pantyhose on a lady, I am conflicted with the dress requirements of flight attendant's. I can see where if they make it a career their compression stockings (they don't wear average pantyhose they wear compression tights) helps in the compression/decompression of take offs and landing for their better blood circulation, but in a crash a few flight attendant's have suffered severe burns because their nylons melted to their legs. It would seem to me that due to the unlikely event of a crash for a commercial plane, maybe compression tights would be better? Thoughts?

Nice to hear! It seems it takes about a year for fashion to arrive from Europe to where I live in the United States. I remember being over in Ireland in 2008 for the first time, and a lover of the miniskirt, I saw a woman wearing and ultra-miniskirt but with leggings worn under it to tame the audacity of it. It just caught my attention, but a year later I noticed the same "new look" over where I live. Whether you love or hated the fashion trend, it just verified what I saw over the years, a year delay in fashion trends.

We have always called them sneakers here, but I live in a strange locale where we are different even from the rest of the United States. We got some strange terms for things I consider are everyday words and others have no concept of what I am talking about. As a writer I have to be wary of that because not all readers will be from around here. But oddly my wardrobe is changing, and I am not sure why. I used to NEVER wear sneakers, but after discovering Sketchers Step-in's which are sneakers you do not need to tie. You literally just slip them on. I even went out and got composite toe step in work shoes by sketchers. I have not worn boots in over two years and before that I LIVED in them. But its beyond changing boots to sneakers. For 50 years I wore crew socks. Loved crew socks. Only wore crew socks and recently discovered ankle socks and now only wear them. Who know, if I keep sticking around you guys, you will convince me to wear high heels! 🙂 (Said all in good fun)

This pretty much describes me too. I wear leggings a lot and while I have tried to buy better ones, the ones I like the most, and fit best for me are the $5 kind found at thrift stores. I have worn them for so many years that I don't even pay attention to them anymore. I don't wear them in public except for maybe mowing the lawn or working in my woodworking shop. In all the years I have been doing this I have only had issues twice. Once was when I was sitting on the couch and the wife took a picture of a woodworking coffee table I had made. I was out of the picture... I thought... but the reflection in a mirror showed me which my mother-in-law just said, "Mr. Crushed Vamp looks very relaxed"... The other issue has been... well... women in leggings SOMETIMES get Camel Toe, but being tight pants and male, let's just say sometimes I show "Missile Toe"! 🙂

It is not often that a forum makes a person feel ignorant and it makes the user all that much more impressed by it. In this case I had never heard of Plimsolls. I have been calling them by a different name for years… Keds. My wife and I both wear Plimsolls/Keds of sorts, her true Keds, which in the United States was the first brand of sneakers to be made entirely for women and marketed to them. Before that shoes were primarily unisex. The ones I buy are for men, but my wife and I wear them for the same reason: comfort and variety. Since I have a thing about matching my shoe color to my pants color, nothing gives me variety in color like Keds/Plimsolls. Not only do they have a ton of color combinations (especially for my wife), but we can buy white ones and dye them at home to get any color that we want. They have their limitations of course. Like getting wet on a rainy day, or walking through snow. And because of their construction they can dirty very easily. They are also thin so for bad backs improvement insoles may need to be worn. Still, hardly a month goes by that my wife does not have some arriving in the mail as new pairs, new colors, or replacements. Over the years Keds/Plimsolls have ramped up and waned in popularity. Really the fashion to wear here in the USA in the 1990’s. but falling off in the 2000’s. So much so that the now late-President George Bush in the 2000’s could not find the style his wife Barbara liked. Out of desperation he wrote a letter to the company and Keds delivered 2 cases of them in her size out of mothballs free of charge to the formerly prominent man. But Keds themselves have a following. While not safe for work, a search of “Keds Fetish” with search restrictions off will prove what I mean. Myself I must admit I have that to some degree. As my wife ages knowing Keds and High Heels alike are a turn-on for me, she will wear Keds to church with pantyhose and a dress. They are more comfortable to walk in and have colors to match her dress.

My wife and I still do this, but not always on Sundays. She will often say, "lets take the long way home", so we do, or go for an afternoon ride after church. It's fun, gets us out of the house and lets us explore new places we have not been before, or not been in a long time. With cars that get 35-40 miles per gallon, it really is not an expensive outing. But part of that is the different culture I think between the US and Europe. We just have limited public transport because of the size of the United States. I do not live in a state that is even considered big but yet my state and the entirety of Ireland is the exact same size. Sadly, I do live in a state that has annual car inspections, and without question that is a HUGE factor of the lifespan of a car. For now its reasonable though because we do not have smog requirements so its only mechanical in nature. The sad part is the inspections really only hurt the poor because if a car does not pass inspection, they just drive it anyway, or go to a facility where they can bribe the mechanic to get it to pass. There is actually talk about the state doing away with inspections because it is such a scam for the populace. And getting a good mechanic you can trust has been a huge reason I have pushed every car I have ever gotten past the 250,000 mile mark. I really rely on them, making sure they know I will invest money in my car as long as they think it will pass inspection for another year or more years. But even then, I have been told, "this will be the last year", but yet I have gotten two more years more after they said that. Part of that is keeping the car looking good. Taking care of any rust so it looks like a solid car. I feel your pain, but for us it is with airplane mechanics. We have a few small engine planes in the family and because of the rigorous requirements of aviation mechanics... and for obvious reasons... it is really hard to find a good airport with a reputable mechanic. We have one now but honestly have no idea how long he will stay there or even keep working before he retires. He is worth his high pay, but also making him worth his value is the airport. One of our planes has floats, one has wheels, and one has both floats and wheels both, and this airport has both a river to land on, or adjacent to it; an asphalt runway. The airport is 1-1/2 hours by car from the house but still worth it to us because some of the camps we own are 6 hours drive by car. Its actually faster to drive to the airport and take the float plane in to some of the camps then drive to them because the lakes are big enough to land and take off on. But I am sure it is the same way on the canals with your boat. You cannot just tie up anywhere so there are a lot of factors that go into your decision on where you tie up your vessel, who you have work on it, and where you take it. I fully understand how hard it can be to make everything work.

Grating just plain sucks! I am around it all the time and whether walking in high heels, kneeling on it, dropping things through it, or getting vertigo for looking down through it; the type of flooring is just a pain. I am forever replacing broken clips that bolt the crap down too, which can sometimes be dangerous when the bolts break causing the grating to be lose at height or uneven from one to the other. I guess they now make high heel proof grating but I still hate the stuff.

I hear that a lot and it just is not true, at least over here. Mechanically speaking, it always makes sense to fix a car up because the cost of repair is so cheap compared to making monthly payments. I always pay cash for my cars anyway, but in doing the math on my current car it is easy to see why I am doing so well with it. I paid $7000 for it and repairs have cost me $4800 over the 4 years I have owned it. That means the car has cost me $11,800. If I was making payments on a new car, just the payments alone would have been $24,000. In 4 years I have saved $12,200 and my car is still in excellent mechanical shape meaning I have more years left of lief on it. I could put in a new engine or transmission, extend the life of the car by several more years, and still be WAY AHEAD of what a new car would cost. But that is mechanically speaking. What kills cars where I live is rust. But here is where paying cash for older cars really pays off. My car costs me $58 dollars per week in repairs which I also put in $35 a week in gas. So for roughly putting in $100 per week, I net a paycheck of $1800 per week. That is a return on investment of 1700%!! Where the heck could I ever get that kind of return on any other investment. My stock investments average 11% most year and I am lucky to get that, and my real estate nets me 12% per year on average, so as much as people bemoan and wish they could retire, the truth is having a car and going to work will net a person the most possible money for the least outlay in cash. Without question, with those kinds of returns on investment a new car pencils out too, but like most things in life, it is not what you make that matters but how much you spend. Keep the costs down on a 1700% ROI investment and you will reap incredible savings. The price to pay for that is driving around with an old car instead of one that is all shiny and new and has all kinds of new electronic gizmos.

I hate cars as they are just a cost. With other stuff, like houses, equipment, tractors or in some cases trucks, you can make money on them, but with personal vehicles they just cost you dearly. More often than not, it's the cars in the driveway that cost most American's their secure financial life. But how could it not? The average cost of a car loan now is $40,000 borrowed.

I am the same way. My car only has 201,000 miles on it and the garage says they have seen the same model and year go to 450,000 miles. With no rust so far, there is hope it will last awhile. I hope so. I hate debt, have absolutely no debt and do not plan to get any either. It means I have no credit but that is fine by me! I always thought it was an insane financial system where you bust be in debt to have banks loan you money! A co-worker just bought another car yesterday. It is his second $20,000 car in two days. In the two years I have known him he has bought five cars, all with loans, and he wonders why he has NO money. Kind of sad because he should retire but can't. Terrible, terrible spending habits. Not my money or life, but so sad to see just the same.

As you know, I do not wear high heels, but rather like my wife wearing them, but in mud I always wore a heeled logging type of boot that had a pretty good heel to them. So, I understand what you mean. I like them at work because it was a solid place to put your foot when climbing towers as they sunk into the rungs of ladders well and when climbing out onto the cross-arms. But now I do far more sub-station work and find working in the crushed rock that is a requirement of substations, that no heeled boots work better. You need a pair of these! 🙂

I can't imagine there will be much interest in restoring some of the cars today... no matter the model they really all look the same. A case in point is a RAV4, Honda CRV, Nissan Rogue, etc... they look essentially the same in style. And I get it. When engineers have to design a car with so many of the same parameters like crash testing, and miles per gallon, the more specifics they have to design for, the more the makes will be all the same on a given model. But they are boring. Myself I drive a 2003 Honda CR-V with 200,000 miles. Mechanically it is sound and has no rust, which where I live is the biggest killer of vehicles. Mathematically it always makes sense to fix a car because what little you spend in repairs more than makes up for the replacement cost of the car. For every year extra you get out of it, the more money you save. But with rust that is not the case. Where I live where salt is on the road much of the year, rust is the biggest killer. There just is no saving a rusted out car. But knowing which cars last longer than others is where a person can get ahead. I struggled one year. My car needed fixing so I rented a car to drive while it was in the repair shop and it was a 2024 Toyota RAV4 with 3 miles on it, and my 2003 Honda was in the shop. It was hard to give that up and go back to what essentially amounted to a Model T, but I am quite frugal and the logical thing to do ultimately won out.

I feel your pain on this. I am walking on marbles might be worse, but having grown up on a farm I have walked a million miles in mud and really dislike it. Slipping back, stumbling, never assured of solid footing; it really wears you out walking in that. I can only imagine in high heels it is overly so. Good for you for keeping on in doing so.

Not laughing at you at all because they are different beasts of course, but on tugboats they do not even have electric starters. The air compressor and back-up air compressor does, but that is only because it must be fired up first, get proper compression and then use that air for the air powered starters for the main engines. Thiee by the way are two locomotive engines so about 4000 hp apiece. For electrical power they typical have 250 KW gen sets, having a back up genset as well. Everything on a tug has back up systems. I am in no way comparing a canal boat, just explaining how a tugboat is set up in case people on here care.