Much of my time has been consumed by club related behind the scenes activities.  We have a lot in the works as we plan our events for the year.  We have 75% of the member swag ordered and we should be delivering it next month.  Looking forward to a great year.

I'm taking my Jeep to have the rear end looked at on Monday.  I have some slop or something going on causing a clunking noise, namely when I left off and shift and resume accelerating.  I thought it was possibly a u-joint but I don't see any issues with it.  I pulled the diff cover and I don't see anything going on there either.  No metal shavings present so it is puzzling.  My buddy will get it figured out for me.

We have a couple more months of downtime with our business before we start up sessions again.  Once June hits, we will be hard at it again for 5 months or more.  However, we are going to cut back some volume for Jodi's sake.  

 We got about 3" of snow yesterday and I got the driveway cleared but didn't go anywhere.  Not much to do other than an occasional errand at the moment.  I've been mostly working on selling off some of my baseball card collection, only keeping the cards I feel have a good chance at much greater future value.  It takes quite awhile to do so on Ebay.  I've sold $8000 worth of cards so far and haven't even touched the surface really although I did sell a couple $1k plus cards in that total.  I turned down an offer of $2000 for another card I just pulled from a pack.  I'm sending in some of my cards for grading which if they grade a 10, the value goes way up.  The $2000 offer card will be about $5000-$6000.

The Chiefs play tonight so our city will be watching that.  I'm not a huge football fan but it's always good when the hometown team is doing well.  The Royals should field some of their highly touted prospects this year so I am hopeful they will be a better team this year, if they get the lockout taken care of.

 I'm ready for winter to be over.  I used to like the cold, and still find the brisk weather occasionally refreshing, but these longer spells of cold no longer invigorate me like they once did.  I'm looking forward to temps in the 50's the next three days.

Most of my time of late has been consumed by club related things as we prepare for a new year of activities and adventure.  We've been working on our 2022 club swag a lot and have some cool new decals, hoodies and mechanic shirts ready for our members to purchase.  We are also doing a lot more giveaways to our members this year.  It should be a fun year ahead.

I finally got my truck back, again.  Apparently they broke the intercooler downpipe mount and then they deformed a seal on my high pressure turbo which was causing oil to run off the back of the engine.  They had to pull the cab again to replace the seal.  Cost to me, $0.

 Well, it's been awhile.  I don't visit my office much and that is where I do my blogging.  Here's a little recap of what's been going on.

We just wrapped up a record year for our business.  We photographed 83 seniors, besting our previous  record of 73.  Jodi did a great job at keeping up with me but wants to spend less time at her computer during our busy season so we are going to cut back to 60 sessions between June and November next year.  That will likely knock 10 sessions off for the entire year.  

My truck is still in the shop.  After getting a new short block in it, I loaded my Jeep up on the trailer and headed to SMORR for Thanksgiving weekend.  I made it two hours down the road and heard a loud pop which I then noticed I had lost all boost.  I limped to a gas station and discovered that the downpipe coming off the intercooler had lost a clamp and came off.  The gas station didn't have the right clamp and the hose clamps they had were not large enough.  I took a hose clamp off the sealed intake of my Jeep and fashioned another clamp from two small clamps I was able to purchase.  I made it 60 miles before it came off.  Had to redo it 3 times on the way home but made it to the dealership.  

The dealer said it just needed a new downpipe as that one seemed broken.  That sounded weird but go ahead, it's under warranty.  After a few days, they calla nd say there is oil leaking from the back side of the engine and they think it's one of the turbos.  That was 3 1/2 weeks ago and they have yet to pull the cab to take a look, although they told me that would take place two weeks ago.  Here we are.

In the meantime, my Jeep either has a loose axle shaft or the backlash has loosened as I have some play in my rear end.  Later today or tomorrow, I will be pulling the rear tires and diff cover to see what the issue might be.  Making the Hangover Krawl on New Year's Day looks slim.  My wheeling has been severely limited this Summer and Fall.  That has to change next year.

I picked up anew firearm recently, an Aces Tactical 12 gauge bullpup.  It was a bargain at $279 shipped, one I could not pass up.  It's the first forearm I've bought in a while.  When I did the NICS check, I got delayed for the first time ever.  Couldn't pick it up for 3 days until the FFL got the proceed.  It finally went through.  

 Well, it's been over a month since I updated the blog.  Time flies when you are busy.  Our business is on the verge of a record year for volume as I hope we eclipse our previous record of clients as we reach early November.  Jodi is doing a great job of keeping up with me and it's a less stressful year for her versus last year.  We are blessed to have so many choose us to document this important year for their family.  

The offroad club keeps me pretty busy too as I am proactive about getting needed things done.  We have grown to 570 dues paying members this year, about a 12% increase over last year.  We have some pretty big events coming up that I'm looking forward to including a couple fundraisers to support local charitable organizations.  

The Kansas Krawl is tomorrow and I'll be heading to Kansas Rocks for that event.  I won;t be participating in the racing but do enjoy watching the carnage and I usually am pretty lucky in the event raffles.  

 We've been super busy with the business and the Offroad club keeps me fairly busy when I'm not photographing clients.  This week I have scheduled a "mental health week" for Jodi as I am only photographing one client and that will give her a little break to catch up and relax a little.  We have a ton of sessions scheduled in September and October so it's game off after this.

It appears we have decided to purchase a Bronco.  Jodi is giving up her Jag for a 2021 Badlands Sasquatch edition.  It isn't built yet but the local dealer has hooked us up with one scheduled to be built shortly and it could arrive by the end of next month.  

Jayson starts kid pitch baseball on Tuesday.  This should be both fun and interesting because this is the year they either hunker down and get into it or they quit.  We shall see.  

 We went to Jeeporama yesterday, a Jeep Show in Paola, KS.  Held at a Drive in theater, our club set up a booth and we hung out with friends and sweated a bit together.  At the end of the day, Jodi's Jeep won Best of Show.  She was presented the trophy at the awards ceremony as I stayed behind at the club booth.  I didn't even clean all of the dirt and dust out of the interior so wasn't expecting that.  We also won several cool prizes in the raffle.  Our lucky day.