I figured I'd better update my blog as it has been a while with a lot going  on between.  My days are pulling me everywhere it seems.  We have started our Spring photo sessions and will be a little busy through April.  After that, we will have about 5-6 weeks of dead time before our Class of 2023 schedule goes full tilt.  During that dead time, we plan to head to Texas for a club wheeling event.  We will be in the San Antonio area hitting a few parks and mixing in a little sight seeing.

I was suppose to go wheeling yesterday and attempted to do so but made it 5 miles down the road and blew the upper intake pipe off my truck.  This was just after picking my truck up last week after them pulling the cab Again to fix multiple oil leaks. This time the valve cover gasket was leaking and once the cab was pulled, they found the other seal on the high pressure turbo leaking.   So, me and a friend are on an exit ramp off the highway with no turbo pressure.  I grab my tools and we put the pipe back on.  Take off again and it blows off in less than 15 seconds.  I'm pissed.  The quality of work coming out of this dealership is crap.  I told my buddy to go on and I was going to limp it to the dealership.  Didn't care if it blew the engine or not.  It sucked but I got it there, dropped by Jeep off the trailer and left the truck and trailer in their parking lot.  Nice crisp 35 degree ride home from the dealer.  I then text the service advisor and let her know that my truck was back.  I have not heard back.  Bunch of BS.

Jodi's family was here this weekend and lefty a few hours ago.  Her Mom, Aunt and sister were here along with her great niece who is a couple years older than Jayson, who also came and stayed the weekend while they were here.  I took them along with JD and Megan to our favorite Italian restaurant Friday night and then yesterday they wanted hamburgers and hotdogs for dinner so I fired up the Blackstone and grilled for them.  

This evening I have a photoshoot down in the city with some girls from our Model team.  Tomorrow Jodi has to report for Jury Duty.  Hopefully she gets released early.

  

Chasing a Bronco for Jodi has been frustrating to say the least.  I should know better but I've been trying to locate one a dealer has that isn't marked way up over sticker.  I'm must quit before I show up at a dealership and choke the living piss out of them for advertising vehicles that are not available, or the advertised price doe snot show the $15,000 over sticker they want.   I'm all for capitalism and generating  profit but don't do it deceptively.  There's some sales people that I know wish they had not been the one to answer my inquiry right now.  

I went and looked at a 1999 Jeep Cherokee yesterday.  It was real straight, absolutely no rust or body damage.  The paint was a little faded and had quite a bit of rock chips on the front of it.  It looked like the rear main seal was leaking.  The interior was near perfect.  In hindsight I should have bought it but I kept hearing the phrase my friends have coined and use, "It wasn't Dave Williams nice."  The guy that pulled into the driveway after I turned it down bought it.  

 We had another first for our studio yesterday, a senior portrait session in February.  Luckily we had a mild day for a returning client with her second daughter.  She is a figure skater so we wound up downtown at the Crown Center ice rink for some photos prior to heading over to the West Bottoms for the balance of her session.  

Tomorrow is our club meeting and we will be handing out the swag to our members.  Those that cannot make it will have theirs shipped to them over the next couple weeks.  Our members only raffle prize is a ViAir compressor.  

I went to Kansas Rocks this past Saturday with some club members to cut and gather firewood for the upcoming Frostbite event.  We had some fun wheeling in the snow while there and we stocked up the firewood pretty well.  Hopefully we have pretty good weather for the event.  On February 26th, you can have just about any weather here.  

In other news, we sold Jodi's Jaguar.  She wasn't driving it and we sold it for what we paid for it so it was a win.  We still have three vehicles so we are just waiting for the right vehicle to come along next, whatever it may be.  

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.