OT - What are you doing right now?

WeberWho said:

I asked my wife what she wanted for a gift. Her response, "Will you clean my car?" She knows how I clean my vehicles. It's way more than her running a vacuum through it and calling it good. 

Here I am 7 hours later and still not finished. The seats and carpet are vacuumed and shampooed. Windows, console, and dash tomorrow. Why couldn't she have just asked for a necklace or some earrings!

Mmm-'kay, you remove the front seats when you clean a vehicle?
 
You win.  
 
EDIT:  And now that I see your level of intensity, how DO you clean windows?  Dad taught me to use Windex and crumpled-up newsprint, which is abrasive and really cuts thru the film but I always see missed spots as I'm driving into the sun.  Suggestions?  

Eoin said:

CPFC1905 said:

Nothing...
Help me out lads - first Saturday after football season and no cricket or rugby either.   I have done the lawns - including a rake and feed, walked the dog twice, tidied the loft and even polished the wood floors.  Not even 4.30.   I have deferred some tasks to tomorrow in order to avoid a vacuum developing.  

Do I need to get in to shaving or foster an overalls habit? 

Get on ebay and buy yourself a restoration project for the summer off season. Sight unseen, minimum 4 pints before buying. What could possibly go wrong?

How prescient;  I was in fact doing the exact opposite yesterday morning.   Child #2's Peugeot has an electrical fault & we all know what that means.  Weighing up the scrap value with an Ebay listing for it as a road legal (MOT until July) parts bin.Sad how something like a broken wire takes the car 'over the rainbow bridge'.

In stark contrast to me, he has no emotional attachment to it (or any car) at all.  His sister gifted it to him, I did all the admin and 'deep-cleaned' it to my satisfaction prior to the birthday hand-over,  but he has used it as a moving 'floordrobe'.  And now it turns out someone is willing him to lend him a car u.f.n, and someone else is keen to offload an A3 on him for peanuts.   

Botch said:

WeberWho said:

I asked my wife what she wanted for a gift. Her response, "Will you clean my car?" She knows how I clean my vehicles. It's way more than her running a vacuum through it and calling it good. 

Here I am 7 hours later and still not finished. The seats and carpet are vacuumed and shampooed. Windows, console, and dash tomorrow. Why couldn't she have just asked for a necklace or some earrings!

Mmm-'kay, you remove the front seats when you clean a vehicle?
 
You win.  
 
EDIT:  And now that I see your level of intensity, how DO you clean windows?  Dad taught me to use Windex and crumpled-up newsprint, which is abrasive and really cuts thru the film but I always see missed spots as I'm driving into the sun.  Suggestions?  

I'm far from a professional. Windex and paper towels here. We use Windex and coffee filters for our glass tables inside the house. That will give you a streak free finish. That's a lot of coffee filters for a vehicle though. 

The Weathertechs do a descent job collecting most stuff. It's the damn dog hair that gets everywhere. The seats take under 10 minutes to remove with an impact wrench and disconnecting wires. It makes removing dog hair and shampooing the seats a million times easier. 

Edit: Just make sure you have a OBD scanner if taking your seats out. It might pull up a code and light up your dash with an airbag warning. The OBD scaner is a good tool to have if you don't have one. Just a heads up for anyone who takes out their seats for some reason or another. 

smokingal said:

Took a break from all the red meat consumption and used some North Atlantic cod to try my hand at fish-n-chips for the first time.  Definitely enjoyed having properly seasoned fish for a change.

Ok, here is the deal. You can't post this cook and not share the step by step instructions on how I, er....we, can replicate this cook. It is in the thread rules. ( I did not write them, just saying).
Seriously, this is My Beautiful Wife's favorite comfort food that I fail at making every time I try. Would love to be able to provide this for her.
There is a place here in Louisville (Irish Rover, if you ever make it here and you like Irish fare, this is the place) that makes outstanding fish and chips using cod, I would love to stop taking her there to get it.
Beautiful cook, thank you for sharing.

CPFC1905 said:

alaskanassasin said:

CPFC1905 said:

How prescient;  I was in fact doing the exact opposite yesterday morning.   Child #2's Peugeot has an electrical fault & we all know what that means.  Weighing up the scrap value with an Ebay listing for it as a road legal (MOT until July) parts bin.Sad how something like a broken wire takes the car 'over the rainbow bridge'.

In stark contrast to me, he has no emotional attachment to it (or any car) at all.  His sister gifted it to him, I did all the admin and 'deep-cleaned' it to my satisfaction prior to the birthday hand-over,  but he has used it as a moving 'floordrobe'.  And now it turns out someone is willing him to lend him a car u.f.n, and someone else is keen to offload an A3 on him for peanuts.   

 You can’t fix the broken wire?

Shorthand for an electrical fault, as yet undetected or diagnosed.  It's Somewhere between the central locking element of the 'brain' and the door locks. No faults reported on the OBD.
Last roll of the dice tomorrow morning.   As ever, its not the single part but the overall costs and effort of dissecting the car's wiring loom.

Galvanic corrosion is often the culprit.   Get some DeoxIT and disassemble connections on the wiring harness, squirt some of that stuff in there and there's a good chance it will fix the problem, especially in older cars.   Or just set it on fire.

YukonRon said:

smokingal said:

Took a break from all the red meat consumption and used some North Atlantic cod to try my hand at fish-n-chips for the first time.  Definitely enjoyed having properly seasoned fish for a change.

Ok, here is the deal. You can't post this cook and not share the step by step instructions on how I, er....we, can replicate this cook. It is in the thread rules. ( I did not write them, just saying).
Seriously, this is My Beautiful Wife's favorite comfort food that I fail at making every time I try. Would love to be able to provide this for her.
There is a place here in Louisville (Irish Rover, if you ever make it here and you like Irish fare, this is the place) that makes outstanding fish and chips using cod, I would love to stop taking her there to get it.
Beautiful cook, thank you for sharing.

Chips are hard to do without a deep fat fryer, but battered fish is easy even shallow fried and turned once. I usually get a thick cod loin and cut into chunks to make shallow frying easier. Flour and water batter is all you need, sparkling water makes it a bit lighter.

Just looked and found this. Delia is a legend in the UK. https://www.deliaonline.com/recipes/collections/delia-online-cookery-school/shallow-fried-fish

Don't forget the malt vinegar.

Eoin said:

CPFC1905 said:

nolaegghead said:

Shorthand for an electrical fault, as yet undetected or diagnosed.  It's Somewhere between the central locking element of the 'brain' and the door locks. No faults reported on the OBD.
Last roll of the dice tomorrow morning.   As ever, its not the single part but the overall costs and effort of dissecting the car's wiring loom.

Galvanic corrosion is often the culprit.   Get some DeoxIT and disassemble connections on the wiring harness, squirt some of that stuff in there and there's a good chance it will fix the problem, especially in older cars.   Or just set it on fire.

Would be handy for a truck to reverse in to it.

One of my guys reversed into a crappy old Pug 205 in a car park, worth less than a grand. By the time the whiplash claim was paid (yes, in a low speed car park prang), the hire car, the value of the car and the ambulance chaser's fee, the total claim came to £9k. Just remember to get out of the car clutching your neck if a truck does reverse into you.

No worries-same instant injury deal on this side of the pond.  The major culprit is the not paying attention "rear-ender" (without authorization )that has ever increased as autos are seen as office space and nothing more.  FWIW-

smokingal said:

@YukonRon I reviewed the article that @Eoin posted and it's pretty much on point with what I did, with a few exceptions.

1.  'High heat' is vague.  I used corn oil at 2.5" deep and got it up to 380F in a cast iron pan.
2.  My batter used ice cold club soda.
3.  The fish sections need to be lightly coated in a very light flour (rice, cornstarch, etc).  I used potato starch.  This helps the batter adhere to the fish.
4.  When dipping the fish in the batter, I used a wooden skewer to flip the pieces and to place them in the frying pan, so as to not rub any batter off with my fingers.

Agreed on the high heat comment, I found I got much better results when I started measuring the temperature of the oil rather than guessing.

You'd think, to make it into the Preakness, you'd be a pretty dang fast horse and all entries would be evenly matched. And so, I'd also expect that any horse that loses 96 lbs or so of mostly-dead weight, at the beginning of the race, should have no problem beating the rest of the field.
I mean, like most NASCAR drivers, he didn't miss a turn... 😛

Recovering form putting the new winch on. Good grief, it is a tight fit.

Just got home from a weekend of diving. Not a lot of shootable fish unfortunately....but did luck out on the sand dollars