Long and exciting. Yours?

How was your weekend?

Mine started Thursday night, care of Good Friday and curious holidays in the private sector.

Alastair and I went to bed Thursday night with excitement in the air: a trip to the zoo was planned for the morning, and Maymont Park in the afternoon!

Somehow, in all my life, I'd never actually been to a zoo. I'm unclear as to how this oversight might have occurred, but occur it did, so when we got there, I was more mesmerized than Alastair, who's now been at least 4 or 5 times. And of course, since he's been there a number of times, he knows where everything is. I felt like I was the kid for half the day!

We saw lions, tigers, bears (oh my...<--sorry, it's obligatory), emus giraffes, all manner of monkeys & apes, bats, and well, everything else you'd expect to see at a zoo. And we rode the sky-car over the rhinos, which, while exciting, were evidently nowhere near as exciting as their poop. I swear: Alastair talked about rhino poop for two solid days.

We also saw an Audi R8. That was my favorite.

Then, while he napped, I started tearing the Miata down in preparation for a timing belt & water pump swap. I figured if I disassembled it Friday afternoon, putting it back together on Saturday would be a snap. Which it was, until it wasn't.

After nap we met a friend and her two girls at Maymont, where mysteriously all the animals except the birds, bears, and fox were...missing. No idea where they were. Dad & Randy showed up to walk the park with us, and it was a delightful way to spend the afternoon. The kids entertained each other, the grown-ups got to talk, and then unfortunately one of the girls did an epic swan dive over her own foot. A bloody knee and 8 zillion tears (now with dramatic over-sell action!) later, we were all spent.

Saturday was even more awesomesauce for Alastair, who got to go to two Easter egg hunts. One at church (grr...) and one at his friend's house. While he was at the church one, and while he napped, I toiled away on the car, getting it almost back together.

We had a fantabulous time at his friend's house--truly, they're like peas in a pod, and it is so much fun to just watch them play.

After I dropped him off at Grammy's for the night, I went home, Daniel showed up to help with the Miata...and it wouldn't run. Dammit.

Teardown & rebuild: nothing.

Daniel wished me luck and went home (it was already pretty late), and at midnight I started another teardown, this time with the idea that I'd leave it torn down overnight and approach the timing issue in the morning with fresh eyes. Yeah, not so much.

When I got down to the belt, I had a revelation that I could abandon all the fancy marks I'd made on the belt if I could calculate TDC, which I fortunately could do because I happened to have a compression checker. Yay me!

At 2am, the car was buttoned up, and she roared to life (sorry neighbors!).

The next morning she threw the alternator belt. FML. At least that was a 5-minute fix.

P-Nut's Easter Party! Woohoo! Monument Ave Easter Parade! Jello shots! Champagne! RedBull & vodka! Ow my head!

Before Alastair came home, I happened upon a stranded motorist in my neighborhood. Her car had overheated, and she was about a mile away from home. But she was blocking traffic, and the cops were less than amused. So I went home, got my truck & trailer, and hauled her to her house.

Pizza with a boy for dinner, 834.2 loads of laundry, and one completely spent daddy.

It was a damn fine weekend, even with the extra 5 hours of work on the car. Now on to the remaining 5 hours worth of work, and next weekend's the circus!