So, this weekend I thought I would make a nice little project out of putting some new springs (a new release from former Prodrive engineer Dan Antonielli's startup, Epic Engineering) on my car (a 2010 Impreza WRX). My goal with the car is to make something that, as I see it, could (and should) be had from the factory, and that means keeping every new part below the "XTREME" line. So, that in mind, today's adventure is ironically not brought to you by the letter "subtlety."

As it was.

To the left you'll find a photograph of my car before I got my stupid ham-fists on it. It is calm, it is serene, it is unadulterated. It's sitting in my mother's garage in this photo, and the trunk is popped because it needed to be de-carpeted to allow me access to the bolts keeping the shocks from just falling out.

Now, I'd like to point out that I've never really done something quite so mechanical as disassemble suspension components before. I have replaced hoses, spark plugs, ignition coils, and other such lean-over-and-un-screw-some-things parts before, but this was breaking new ground for me. That said, I knew I was probably going to be in a rather foul mood and spouting all sorts of appropriately foul words in no time, so I wanted to put myself in a place where people generally aren't (hence mom's garage), put on some R.E.M., get mad and dirty, and make a day of it.

Well, I forgot the R.E.M., so I moved straight on to mad and dirty. In retrospect, I don't know why I didn't just throw on one of the many other CDs I cart around with me, but I guess I was rather stubbornly set on R.E.M. That's probably a good point to take away from this: I'm awfully stubborn sometimes.

Anyway, things were going along reasonably well. Yes, I had to compress and decompress that first spring about a billion times, and then another billion after that getting the new one on because I would always wind up having the long end of one of the compressors in the way of something necessary, or needing to move out of some small gap that I needed to get the vice grips through, or... well, really just those two things, but I found myself in one of the two situations so constantly that by the end I was turning into a crazy person. Also, due to the rear suspension being a rather compact multilink setup, I found myself using every available limb on my body to pry things down and wrench at things in order to get the shock assembly in and out. At one point I was actually on my back, using my right leg to press down on a pry bar, my left leg for leverage for said prying, and my arms to jam the assembly back into place before the bar slipped and everything closed back up.

But, one run to the store for a deeper socket and some PB Blaster and a whole lotta swearin' later, the driver's-side rear was done and back in. And I was thrilled.

Subtlety was not here.

The second rear was loads easier getting out, and things seemed to be going quite swimmingly until my grandpa wandered over to try to convince me to wrap things up because it was getting late (it was not getting that late, but I do not fault him; he just did not want me to meet an early end at the hands of falling-car-syndrome). Anyway, at this point I was about to separate the top hat from the shock itself, so I had the assembly across my lap and my ratchet on the lock nut. Now, I don't know if I had bumped the ratchet from "loosen" to "tighten," or if I merely thought I was loosening and just paying no attention whatsoever, but, whatever the reason, I was unable to turn that nut at all. So what did I do? I didn't stop talking for a second to think about what I was doing, I didn't check to see if I was even trying to turn the right way (something which I'm typically a nazi about with other people); no, instead I reached for a big-ass length of copper pipe, slipped it over the end to give me a ton more twisting power, and just cranked away. And wouldn't you know it, it actually began to turn, and it continued to do so until the pressure of the now way-too-tight lock nut split the top hat seat clear down the side.

It was at that point that I realized that I was a dumbass.

Rather than learn from that and take the hint that I had fried my brain with heat and cusses, I decided to solidify my position as a dumbass and "fix" this broken perch with what else but a zip-tie. I figured my apartment was close by and the roads en route were smooth, so I'd just limp it back and leave it in the garage until I could get my hands on a new shock (I do not believe that little perch can be had individually). So, I reassembled everything, got it all back in place, and took the car down off its stands. This is what it looked like:

Imperceptibly lower.

If you're looking from this picture to the one up top (which you probably aren't) and are unable to tell the difference, well, neither can I. It'll settle down in a week or so, though, and then it'll be nice and ever-so-slightly less SUV-like.

At this point I was pretty mad at myself, so I took my grandpa's advice and headed indoors for the night.

THE NEXT DAY.

I was up early to finish things off. I knew the fronts were supposed to be easier, and my head was no longer so full of thunder and lightning, so I was in pretty high spirits. Got out there, took things apart, put things back together, and all was fine and dandy, until...

Hang onto that "until" for a second while I provide just a bit of backstory. See, I had a largish brass pipe that I was using as a cheater bar with my smaller ratchets (the very same pipe which so readily facilitated my first failure). It slid on and off those smaller ratchets without drama, as should be the case with a cheater bar. However, the deep sockets I needed for this required my larger ratchet, which was just a little too broad to fit in the pipe. Turns out my hammer thought differently, and a few solid swings later I had effectively fused the two together for all of eternity. What does this mean? It means that whenever I had to use a socket that required the permanently-lengthened big ratchet, I had at my disposal way more twist than should ever be applied to the shitty bubblegum metal bits that Subaru uses to build their cars' most critical components.

You can probably see where this is headed (quite literally, in fact; there are pictures).

Things were going really well with the front end. Like, so well I was singin' and (ever so slightly) skipping around. The end was in sight! I would soon be free of my comical wheel-well gap! So great was my enthusiasm that it bade me forsake discipline and leave my torque wrench on the sidelines, relying instead on my "skills" to tell me when the very last bolt was properly tightened.

Nor was it here.

As it turns out, "properly tightened" when translated by a three-foot breaker bar becomes "stripped." And not only was this a stripped bolt, but it's a stripped camber bolt which cannot be found on the shelves of your friendly neighborhood hardware store (at least not my friendly neighborhood hardware store).

So, the last thing between me and slapping the wheels back on and driving (gingerly) away is presently chilling in the parts bin of a closed-on-Sundays Subaru dealership. I guess that's probably for the best since it rather forces me to buy a replacement shock instead of relying on the makeshift zip-tie cast holding the rear in place.

And that is the story of how enthusiasm ruined everything forever.

No license needed to captain this vessel.

They don't. In fact, even "zucchini raft" is really quite overoptimistic.

Speaking of overoptimistic, you should try some of these boats. "Mmm" is for "mmmediocre."

Anyway, it's been a good long while since I plunked down here and went about attempting to distract people with words and pictures; four months nearly to the day since I've made something worth mentioning. Well, that's not entirely true, really, but it has been quite some time. What got me back to pushing down buttons again? Other cooking, obviously.

I had a buddy over the other night, and we decided we'd try our collective hands at "Enchilada Lasagna," which was a recipe we'd come across on an episode of Alton Brown's Good Eats. It was indeed good eats. So good were the eats that my heart ached to again spend more than I should on supplies, to again waste away a weekend evening spinning around in the kitchen, and to again eat enough for three people. So what did I do?

Ruined my streak of never buying mushrooms.

I remembered something. Ho-ly shit.

Backstory: A few (six) weeks ago, I took a trip with some friends to see some friends in Colorado. (This has no relevance whatsoever to the outcome of the story, but now you know where I was.) Now, since we were there for quite a while, and it was really just being in a house where other people lived (while said other people went about their daily routines until the evening when we all came to life), there was a decent lot of television-watching. This was a pleasant surprise for me, because I haven't watched copious amounts of television in a very long while, and, frankly, I miss doing so. Some of it was crappy music-channel disposable programming about nobody-cares-what, some of it was of the soap variety, and some was cooking. It was in this last portion that I saw a lady cook some things that made me take note.

Zucchinis' back-sides.

Her name was Rachael Ray, and she made some vegetarian zucchini boats. There were bits of mint, mushrooms, herbs -- exactly the same sort of stuff that small- to medium-sized ground animals subsist on. And you know what? It looked good. I sort of hate mushrooms, and there is no such thing as a vegetable which can raise my pulse, and yet this culinary witchdoctor had voodoo'd me into a stupor with her mint and her mushrooms and her herbs. And so I took some very shoddy notes, which also included a bit about "adding sassage" in order to make it into an actual meal.

FAST-FORWARD TO THE PRESENT DAY. It's Friday, there are no plans, and I'm feeling like it's an appropriate time to postpone going to the gym. "You haven't cooked anything in a while, you lazy ass," I say to myself. And so, after a moment of rather dull recollection, I decided I'd make some stuffed zucchini boats. I left work, I bought things, I returned home.

Oh my God, I just remembered I also bought delicious lemon squares. I am going to eat those so hard.

This is what cooked food looks like.

Anyway, yes. I returned home and I got to the cookin'.

Now, I looked for the same recipe I saw on the television, but I couldn't find it. I referred to the aforementioned notes, but all they said were:

Zucchini boats! Mushrooms? Add sassage. Mint.

My note was of no use to me. So I went off of this one instead, and by "went off" I mean "looked at, largely disregarded, and improvised based in theory upon." I used "some" tomatoes and "less" onion, two links of spicy Italian sausage (which was not called for), half a portabella mushroom (also not called for), and pecorino romano in place of parmesan and mozzarella. Actually, that's pretty close to the original, just heartier.

I would like to point out that this recipe says simply to scrape out the zucchini guts and then bake the zucchini for a little bit to soften it up some. Another recipe I dug up (which I think was in fact one of Ray's) mentioned boiling the zucchinis (whole, guts in tact) for a few minutes before gutting, and made no mention of pre-baking whatsoever. Having found the zucchini to be a bit tough in mine (which were not boiled, but rather pre-baked) I would have to recommend this. The instructions were to boil until "tender," but not "soft." I'd imagine a good run under cold water afterward would be wise.

But, honestly, like I've said a couple times, they didn't turn out so hot, which I attribute to me disregarding the instructions. I mean, they weren't bad -- if I ordered a couple in a restaurant, I wouldn't be sending them back, but I also probably wouldn't be ordering them again in the future.

The friendly fungus.

The real point is this: I willingly ate a rather large quantity of mushrooms. Also I ate a few slivers fried and lightly salted but otherwise plain. That's crazy talk to me, because I think eating mushrooms is crazy talk. They're weird, man. Like, okay, I read that I had to be careful when cleaning or sautéing them because they "might absorb some liquid." Holy understatement, Batman. These things are like cloth. For example: I had some oil coming up to heat in a small pan and dropped in a few slivers to fry up so I could say I ate mushrooms plain. This is all well and good, until the oil around the mushrooms actually disappears and the slivers are several shades darker around the edges like a wet cloth.

Fine, maybe "something being absorbent" is not the wildest thing you've ever heard, but I thought it was something.

And why are they so soft? They are gross food. Cutting them sounds like cutting styrofoam. Gross.

But, honestly, they weren't bad. Their flavor did not overpower the rest (the sausage took care of that), but did come through with a good bit of definition. Interesting new flavor, but it definitely will not be showing up on my pizza any time soon.

So, in closing, what did I learn today? That I prefer romano to parmesan, and that mushrooms are precisely as off-putting as I had previously suspected them to be. (Also that URLLoaders don't fire init events.)