I've worked for the phone company for over 31 years where we have acronyms for everything. I had a real rough day in the garage the other day and I decided to put some acronyms together to try and classify what kind of day I had. Most people know what RPM and MPG stand for. Here are some new ones.
You know it's going to he a had day if your F-COD is < 10:00 AM. You feel like you have really cut a path through he jungle if your CPD is > 5. At the time it's awful, but you usually look back, point and laugh for every STFOOMF you get. A BMFNB is worse than scraping fingernails on a chalkboard. But really the worst is if you get a major PDM.
F-COD stands for First Cut Of the Day. It's a Saturday. You get your chores done early; wash the car, go to the bank, go to the Post Office, service the wife and mow the lawn. Not necessarily it that order of course. So you are done with the chores and now you have time to work on your favorite project in the garage. I had a bad Saturday the other day when after finishing my chores I went for some aspirin in the medicine cabinet only to notice that a good bit of blood was drooling down the back of my hand. So instead of just getting aspirin for my sore back, I had to clean up my hand in the slop sink enough so the band-aid would stick. Now here is another thing I want to zoint out. Why do they make and why do women buy those teeny, itty little band-aids? You know the ones. They're so small you have a hard time opening them because your fingers are so much bigger than they are. These things would be fine for a cut on a mouse or maybe an ant, but not for any kind of cut that a real man would bother to try and stop the bleeding with. If I have a cut that small, I don't even bother with it, unless it's real small in diameter but maybe 2 inches deep. You know, like an ice pick wound, or maybe something from a stray nail gun shot. Maybe then I would use those fairy band-aids. What we real men need are Man-Daids. something a couple inches in diameter with enough gauze padding to do some real soaking up. But at least I make the effort to find
proper, clean stuff to tend to my wounds. I've seen some of my old-timer neighbors with their entire finger wrapped up with black electrical tape. I ask if the tape was just to stop the bleeding or if it was holding the chopped off piece of appendage in place. They usually don't want to answer.
So I sort through all the fairy hand-aids and put a Man-Daid on my F-COD and head hack out to the garage and start on the real work. Today's project is to take out the dash in the Europa. Real easy on an Elan; Royal pain in the butt on a Europa. After finding hidden rivets and nuts on the console, I managed to pull the console out without tearing the 32-year-old ABS plastic. The dash itself had all sorts of extra supports. The Elan is a real flexi flyer. When you go through a turn, the wood dash flexes and creaks with the turn. On a Europa there are all sorts of extra braces to tie everything to the body. Almost like they thought the wood dash would add stiffness to the body. So I continue to unbolt and unscrew and drill out hits and pieces that hold the dash in place. On this day I had to stop several times during the project to swear at inanimate objects and stick the bleeding part of me in my mouth and go find additional Man-Daids. At least the cuts weren't real bad.
This particular Europa dash removal job was especially nasty. I had started out with my F-COD at about 10:30, by the end of the day my CPD (Cuts Per Day) was at 5 and to top it off, whilst releasing the grip of my vice grips I got a real good PDM (Pinched Da Meat). It was a tough day. Could he worse. Sometimes as I'm talking to my buddy Paul Quiniff. I will notice evidence of a real good Smashed the **** Out Of My Finger (STFOOMF). Sometimes he laughs, sometimes not, depending on how manypain killing Old Styles he has had since the incident. Another thing to watch out for, but luckily I haven't had in a long time is a BMFNB. I keep my fingernails cut pretty short because a cut fingernail is WAY better than a "Bent My Finger Nail Back". O-o-o-o, gives me the willies just thinking about it.
Only once in my life did I have to go to the emergency room because of a cut. On that occasion I was working with my brother-in-law Gregski on some stubborn Elan shock inserts that did not want to come out. Greg was pushing and I was holding, or maybe the other way around, I don't remember. All I know was that the palm of my left hand was the recipient of the sharp end of the big screwdriver. It went in pretty deep and was bleeding pretty good. I stuck the bleeding part in my mouth and knew I had a problem when I had to go gulp! But I digress....
Next - Europa Euphoria, Part 6
