Many thanks for the IM, emails, Facebook wall posts, and Twitter tweets about my birthday!
Today I spent sick on the couch with no voice, but yesterday was the real celebration!

Yesterday was a tech/detail day at DT Auto with the Mass Motoring Club. It had been so long, I missed it! And, it’s been a long winter with Eloise, who was filthy and needed a wash anyway.

Tech days are great fun. Our MINI pimp, Pete is there, and usually brings his trusty sidekick mechanics. He sets up a bay and we all sign up for bay time - they’ll do whatever we need. Installs, oil changes, etc. Pete also sets up a few empty bays where we can take turns washing and detailing our cars.

As for the downtime, when our cars aren’t in the bay, we just sort of hang out, find out what everyone else is doing, and bring lots of food to eat. It’s such a good time, and I’m always glad when we do this. There’s always new folks to meet, and I usually end up learning a thing or two about the cars.

As for Eloise, she had some scheduled work, and there was a surprise! She was getting her white mirror caps swapped out for custom painted lime-green ones. Lime green and light blue is my favorite color combination. On EBAY, I managed to find some white MINI mirror caps up for sale. I gave Pete a sample of green I wanted, and he took it to his “guy” who painted them for me.

Here’s the “Before”:

She was also getting a new Detroit Tuned supercharger bypass valve, which has a tighter spring than the old one and will give Eloise more boost and a better throttle response.

These are both body and engine mods, so I was a little surprised when I drove Eloise into the bay and immediately the guys put the lift wings under her. I asked Pete why she was going on the lift, and he replied, “Because she needs work.” I never question Pete, and someone else asked me a question after that, so I guess I forgot about it.

All of a sudden Pete pulls out this huge box and said, “Go give your husband a hug! He bought you a sway bar for your birthday!”

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

I love my hubbie. I am now the proud owner of an H-Sport 25mm hollow competition sway bar, which completes my suspension upgrades (to go along with existing front/rear strut bars and lowering springs), which should make for a mighty fun autocross season!

A sway bar helps keep the car’s body steady while turning. If you go around a curve, you’ll notice that you seem to lean towards the outside of the turn. The faster you go, the more you lean. Well, your car, and all it’s parts, are leaning the same way. There is less pressure on the tires on the inside, and more pressure on the tires on the outside of the turn. A sway bar (or stabilizer bar) forces weight evenly on both sides, helping the car stay flat and even during the turn. The bar I have has three settings, which I will have to play around with to find the best setting for my car. If it’s too tight, the wheels lose their independence and work together a little *too* well, and I’ll get oversteer.

Oh, they got me a cake, too, right there in the garage. I love my friends!

Zo? had a great time at her first Tech day. She hung out like a champ in the garage, liked looking at the cars, and didn’t even mind all the loud noises. Everyone loved seeing her. In fact, everyone was laughing when I drove my car into the bay, because apparently a baby carseat was the last thing they expected to see in the back seat!

Here’s Eloise almost finished. She’s clean, has her new mirror caps, and has most of her decals removed. I took off every decal that’s not white or lime green (and added a new lime green antenna duckie!). I say almost finished because I have a bunch of lime green “Pixie Posse Racing” stickers that Pete made for me and Audra. I just can’t decide where I want them to go yet! The green is what he color matched the mirror caps with.

This shot is actually a pretty good angle to see how low Eloise rides, too.

She’s got all the toys, now the only factor left in autocross this season is the loose nut behind the wheel!

There is a fun new thing going on the blogs, et al.
It’s called “My album cover”.

Your album cover can be randomly created in three easy steps:

To find your artist name, go to Wikipedia’s random article page. In my case, it was UIT.

To find your album cover picture, go visit Flickr’s Last 7 Days of Interesting Photos page. The third picture in is your cover, in my case, I got this gorgeous shot.

Finally, every album needs a title. Go to the Random Quotations page, and use the last four words of the last quote. In my case, it was a Virginia Woolfe quote: For most of history, Anonymous was a woman.

Here is my finished album cover:

So I have the album cover. Sigh. The timing of this meme is more than a little interesting to me. At Lotusphere, I was able to get to Kimono’s one night. I wanted to sing, but I wasn’t sure what would happen for two reasons. I had done Speedgeeking the night before, and had no voice. Also, I hadn’t sung at all since way before Zo? was born. Really, the only time I ever get to sing is once a year at Lotusphere. I decided I wanted to take it a little further, and awhile ago, I started taking voice lessons. I had to stop when Zo? started pressing against my diaphragm!

For whoever was there that night, it was obvious at first I couldn’t even remember how to find my voice…it was shaky, unsure, and truthfully, I didn’t even fully remember how the song went - until I got to the chorus.

“WAKE ME UP INSIDE!”

Life imitates art, so much. I’m not even sure what made me pick that song (I was actually expecting a disaster), but when I got to the first chorus, something magical happened. I remembered how it was supposed to work. It felt real, and it felt right. The entire lyrics were something I needed to hear. I could never hold a note before, but thanks to the voice lessons, not only could I sustain a note, but a vibrato seemed to appear out of nowhere (I had always wanted to do that!).

Evanescence’s “Bring Me To Life” made me feel alive again. Now I just need to do that more often.