Update on life

Well, I am counting the days now. In one weeks time, God willing, I will be en route to the wonderful city of Dollars (formerly Dallas), Texas to pick up my humble new vehicle. The vehicle in question is a 1989 Chevy S-10 Blazer SUV 4x4 which is kinda what I want. I have desired a vehicle more appropriate to my Ham Radio and Weather Spotting. The Blazer makes sense. While is an 89, it only has 106,000 miles on it, which isn't bad for a 20 year old vehicle. I hope I don't give the thing too bad a workout, but I have to have a better vehicle. Even though the Blazer is 20 years old and sort of anathema to what I have wanted to stand for I am still getting it. The best part is I don't have to pay for it till Tax refund time and even then, its probably going to be half price. Can't pass up a deal like that.

The fate of the Victor/Victoria is still in limbo at the moment. Donation for cancer research seems to be the best prospect since if I sell it to someone, they face a considerable sum for repairs. Another prospect popped up the other day. My sister-in-law's brother repairs cars and is presently unemployed and I thought that in exchange for my car and other considerations, they might fix my sister-in-law's Taurus which has sat out in front of my brother's house without a fan belt or an AC compressor for the better part of two or three months. If my brother can get in contact with Steve and he wants to go through with the exchange, I think it would be a good thing. The in-law's get a car that he can part out for work on his Mustangs (the CV and the Mustangs share the same motor) and/or he can fix the thing up for sale to help him out in his drought of unemployment. Brother dear gets his car fixed and can drive himself to work and not have to ride the bus anymore. We'll see what happens.

Anyway, I have been on a kick of late on YouTube. I have nostalgia for my misspent youth watching endless hours of bad sci-fi television. Among these was the Gerry Anderson series "UFO." Not to be confused with the Jack Webb series "Project: UFO" which came much later, the 1972 series concerned a fictional organization existing in 1980 called "S.H.A.D.O." whose primary mission was to shoot down invading UFO's. It was fanciful at times, but all in all was a fairly good show and it was fun, but only lasted one season. While a planned second season was killed, the pre-production work for that later came to be used for the follow on series "Space: 1999" which was even more interesting, if not for its bizarre premise of the moon as a drifting planet through the universe.

UFO had all the elements of earlier Anderson fare such as "Thunderbirds" or "Captain Scarlet"; secret organizations battling evil or some other such things, but it represented a leap by Anderson into live action. However, a drawback with UFO was that since Anderson's earlier fare was primarily for children, many expected UFO to be that as well. Since many in the UK considered Sci-Fi to be children's fare anyway, it wasn't shown correctly. It was very dark, much like the US "Land of the Lost" and many of the episodes dealt with such adult fare as adultery, interracial romance, the breakup of marriage and the like. That, coupled with erratic schedules which resulted with syndication, spelled the demise of the series. The effects were first rate for the era, conducted by Derek Meddings who later went on to do several of the Roger Moore 1970's James Bond films (Live and Let Die, Man with the Golden Gun, The Spy Who Loved Me, Moonraker (nominated for an Academy Award for Special Effects) as well as Superman and the 1989 Tim Burton Batman movie.

Here's a montage posted on YouTube of one of the more typical scenes: