I received a telephone message this morning from the company that was holding the software training in Detroit that I was registered for next month. The bad news is that they are canceling the Detroit class.
There was good news, however. Instead of having the training in Detroit, they are rescheduling it for the same week but in Santa Ana, CA. Their rationale was that in the past many of their trainees were from the auto industry and they could commute to a class in Detroit for the week. However, with the auto industry's financial problems there are apparently no automotive clients sending trainees to this session so rather than flying an instructor in from their Santa Ana headquarters they are opting to have the trainees fly into Santa Ana rather than into Detroit. Since we all were flying in from somewhere anyway it's just a matter of having us re-route our destination.
In further good news, today is the Annual Christmas Potluck Lunch and Belly Gorge at my office. I prepared two chocolate pies last night, one was a baked pie and the other was a chilled pie. I'm enjoying the last bits of turkey, ham, pasta salad, mashed potatoes, and dessert as I type this entry. I think I'll pass on dinner!
This has been a week of feasting, yesterday the boss took his group out to lunch. We chose to eat at Sumo's, one of those Japanese hibachi restaurants. Not exactly traditional Christmas fare but good nonetheless. Again, I skipped dinner when I got home!
I've been working on a couple of model car projects lately. In addition to the yellow car I showed a few weeks ago I'm working on another two projects. One is far enough along that I can show it, it's a Monogram 1989 NASCAR Thunderbird that I've updated to more closely resemble a 1993-spec Thunderbird as raced in 1994. My project is to build a memorial of sorts, I remembered that this coming Daytona 500 is the 15th anniversary of the deaths of Neil Bonnett and Rodney Orr in practice prior to time trials for the race. Neil was a veteran, a multi-race winner, a star not only of NASCAR but he also hosted a couple of sports-themed television shows that he had become involved with during a layoff of almost three years due to a career-threatening injury. Rodney Orr was the exact opposite, a young man who had never started a race at the top level of NASCAR but who had been gaining experience in the lower levels of the sport. His previous Daytona experience had been in a division for compact, four-cylinder race cars and he had won the championship in that division the year before. He had bought a car from Bill Elliott to make his move up to the top division and he had been one of the fastest cars in pre-season testing before the race. Neil Bonnett crashed fatally on February 11, 1994 and Rodney Orr crashed fatally three days later, on Valentine's Day 1994. I hope it doesn't seem morbid to memorialize these drivers in this way. I see it as remembering their stories and honoring their commitment to the sport.
Sanding down and puttying up features on the molded body to make the 1989 kit resemble the photo reference of the 1993 car as raced in 1994:
After sanding the original putty and adding some spot filler to fill pinholes and scratches:
After the first round of primer, with the chassis fitted to ensure everything fits properly
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