Was anyone else aware that Bondo, when mixed, turns bright pink? I opened up the tub of filler, noted the expected grey color of the material inside, and then wondered what the other tube of stuff was for. Well, it's the "hardener," since apparently Bondo doesn't just harden on its own. The hardener itself is flame red, so when mixed it all becomes pink.

As usual, I didn't have the good sense to get any "before and after" pictures, but I'll be sure to get a picture of my pink accents when I return home this afternoon. Right now it looks completely absurd; a black truck with a pink area of unsanded goop around the right rear wheelwell. (As my father-in-law put it, "I'm sure that makes a statement." I'm not sure what statement that would be, and I'm fairly certain he wouldn't really want me making it, but let's move on.)

Anyway, the stuff seems to work quite well, if you're willing to deal with it getting all over the place. (My fingers were Bondo'd together at one point, and I had to have Sarah chisel them apart.) I need more sandpaper, since I used all of my 80-grit removing the paint from the dent, and I need to slather on a bit more filler to get it out to the proper thickness. Bondo dries in less than half an hour, so I can sand it almost right away. With any luck, the rain will hold off this afternoon, and I'll be able to apply the rest of the stuff, sand it to the proper shape, and prime it.

I imagine the sanding will take a very long time, so hopefully I won't be interrupted by rain. I also need to drive to my grandmother's and pick up a treadmill of which she wants to rid herself, so I've got a full evening, and if it rains I'm basically screwed. I really want to get primer on the truck before Saturday, since if it rains constantly over the next week like it's supposed to, I have bare sheet metal that will probably corrode. Which probably means I have to completely start over. Which probably means I will start sanding off my own skin.

Anyway, if this ends up working, I might try to fix the gas tank on the motorcycle, which has a large, unsightly dent in it, from when I, um, dropped it on the driveway. Of course, I don't have any more of the cool two-color paint to put on it, which will irk my wife. Not that the bike runs anyway.

I really need to get it working, though, since it's due to be re-registered at the end of September, and one of the things they seem to always check at inspection is whether or not the vehicle in question actually starts. Of course, since both the bike shop and the DMV are within 2 miles of my house, I probably could make it one and/or the other without getting pulled over by the fuzz. And I think the DMV will issue a temporary tag so that currently unregistered vehicles can drive over to get inspected.

Oh, and in the interests of sharing too much information:

Has anyone else ever burped up stomach acids and accidentally inhaled them into your windpipe? No? It's not a great way to wake up. At 5:25 this morning, I'm in the bathroom drinking water, coughing uncontrollably, trying not to throw up, and crying like my father during "A Few Good Men." Bad times all around.

Every time I took a deep breath, I had to cough. Every time I coughed, the pain got worse. So I finally got back into bed, taking shallow breaths to avoid hacking my larynx out of my neck, and sobbed silently into my pillow for roughly an hour, during which the cats were kind enough to purr louder than a threshing machine. (Which I wished was handy so I could fling myself into it.)

Not a fun morning. Tomorrow: why the Body Mass Index is the biggest pile of crap since "Save The Last Dance."