A daughter, the passing of my garage buddy, and still working on the garage...

Some good news first.  My daughter was born March 28th and both baby and mother are doing well.  We're home and her brother seems to like her.  My son is 21 months old and refers to the Corvette as "daddy's blue car".  I started it about once a month this winter to keep oil circulating, and he insisted on coming with me to start it.  He sat in the passenger seat while I got it started.  It'd been sitting for a while so it took a little bit for it to start (plus I'm pretty sure I could use a new starter), and he got a little scared.  Ever since he says "blue car...  loud".  It's pretty funny, but he's since gotten over it somewhat and ridden in it twice.  Just this last weekend he got to ride in it with the top down.  He liked it.  (Sorry no pics...)

A few years ago I posted a picture of my Bernese Mountain dog, Charlie, hanging out in the garage as I worked on the car.  He liked the cool cement floor and he usually just liked to be where ever I was.  Last night Charlie died from bloat, a not uncommon condition that occurs in large breeds where the stomach twists.  He was staying with my in-laws while we got used to having a second kid in the house.  I feel bad that he wasn't with us when he passed, and that he didn't get to hang out with me in the garage in the new house.  He was a good dog, he will be missed...

I have continued to work on getting the garage and shop area of the new house ready to do work.  Unfortunately, I'm still not quite there yet.  The remainder of my cabinets are coming this week and I'm working on installing shop lighting.  If you're looking to do LED strip lighting for cheap, check out 1000bulbs.com for some pretty good deals.  I decided that I didn't like having LED fixtures where I couldn't replace the bulb, so I grabbed some 2900K 4 ft. long LED bulbs for $10 a piece.  Converting fluorescent fixtures to use the LED bulbs is really simple because the fixtures are designed to have the ballasts replaced.  I've converted 9 cheap $12 fixtures from Menards and 4 $30 3-light fixture from Home Depot to use the bulbs.  If someone is interested, I can post the process for converting the two fixtures.

The start of my lighting project.  5 fixtures and cable management to go.

3-light fluorescent fixture I'm going to use in the garage portion of the shop.

The Corvette has reached the critical mileage (1500-2000 miles) where fluids need to be changed for the first time after the rebuild.  As soon as I've got the lighting in the garage set, I'll be changing to a synthetic power steering fluid (Royal Purple), changing the oil and filter, flushing the radiator fluid and swapping the lower hose for a stainless one, removing the transmission fluid filter (refilling for lost fluid), and also replacing the inline gas filter.  This should ensure there's no burrs present from machining or making of the hoses in any of the fluids.

Unfortunately, being that I'm getting to this point when it's spring, I don't really want to start projects on the car.  I want to drive it!  I've got the MSD digital ignition, ignition coil, and pro billet distributor sitting here just waiting to be installed.  I haven't decided if that project will be started when I'm changing fluids or not.  The new starter I think will be a project for this coming fall/winter along with "never night" and electric headlight conversion (the stock headlights suck, but I guess I'm used to the HID projectors on my 2013 Charger....).