ShelbyFoister.com – Est. 1981
25Aug/130

Use sunscreen, skin cancer is frightening.

Disclaimer: This is going to be a lot of words, I'm sorry there is no TL;DR. If you don't know much about skin cancer, read this. If you're an expert go ahead and skip it.

I have freckles, I live in Florida, I have had a lot of sun burns in my life and I have never been to a dermatologist. Until last week.

My skin cancer story starts with a cyst. I have a small cyst under my right arm, it's no big deal and it's not the first one I have needed to have removed. I originally went to a general surgeon to have it removed. Luckily he wanted to completely put me under in order to remove it and luckily I don't want to be put under, so I went seeking a second opinion from a dermatologist. While in the dermatologist office I opted in for the head to toe check and what followed turned my life upside down, temporarily. The doctor found a spot on my "birth mark" that looked like melanoma and a biopsy was taken. During the two days of agonizing waiting I did a lot of reading about melanoma and skin cancer and completely freaked myself out.

My primary concern was that this spot has been there for a very long time, at least 5 or 6 years and if this was in fact melanoma I was sure it had been there long enough to spread and kill me. I justified everything with this in mind. My right testicle was sore for a couple of hours, oh shit it's the cancer. I was very tired recently and took more naps than usual, oh shit it's the cancer. I'm going to die! I'm not going to see my daughter grow up!

Skipping ahead, the biopsy came back and it was not melanoma. The official diagnosis was "Junctional Melanocytic Nevus with Architectural Disorder and Mild Cytologic Atypia (Dysplastic Nevus)". Very scary sounding, however, translated to english this means I have a large birthmark/mole with mild atypical skin cells that could potentially be dangerous, but not cancer. The doctors still want to remove it because it could be dangerous and it's better to be safe than sorry. That procedure will be done on September 5th, hopefully at the same time they remove the cyst under my arm.

So, all of that being said there are a couple of things I have learned. Skin Cancer is the leading cause of all cancer in the world. One study states that one in five people will be diagnosed with some form of skin cancer throughout their lives. Out of those people, one in ten will be diagnosed with melanoma, which is deadly. Caught early there is a 92% cure rate, which is great. But if you're like me, a regular dude and you don't look at your back in the mirror frequently you are more likely to catch it late. Catching it late, after it has spread to neighboring lymph nodes or organs turns it into only a 52% cure rate.

Every night on TV you watch at least one commercial about viagra. You might hear something about feeling for lumps in your breasts or about some new medicine to help cure prostate cancer. A very common thing to hear as a man is how you should roll your balls around in your hand to feel for bumps, lumps or any size change. The awareness for these cancers is fairly high. Why is it then, than the leading cause of ALL cancer is not spoken about nearly as much? It's easy to detect... rub on your skin and feel for anything new, abnormal. Use your special eyes to look at yourself for anything new or abnormal. Growing up in what might be the skin cancer capital of the united states I feel like this should not have taken me by surprise.

Growing up my mother always told me to wear sunscreen, and I'm positive she mentioned skin cancer... but mostly I just "didn't want to get a burn" and a lot of times this was not enough of a deterrent to reapply every 30 minutes. There were days we spent at the beach where I didn't see the shade for hours.


If you take nothing else away from this blog post, take this. Wear sunscreen and channel your inner primitive human. Ask that primitive beast if it would like to go sit
in the sun. I'm willing to bet the answer is no... Human skin really isn't resilient enough to handle the sun at peak hours. Check your skin, have your spouse check your skin. It's easy, and don't be afraid of the dermatologist. Catch things early, removing things from the skin is easy.

Filed under: 2013 No Comments
10Oct/120

The 10 Month Update

 I recently made a post on Facebook about how my daughter sits deep in thought sometimes, you can tell her little gears are turning and I speculated that she was trying to decide how to solve the worlds' problems. I wish she was just thinking about how much she loves her Daddy, but really for such a young bright mind the world at large is a much more important task.

I was wrong, she is much smarter than that. You see, all she needs to do is smile and laugh and the problems in her immediate area are solved, or made a lot less significant. This is my unwavering opinion of my (now 10 months old) little girl. She is the ultimate problem solver because there are just simply less problems when she is laughing, smiling and happy.

I'm not one to believe in fate or a higher power somehow deciding my life for me but I will admit that a little girl is what I needed in my life and fatherhood is something that I (now) cannot imagine living my life without.

Life has a funny way of giving you what you need. Then you realize that's what you wanted all along. Ten months old.. we are ten months into this journey and I am still frequently left with this surreal feeling when she smiles at me;

"This is my daughter... wow"

Filed under: 2012, Fatherhood No Comments
21Jan/120

The One Month Update

Today Hazel is one month old. After a month of fatherhood this is what I have learned.

1. Your wife is going to be possessive, emotional and irrational at times. Shut up and clean the bottles.

2.  Your wife is going to be very busy during the day, especially if you are working. Feeding a newborn every 1-2 hours is very frustrating. Shut up and prepare the bottles.

3. Your wife is very lonely while you're at work. She may refer to inanimate objects as "Wilson", or if you have pets she may speak to them as if they were Wilson. When you get home from work she's going to talk your ear off. Prepare for this any way you see fit but when you get home, shut up and listen. When she starts to speak too fast to keep up just listen for inflection, or the end of sentences and respond with "Wow, great idea.", "Fuck yah! That's what I was thinking!" and my favorite "Hahaha!"

4. Cook huge pots of stuff for her to eat during the day. My favorite is chicken noodle soup. Use a crock pot. Make it microwavable.

5. Shut up and clean the bottles.

6. Try to take at least a week off of work. Do all of the laundry, dishes, cleaning, lawn work during this week. Try to be available to help when needed but get these things done before you go back!

7. Watch the baby in the middle of the day when you can so your wife can sleep.

8. Stop updating your blog and feed the baby while she scrapbooks.

10. Ten is a nice round number.

 

 

Filed under: 2011, Fatherhood No Comments
2Sep/110

Pay no attention to the man behind the Glass

Today I received my driver door glass from AAPD.net. I have heard a lot of horror stories about the contour of aftermarket glass not matching the contour of stock glass. However I have not heard anything specific about Scott Drake reproductions, which is what this is. I just ordered my butyl tape from NPDlink.com and I will attempt the assembly next week when the tape comes in. I really hope this glass matches the stock contour, so far I have had nothing but trouble with reproduction parts...

 

Here is the glass. Dachshund not included.

Scott Drake - Driver Door Glass

 

I also talked to a restoration shop and a chrome shop today on the phone. I have to give a shout to the guys at http://www.vintage-mustang.com for the recommendation. I called Orlando Mustang and Peter was so helpful. Even though I was not spending money with him right then he was more than willing to talk to me about chroming and recommended a great shop called Space Coast Plating over in Melbourne. I am willing to ship my parts to someone I can trust, and so I will. Space Coast quoted me a price I was very happy with. They were very helpful and honest with their answers, as if they enjoy what they do and are not out to just make the quick buck.  I was figuring a lot more.

Thanks a lot to Peter C (Pmustang) from vintage-mustang forums, Peter from Orlando Mustangs and Space Coast Plating (Sorry I cannot remember the gentlemans name I spoke to). I can't wait to do business with these guys.

Chrome Plating http://spacecoast-plating.com/

Used/New Mustang Parts and Restoration Services http://orlandomustang.com/

Very helpful group of guys (and girls) that are very responsive and thoroughly enjoy the hobby. http://www.vintage-mustang.com

Filed under: 2011 No Comments
1Sep/110

So Many Pieces…

Alright, so by this point everything is removed but the transmission and the engine. Obviously I'm leaving the suspension and the steering in place so that I can deliver the car to the restoration shop as a rolling chassis and not just a pile of parts that can't be moved around the shop. I would just like to add that when the car pulled into my garage I really had no tools for this kind of project. I had a very small ratchet set and 99% of the disassembly was done with this set. As I have gone I have bought all of the tools as I need them. I am mechanically inclined and working on cars is nothing new to me but I have never taken on a project of this magnitude.

All in Pieces

 

I removed the window trim with the correct tool, but being a complete newbie with it I am afraid I may have damaged the trim in some places. I really hope not, I don't want to buy new stuff. I'll need to inspect it and hope I can straighten it back out if it's serious. For removing the window itself I used a large flat head screwdriver and drove it down between the glass and the body. The rear window was the most labor intensive part of the entire disassembly process. What a nightmare...
Here is the tool used to remove the trim, I found it at Advanced Auto Parts for under $10.

Trim Removal Tool

In the first photo on this post you can see the exhaust laying on the ground under the car. Par for the course I didn't have the tools I needed to really remove the exhaust. Not that pulling out the exhaust was hard but I could not get the car high enough to easily turn it so that the high arc in the back over the rear axle would clear. So I decided my objective was clear, this shit needed to come out and I don't care to save it so I'm going to man up and buy something dangerous (if used improperly).

Reciprocating Saw, Wins!

My advice to anyone removing exhaust on jack stands. Just cut it out, don't waste your time trying to find the best angle to pull it over the rear axle.
As I removed everything from the car I put all the screws and bolts and such in baggies with notes that indicated what they were for. I put all of the parts in boxes and labelled them. I tried to group all of the parts together into categories that I would be restoring them in. Such as Lighting, Interior, Body, Dash, etc... Unfortunately as I labelled and added notes inside of the baggies I didn't know what every little piece was called so I have notes that say things like "Bolts with threads on both ends go through the bottom clamp on the steering column and into the threaded piece on the bracket that holds the pedals" and my favorite one "Screws that hold the weird box thing to the front radiator support on the driver's side." I have since learned that it is called a  voltage regulator. But that's ok. I'm not going to correct myself now because when this car is done I'm giving all of these little notes and scribbles and greasy diagrams to my wife to make a scrap-book out of. Here are a few photos of my organization process.

Trim Organization

All of the trim, busted up or not is tied down to cardboard and hanging in my garage. Once everything is polished or replaced I'll be wrapping it in paper and putting it in the attic.

Boxed Up For Later

All of these boxes have labels and are organized into restoration groups.

Organization Process

This is what my organization process looked like. As I removed things I would drop it in its respective box and add it to the label. Anything that would not fit in a box was labelled and added to my spreadsheet. Yes, I have a spreadsheet also.

Click for the larger image to be displayed in all it's glory.

Restoration Log Spreadsheet

 

Maybe I am a little anal, maybe I am a little OCD. But I'm not going to lose anything. And I know how much this thingamajig costs even if I don't know its proper name.

Filed under: 2011 No Comments