New Year’s Day. Cold, maybe mid for­ties. The Miata sits in the garage all day. The far­thest I ven­ture is around the block on rollerblades. Donna goes to the store, but uses the MSV.

The snow has turned to sleet and now back to snow. The flakes now are few and far between, but are the size of postage stamps! This is prob­a­bly the only time I would ever have needed the defroster option in the glass win­dow. Guess I’ll just use a credit card.

The Miata sits in the garage today, in it’s rapidly evap­o­rat­ing pool of mucky water.

Donna would feel much safer if we didn’t drive the Miata, so we take the MSV, her Mom’s Honda Civic 4-door, in to work. The sleet quit late last night, but they still delayed the start of work today until 10:00AM. Good plan, but it is colder this morn­ing so every­thing is pretty frozen. Plus it started snow­ing again about 8:30. Really beau­ti­ful. We left around 9:00 for the what is nor­mally 15 minute com­mute, not because I fig­ured it would take that much longer, but I took along the dig­i­tal cam­era so we could stop and take a bunch of “Win­ter Won­der­land” pho­tos around town.

Drove the Miata to Augusta today to deliver bicy­cle club newslet­ters to the 3 main bike stores. When we left at 9:30 it was still quite chilly from last night’s record low of 15 degrees. The top was up. There was still ice on the roads in some of the shady spots. After we had fin­ished vis­it­ing the 3 stores it was noon and the sun was out, bright and shiny. It was prob­a­bly only in the mid for­ties, but it felt like spring. We put the top down for the drive back into the city for lunch.

Think­ing of buy­ing these gage faces to replace my cur­rent I.L. Motor­sport white ones. They are also sup­posed to shift to blue as well. I’m hop­ing the blue will some­what match the blue of the new Blaupunkt San Jose MP3 player I just put in. The San Jose doesn’t hook into the dash light dim­mer so it is bright all the time.

Finally got around to call­ing the Tire Rack today to see what it would cost to get another lug nut adapter. When I bought 4 Kosei Rac­ing Senekas shod with Bridge­stone RE-71s back in Decem­ber of 2000 from the Tire Rack they included an adapter that allows you to loosen/tight the “tuner” lug nuts with your stan­dard lug wrench. This last Christ­mas Eve I needed a new tire. I ended up get­ting a whole new set of tires. When the chuckle-heads at the local Fire­stone dealer put the wheels back on they used an impact wrench to tighten down the lug nuts. While try­ing to loosen them in my dri­ve­way, to prop­erly torque them down, I busted the adapter.

Yes­ter­day was the first day of the South Car­olina Lot­tery. Donna’s mom bought 14 scratch-off lot­tery tick­ets for the $20 she won in the Geor­gia Lot­tery on Sat­ur­day. After we had scratched off all that sil­ver stuff off the front of the cards, we WON $17. Now I can quit my job.

I can’t pub­lish since like 4:00 o’clock this after­noon. Is it me? First ThatHost­ing­Com­pany toys with my Inter­net emo­tions, now Blog­ger. And 1 day after I forked over the $12 to be ad free. Jeez.

The lugnut adapter just arrived on my desk. It left South Bend, IN at 10:04 PM on the 8th, not bad. This one is not chromed like the one I orig­i­nally got with the wheel pack­age. I’m not com­plain­ing, mind you, the price was right, FREE! Thanks Tire Rack

Now I am more famous. I sub­mit­ted another photo to The Mir­ror Project today. Win­ter Event joins Hard Drive Clock in what used to be Friends of Jezebel’s Mir­ror. Going to have to get one with me and the Miata to add as well.

Nearly 70 degrees for the ride home. Dropped the top of course. The only rem­nants of the snow of a week ago is the sandy spots on the overpasses.

I am now famous. I was men­tioned in Randy Nieland’s Tech Specialist’s Email Newslet­ter yes­ter­day. It raised my stature a notch or two with the cou­ple of other geeks I know that I turned into Gnomies. We had a lit­tle email con­ver­sa­tion about whether or not he should start to blog and what might be the theme for it. He is not sure if he wants to go there though.

More excit­ing than when I got the Master’s Miata Club a men­tion in Chris Pirillo’s Win­dows Daily Email Newsletter.

The only time I ven­tured out today, was this morn­ing, for a trip to Home Depot. Cloudy and cool, but not cool enough to put the top up.

The wrought iron rail­ing on the front porch was loose. The screw on one side of the post was loose and the other was almost tight, but frozen in place. Under the semi-tight one I wedged a piece of metal under it. The loose one needed a new plas­tic anchor. The hole was just a lit­tle too big for the #10 screw in an anchor to keep it tight. Like most guys I have a place in garage with all kinds of nuts, bolts, wash­ers, screws, nails, etc. I have hun­dreds of screws, but the only #12 screw I had was about a 1/2 inch too long, so off to the store.….

Sun­day is usu­ally a rest day for the Miata, usu­ally eat lunch with friends the 3 of us (Donna, Mom and Brian) pile into Donna’s Mom’s Civic for the trip. Today was not much dif­fer­ent, but the Miata did get a late after­noon run to Tar­get, Lowes and CVS for var­i­ous things. Upper 50’s and the top was still down from Friday’s trip home from work, so it stayed that way. Gotta love the guy who invented the garage. It will be up tomor­row for the ride to work, sup­posed to be in the mid 30’s then.

Cold and yucky today. Had to keep the top up all day and even had to burn the head­lights on the trip home. Shouldn’t com­plain, it is after all win­ter and the folks north of the Mason-Dixon Line are suf­fer­ing with snow.

Try­ing to fig­ure out what shall adorn the rear bumper next. It is just too clean back there. I have another of those 5″ diam­e­ter Barn­door Fan Club stick­ers I could put on. I like the idea of some­thing text-like in white on the black rear skirt. In 1999 I had “Not Y2K Com­pli­ant” and in 2000 I had a Star Trek Voy­ager quote, “Sur­vival is Insuf­fi­cient” and last year was the BDFC sticker. Lean­ing towards the URL of either the Master’s Miata Club or the Barn­door Fan Club. Heck, maybe I’ll just put this Blog’s URL there.

Yahoo! (the expres­sion, not the ser­vice) Sunny and 60 at 4:00PM. We had hair­cut appoint­ments at 5 and a whole hour to get there. Put the top down and went the loooong way. Had to put some gas in first though, $10.50 at $1.069.

Cool-Glo gages were on the doorstep when we got home. Prob­a­bly won’t get to install them until Sat­ur­day, but I did take them out of the box, hook all the wires up and use a lit­tle 12v bat­tery from a garage door opener to check them out. Nice green or blue glow, gonna be cool (hey, maybe that is how they got named.)

After that I’m think­ing of Power Neon Cables in blue. (have you noticed I like blue?) There aren’t any links on where to buy the stuff. Won­der if any­body else car­ries it?

Sunny and mid 50’s for today’s lunch “date” with my wife. Today we went to Popeyes and I had their spicy chicken sand­wich. No com­par­i­son, Popeyes was lev­els above last week’s Hardee’s spicy chicken sandwich.

Couldn’t wait until Sat­ur­day to put in the gage faces, did it tonight. The only prob­lem I had was the loca­tion of the switch/dimmer. They sug­gested a place that my big foot would hit, so I moved it up and out of the way. Can’t get to it while dri­ving, but once it is set who needs to adjust it.

It is still dark in the morn­ing (sun­rise 7:30 am, leave house at 7:00) so we got to watch the blue gages in their full glory on the morn­ing com­mute. Every­thing looked AOK. I was wor­ried last night after I shut the car down, I don’t remem­ber the temp gage flop­ping that far to the left with the key off. I did get a sur­prise though, when I put the car in reverse to back out of the garage a cou­ple of screws landed at my feet. I had for­got to put the last 2 screws that hold the hood over the gages on. no wor­ries as there were a cou­ple of clips hold­ing it in place, I’ll screw them in tonight when I get home.

Today was cloudy, but warmer than yes­ter­day. So we made a lit­tle extra trip out of the ride home. Didn’t have to run an errand, but what the heck, it meant a trip through an old sec­tion of town that has nice nar­row, windy roads.

A Miata is as good as a pick-up truck as long as it is a sunny day. Spent most of the day try­ing to get my garage door to work smoother. I’ve bought a new opener, replaced the wheels, cleaned the tracks and tight­ened the hinges. the only left was to lower the opener. It is pretty far up because there was no stud above the header in the cen­ter of the door to bolt the track to. Off to Lowe’s. The rain they pre­dicted last night has yet to arrive and it is a good thing too, because how else would I get an 8′ 2x4 and an 8′ 2x8 home with­out the top down.

OK, I com­plained too much about the sun and now it is GONE. Cloudy and misty on the way to work, cloudy at lunch and cloudy and driz­zly on the way home. I had to run an errand at 7:00 PM, Weather.com said it was 67 degrees out. Cool, I drop the top and back out of the garage. To quote Frank Barone, “Holy Crap!” The fog was thick as pea soup. Ran the errand slowly and when I got back, left the car in the dri­ve­way and snapped some photos.

This morn­ing as I got into the car my wife asked, “Where is the umbrella?” I shrug, go back inside and grab one from the cor­ner. She pops the trunk and I hop down the 2 steps to floor level and as I go to put the bum­ber­shoot into the boot, I mis-judge the dis­tance and place a 3″ long scrape on the back of the car. Yikes! Took the top layer of paint right off! That is the sec­ond time I have done that with an umbrella. The first one is not so bad and is really only notice­able if you know where to look. Or the light is just right. This one is pretty obvi­ous, even to the most casual observer. Damn, I hate umbrellas.

Started today with the top down, but put it up for the drive to work. They were call­ing for a 40% chance of rain and we must have been in that 40, ’cause it was rain­ing now. We went out for lunch with the gang for a co-worker’s birth­day and put the top down for the drive to eat. When we got to Ruby Tues­day it looked kind of threat­en­ing, so I put the top back up. After lunch it wasn’t rain­ing, so the top came back down for the return trip. At work in the park­ing lot I put it back up, just in case. By quit­ting time the skys were clear­ing, so back down the top went for the drive home.

Up. Down. Up. Down. Up. Down. No won­der my tops only last 3 years.

Made the run to Evans, GA to check the Miata Club’s P.O. Box. I has been nearly 2 months, but we never get any mail unless it is renewal time any­way. There were 5 pieces of mail, a credit card come-on, a flyer from a gro­cery store, a returned newslet­ter, a group buy offer on wind­stops from Seri­ous Auto and a Christ­mas card for the P.O. Box just to the left of us. Almost put the top up when we started as the temps were in the upper 40’s. My wife said, “That’s what heaters are for.” So instead I put the boot on. When we got back from the drive it was after lunch and it was near­ing 70 degrees, so I put the top up. I wanted to wash and wax the car.

Start­ing yes­ter­day, I think I will list the sta­tus and the changes to that sta­tus of the top here in the last line. Might be fun to go back and count ‘em up for a week, month, year…

Started down, now Up.

Top still down. The trip to work required the heater though, the back roads stay cooler than in town. So cool that we popped up the last 60′ hill by work and back into the warmer air that it was instant white out. The win­dows fogged up so quickly I had to come to a com­plete stop. Got the wind­shield wipers on but they only worked for a bit. Got the defroster on too and in a bit I could see using the bot­tom 3 inches of the wind­shield. Almost had to stick my head out the win­dow like a dog to see.

Just got con­fir­ma­tion that my pic­ture of me in the car fender was added to The Mir­ror Project. See it here.

Started Down, still Down.