…it is worth overdoing.

I was going to buy my Kanji vinyl decals from a place called VinzDecals.com because they have such a huge col­lec­tion of kanji words, but the are kind of pricey, $7 each for 3″ high decal (mean­ing $28 +ship­ping to do what I want.) Well, Cafe­Press to the res­cue. I can squeeze all 4 of the char­ac­ters I need on one bumper sticker from them for around $3. I’ll have to trim each let­ter out with a sharp knife, but for a $25 sav­ings, it is worth it.

So, of course while I was at it, I made up on of those oval decals too. What the heck, I made up a ringer T-shirt with the char­ac­ters on it as well. So even if your car isn’t called The Emperor, you can wear the shirt around the house act­ing like the king of the cas­tle (mar­ried guys, don’t for­get to ask the wife’s per­mis­sion first.) Get ‘em here:

Life Of Brian Stuff
Save $10 when you spend $25 or more!
Enter the coupon code DES9 when check­ing out.
Coupon expires 08/08/2005… so hurry!

The Miata is our daily dri­ver, which is both a bless­ing and a curse. The really good part is that a fun car makes the most mun­dane drive enjoy­able, even the one to work. The curse part occurs after spend­ing the week­end, like we did this last one, dri­ving the windy, twisty roads in the moun­tains, because when you return home it makes those mun­dane dri­ves mun­dane again.

When dri­ving in the moun­tains you spend a lot of time in 2nd and 3rd gear, wind­ing the engine out close to the red­line as the g-forces through you from side to side in the car. As you turn the wheel, the engine is singing and the car goes right where it is aimed. Occa­sion­ally you approach the lim­its of adhe­sion and the tires start to com­plain, but then you ease off the wheel and give it bit more gas and you swoop through the curve. Barely time to enjoy your accom­plish­ment when you see which way the road bends next and set up for it.

Then you are home. Shift­ing gears returns to a more sedate 4,000 RPM level. All the curves are 90 degree bends on city streets taken at 20 MPH so as to not land in the back seat of the mini­van in front of you. Sigh. I have said it before (I could have sworn I’ve said it here, but a search turns up noth­ing) this must be how women feel after giv­ing birth, a sort of post par­tum depression.

I saw a com­mer­cial the other day on TV for Celebrity Cruise Lines. This older cou­ple return from their cruise and all they can do is remem­ber their “celebrity” treat­ment. “My but­ler knew just how I took my tea,” he says. “I had fresh cut flow­ers every­day,” says she. My favorite part is the man is obvi­ously back in his office and is try­ing to open some ver­ti­cal blinds that aren’t act­ing right, “I like to think of this as a tem­po­rary exile,” he moans. That is what it is like for me to come back from a week­end dri­ving in the mountains…

I don’t remem­ber where I came across these, Miata.net Forums no doubt, but I down­loaded a whole bunch of these cute lit­tle Miata icons. Here is a 4 to 1 look at the the Gar­net Red ones:

I’m not sure what for, maybe chang­ing the Miata Club’s mem­ber page icons, maybe dec­o­rat­ing my desk­top, but for now I’ve added the above ones to this page down on the right in the Emperor section.

There is just about one of each style for each color of Miata. I did have to tweak them some as the orig­i­nals all had yel­low head­lights, must be a Japan­ese thing. If you would like your very own selec­tion of these icons, get them here: 90–97 Miata Icons and 99–05 Miata Icons.

The bud­get has been announced for Glo­ri­fi­ca­tion Of The Annivesary Of My Nascency.

Bar­bossa: There be a lot of long words in there, mis­ter. We’re naught but hum­ble pirates. What is it that you mean?

Donna has allowed me to spend $200 as I see fit for my birthday.

I have a cou­ple of ideas that I’d like, but I’m not sure I want them bad enough to pull the trigger.

Item 1) Bronze tint on the Miata’s win­dows. Upside — keeps the inte­rior cooler on sunny days. Down­side — On 99.9% of all sunny days the top is down thereby negat­ing any tint­ing. The top is only up a lot in the win­ter when the tint­ing isn’t needed.

Item 2) Rear lip spoiler. Upside — gen­er­ates increased down­force at triple digit speeds and being non-OEM ensures some indi­vid­u­al­ity. Down­side — not so sure it won’t enhance the very thing I’m try­ing to dis­guise, the lit­tle duck tail hump on the trunklid.

I’m open for suggestions.

For those of you who would to get me a lit­tle some­thing, but can’t afford either of the above two items, more cost friendly items can be found on my Ama­zon Wish­list.

At our lunchtime walk around the com­pany park­ing lot, my wife sug­gested putting the top up. I thought for a minute, try­ing to ratio­nal­ize a no answer, because after all it was only a 40% chance, but decided to take off the cock­pit cover and raise the roof.

Even under the opaque cock­pit cover, the inte­rior bits I had to touch to put the top up would blis­ter skin if held too long. They would be lit­er­ally red hot at 4:00 PM if the top went up and it didn’t rain.

I’m glad I lis­tened, the thun­der started by 1:30 and the skies opened at 2 o’clock. And while the inten­sity had waned, it was still rain­ing at quit­ting time. If I hadn’t put up the top I would have had to bail out the interior.

And I didn’t have to worry about the inte­rior tem­per­a­ture, to keep the win­dows from fog­ging I turned on the AC and actu­ally had to turn the knob halfway to hot, so as not to get it too cold in the car. The bank sign on the way home said 76 or about 25 degrees cooler than it did last Fri­day at the same time.

Today was our half day off Fri­day and we had no real plans, but ended up hav­ing a nice ol’ time. Orig­i­nally we intended to go to lunch at Ferando’s for a cal­zone in down­town, but once we stepped out in to the park­ing lot at 11:30 a course of action was set. With the temps in the low 80’s with prob­a­bly 60% humid­ity and the sun shin­ing in a bright blue sky, we knew the weather called for a drive.

In true syn­chronic­ity, we both thought Maurice’s BBQ. So we drove 50 miles of two lane back roads one way to eat lunch instead of the orig­i­nal 3 miles. $2.67 a gal­lon gas be damned.