Sturgeon’s Law Ninety percent of everything is crap.
Derived from a quote by science fiction author Theodore Sturgeon, who once said, “Sure, 90% of science fiction is crud. That’s because 90% of everything is crud.” Oddly, when Sturgeon’s Law is cited, the final word is almost invariably changed to ‘crap’.
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 The picture in last Wednesday’s post was on TV. After I showed the image to a couple folks at work I was told I should sent it in to the local morning weather guy because every morning he shows a picture that a viewer has sent in. I emailed it to him on Friday and he replied that it would get shown on Monday at 5:15 and 6:15AM. When Donna asked if I wanted to get up a little earlier so I could see the picture, I told her no, I’d already seen it.
There are a lot of people at work who get up early and must get their weather in the morning from Matt Monroe because I had a whole lot of people catch me Monday (and a few on Tuesday) and tell me they saw my picture on Channel 6. One person tells me I won a coffee cup with some ground coffee. Another tells me I will probably get an umbrella. I think both of those are promotions from other stations or previous weather people, but never having watched the local morning news, who knows. I vow to watch on Tuesday morning to see what actually happens during the viewer photo segment.
I of course forget all about it. Then last night a friend from the MMC emailed me to say she saw my photo on TV on Monday and I should watch this morning to see one of hers, so I rolled out of bed about 10 minutes earlier than normal and watched the morning weather. Matt did the weather and then went to a commercial. Huh? No picture? When they came back from the break, there was Carol’s photo of some high mountains and blue sky. Oooh and aaah from Weather Guy, cheery comment from Anchor Woman and back to the news. No mention of a coffee mug. No umbrella. Nothing but using up about fifteen seconds of our 15 minutes.
Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 438
We got to the shopping center early where the restaurant was for the MMC monthly meeting, so we decided to kill a little time taking a walk around. We got about halfway down the strip when we decided to duck into Circuit City for a restroom break. They were in the back of the store and when I came out I was facing the keyboard & mouse area. The OEM Dell keyboard has a couple of sticky and or hard to hit keys that have become annoying. The biggest culprit is the space bar.
Plenty to choose from ranging in price from $25 to $75. The one that intrigued me the most was one that had back lit keys. The computer sits in a dark room with one light aimed at the back of the desk behind the monitor for that indirect lighting effect. Because I have to look at the keys to type this thing was made for me. Seventy bucks later I was the proud owner of a Saitek Eclipse II Keyboard.
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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 439
 Last week the mountains, this week the shore. We are down in Hilton Head for a little business and a lot of fun.
Took the afternoon off and got to ride here with the top down (windows and windblocker up.) Traffic was pretty good except for both ends of the drive. Friday midday in Aiken must bring out the grannies and Friday late afternoon brings out the crowds, even in the off-season, in Hilton Head. After unpacking in our condo by the beach we went back out to get some dinner. It was a toss up between Japanese and pizza. We were leaning towards the pizza and the clincher was the Japanese place wasn’t even going open for another 45 minutes. There were two pizza places I had picked out of the restaurant guide and we missed the first because I never spotted the landmark (Fudruckers) that they said they were behind. We found the second one and were not really glad we did.
If you ever find yourself here, don’t eat at Pizza Roma in Coligny Plaza. We were the only ones in the place and maybe we should have taken the hint. The salad was good and plentiful, but the pizza was nothing special. We would have been better off getting a DiGiornos at Bi-Lo and heating it up in the oven at the condo. I have always said that pizza is like sex, there is no such thing as bad, just different. Well now I certainly hope that I never get to experience the sex that is the parallel to tonight’s pizza…
Started up, went down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 441
 These pipes are part of a $16 million dollar “beach renourishment program on the south and east coast of HHI. They dredge up sand from the bottom of the sea a 1/4 mile offshore and pump it to the beach to widen the slowly retreating beach. They’ve finished the section in front of the resort and have moved further along the shore which is closer to the dredging area so these lengths of pipe are not needed right now.
Morning walk on the beach, hhicondo.com business, lunch at Gruby’s NY Deli, washed the mineral encrusted water spots off the Miata (parked under a sprinkler here at the resort), read some on the balcony in the sunshine, visited Jerry the Condo King and his bride Donna before they treated my Donna and I to dinner at Julep’s where we eat for the trifecta (appetizer, entree & dessert), short walk on the golf cart path and write a little blog post.
Full freaking day.
Started up, went down, back up, down again, up again, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 445
 After breakfast in the condo Donna and I drove over to Roebling Road Raceway outside of Savannah, GA to see a couple of friends race in an SCCA Solo1 event.
John is a heck of a driver that I hate following through the twisty roads on MMC events, because I know if I try and keep up with him I’ll end up getting in trouble. On the road he drives with what seems like abandon, but he always keeps in on the pavement. On the track he is a terror and usually once an event he manages to find the dirt, but he still has wrapped up first place in the southeast region in the CSP class. The car he drives, and consequently the race team, was christened by his wife the day he brought the well used red early model Miata home from the dealer, POS (and I’m betting you can figure what those three initials stand for.) After these last few years POS now has an alternate nickname, the Money Pit. Hey, it keeps John off the streets, literally.
Today when we got to the track John made me an honorary pit crew member by giving me a ball cap embroidered with the words POS Racing and a small red Miata complete with his car number in the white meatball on the door. I’m not sure if you get to pick your own number, but John’s is 54 and I wonder if it has anything to do with his propensity to leave the track and Officers Toody & Muldoon.
When we got back from watching racing this afternoon I changed the oil and rotated the tires on the Emperor. At 48,840 the car was about at the halfway point between Mazda’s recommended service points of 45,000 and 52,500.
Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 446
Tomorrow is election day and while I just love the bumper sticker, “I don’t vote, it just encourages them.” I usually do just the opposite, I vote to encourage them. In my own little protest against mainstream politicians, I typically vote for the Libertarian, the Green Party guy or some other third party candidates.
This election my voting will be guided by another bumper sticker I saw just the other day, “It’s broke, so let’s fix it. Vote Democratic.”
I mean what have I been thinking all these years, voting that way. The Democratic party is the way to go, always was, I mean the don’t call voting “The Republican Process” do they?
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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 448
 I’ve been driving by a lot of cute little ones lately. They have been calling out to me, “Take my picture. Take my picture. Come on, you know I’m cute. The light is right and the car is clean. What are you waiting for?” We have driven by this little Post Office numerous times on our trips to, and from, Hilton Head and every time I see it I note the name and it’s correlation to the Emperor’s “official” color name. And every time I see it I am tempted to stop. This time I did. A Garnet Red Mica Miata in front of the Garnett, SC 29922 Post Office.
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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 449
 Is how many litter our front yard after the last few days of wind and rain.
It is also the amount of miles on the car. We must have hit the 49k mark late last night because after I made the 6 mile trip to work this morning the odometer read 49008. The Miata when new came with a 50,000 mile/3 year warranty and it looks like we are going to be a little shy of the mileage mark when we pass thru the time limit in 16 days.
In an attempt to wipe out the memory of the lousy “pizza” we ate last Friday on HHI we went to Ferrando’s in the Alley. It worked. Lou and company serve up an excellent pie and as Rachel Ray would say, “Yummo!” Best part is we only eat half of the 14“er in one sitting, so we have the other half for, let’s say, Saturday lunch. It’s all I can do from raiding the fridge right now.
Started up, went down, back up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 452
 After I got back from rollerblading Donna had finished cleaning off 2/3 of the driveway and 1/2 of the front lawn. She finished the lawn while I swept off the rest of the driveway. As you can see from this hickory there are still a lot of leaves to come down yet.
We couldn’t stand it, the leftover pizza was eaten for supper tonight.
Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 452
 Washed the Miata tonight and my next door neighbor is probably thinking I wash the Miata once a week. For the last month or so, he’d be right, this was the fourth time since October 5th.
Today’s bath was to get the red dirt off the inside (and outside) of the wheel wells because tomorrow is a MMC event and I want to look pretty. On Tuesday Donna and I delivered dinner, from her department, to a coworker who is home recuperating from surgery. This person lives down a dirt road and it had rained most of Tuesday, so the driving surface was easily transfered from ground to car as we slid precariously around a couple bends in the road.
Started down, went up, went down, back up, back down, up again, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 457
 On the way home from Saturday’s lunch at the Stoplight Deli and much to the chagrin of my wife I drove onto the median in the historic district to take a picture of the car near this small bright red tree. I have had my eye a one with bright yellow leaves, but someone was thoughtlessly holding some sort of party or wedding reception at the house on the corner nearest the tree and there were all kinds of cars and such in the way. A backup was spotted a block away and Donna was only mildly uneasy until I got back in the car and moved it a few feet to try a different angle, then, well…
 Later that afternoon was the MMC’s semi-annual Elmcroft Senior Drive where we go over to a local Assisted Living, don’t call me a nursing home, Center and take some of the residents for a little drive. We had 7 cars and seven riders, so we took a nice 35 mile drive up to and over the dam at Lake Thurmond. We had one Miata with a Porsche Boxster kit and a rep from the local dealer brought a 3rd gen Miata (unfortunately not the retractable hard top version) for us to use if we needed.
 Later that evening was another MMC event, Game Night. A dozen of us gathered at the Butler’s to played games and eat finger foods. Four of us played a game of Scrabble while the other eight, in 2 groups of four, played dominoes. After a few games or so, a call went up to play something that all of us could partake in together. A couple people voted for charades, but two people, one of which was me, vowed to go stand outside in the rain rather than play that. We ended up playing Trivial Pursuit, the original Genus Edition which caused quite a few of us to have to relive the 80’s.
 Today we started our day with a leisurely breakfast of bagels at the Atlanta Bread Company followed by grocery shopping. We then drove over to Augusta because you can buy stuff earlier there than you can here on Sundays. We bought a wedding gift, some Christmas gifts for siblings that need to be tweaked and mailed around the country later and just shopped, not bought, gifts for a 3-year old who will be spending the holidays in a family shelter. He is one of several kids that people from ASCO are going to help out this year as we usually do. We then got a chicken salad sandwich to go from the Atlanta Bread Company that we ate overlooking the same dam I passed over yesterday. On the way home I passed by my yellow tree and the photos I took were kind of disappointing, not at all like I envisioned them. For the record we ate dinner at home, not the Atlanta Bread Company.
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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 460
They always have a yearly on-site visit from the mammogram bus, so…last week at ASCO the Plant Nurse had some representatives from a local hospital come in and offer PSA testing for us guys.
I had it done about 5 months ago at my annual visit to my Urologist, but to help support the cause I signed up to do it again at work. At nine bucks for my participation, I figure it is cheap insurance that they keep the program going next year by having plenty of takers.
My results came in the mail today. At the bottom of the sheet was the following note:
Heterophilic antibodies in human serum can react with reagent immunoglobins, interfering with in vitro immunoassays.
I’m not a doctor, so I don’t know the exact meaning of several of those words. I’m not a lawyer, but I bet I do know the exact meaning of that note — In no way can you blame us if the test results aren’t accurate.
Wow, thanks for doing the test for me.
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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 462
Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 464
Red sky in morning, sailors take warning. Then what the heck does an orange sky in the morning mean?
As we were getting ready for work this morning I passed by the kitchen window and noticed a strange glow outside. On my return trip the other way it was still very orange looking, so I went out into the garage and opened the door. Wow, very eerie. I’ve got to get a picture of this. Popped the trunk and got out the camera. By the time the camera booted and I stepped into the driveway the effect was fading fast. As I wondered whether to try and capture the tail end it was over, back to a regular looking morning.
!INCREDIBLE SIMULATION!
!INCREDIBLE SIMULATION!
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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 465
All of these fit a theme. Which is: It’s not all about YOU out there. You are part of a collective. If everyone did these unselfish things, traffic would be much better:
1. Don’t tailgate. When you tailgate, you have to tap your brakes at the slightest speed change. You tap for a second, the guy behind you taps for two, the guy behind him for four, and so forth. Ripple effect that equals slowdown.
2. Use on ramps correctly. ACCELERATE! Get up to a speed that matches overall traffic, then merge seamlessly. Too many people here merge into 60 mph traffic at 40 mph. People hit their brakes, and again you get a ripple effect.
3. Honor the left lane. Move over when not overtaking cars. Yes, we’ve talked this one to death. Just do it.
4. Pick a lane and try to stick with it. Incessant lane changes for little real gain can cause slowdowns for much the same reason as the on ramp example above. Think ahead: Will the lane you’re in peter out soon, or turn into an exit-only lane? Get yourself in one that will see you through to your destination.
5. At stoplights, pay attention. If you’re first in line waiting at a light, be sure you’re pulled up far enough, as someone here already noted. Then PAY ATTENTION! Watch the light. When it changes, go! Driving is war, and you’ve got the point — so stay alert! That goes for everyone in the back of the line too, but we have way too many people at the front who use stoplight time to apply makeup, read the paper, change the radio station or eat french fries off their car’s floor.
6. Step on it. If traffic’s going 60 in your lane, why aren’t you keeping up with the guy ahead of you? Why do you feel the need to go 57? Again, you’re part of a collective out there. Join in, please.
7. Don’t go so fast you get pulled over. Because every time someone gets pulled over, it gums up traffic for the rest of us. People rubberneck and irrationally brake (like the trooper’s gonna drop you to go after them), and the aforementioned ripple effect ensues. So drive briskly, but don’t risk a ticket. If you’re going over 70 in a 60 mph zone, you’re risking it.
8. Look way down the road. I get on I-5 northbound everyday from Fairview at Mercer. Two lanes from Fairview are on ramp only. Invariably someone is sitting in the middle, on ramp only lane who wants to go straight. And he just sits there, and people are stuck behind him. It happens at every signal, because the mope didn’t READ THE SIGNS. Look ahead. Look far ahead. Look way past that big hurkin’ SUV you’re behind, if you can. The sooner you see signs and the sooner you see trouble, the sooner you can avoid messing up in a way that affects the rest of us.
9. Live the golden rule. Let people in. Wave when someone lets you in. I wish I had a buck for every time I’ve signaled to enter a gap in a lane, and the car that’s far back in that lane guns it to try to keep me from moving over. No wait, I don’t wish I had a buck, I wish I had his head on a pike. But you’ve gotta check that impulse too. Do unto others … you know.
10. Devote yourself to the task. This is covered in many of the points above, but driving is not simply something you do to pass the time while listening to the radio. Driving is the all-consuming task at hand.
So DO it — briskly, efficiently and competently. So that we can all get out of each other’s way.
Thank you.
 For the past couple of years I’ve made up a nifty wall calendar using images of the Emperor I have taken over the previous year. You can see the images I have used by clicking on the appropriate link under Photos in the sidebar.
This year I haven’t been taking that many photos of the car, so I don’t think I’ll have 12 that will be calendar worthy. I do have about half enough, but even then, that is stretching the suitability envelope. While monkeying around with some of the possibles I hit upon a strategy that might work for 2007 — photoshopped images. This way I can go back and maybe use some outtakes from earlier photoshoots. I can possibly turn a sow’s ear into a silk purse. Well, I’ll be the judge of that…
Started up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 465
The DVD, courtesy of Netflix, is supposed to be here tomorrow. Most everybody over on Miata.net is gushing praise. It seems as if you are a car guy, and I consider myself one, you have to love this movie. Hummph.
I am all prepared to hate this movie. Why? I ranted a bit about that back in June, but mostly I think I’m tired of computer animated movies. No specific reason I can put my finger on either.
Of course I could be wrong, I avoided the movie Elf, because of the star, it’s premise, etc. Tonight it was on one of the cable channels and Donna paused during her surfing on it and we watched about 10 minutes worth. It was funny, may toss it in the rental queue.
Started up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 465
 Even though it was only around 40 degrees when we started out this morning, it was perfect weather for a little hike in Hitchcock Woods. Just cool enough to give that fall feeling, but not so cold that you were uncomfortable. We walked on a few familiar trails, along with a few little traveled.
We then did our Christmas shopping for our “adopted” child, followed by lunch at Subway before retiring to the couch for the rest of the day.
Cars wasn’t too bad, we did manage to watch the whole thing through.
Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 466
 Alternate title: We Drove All The Way Here For That?
We have the week off and the plan is to go see Donna’s sister and family in Palm City, FL for Thanksgiving. Originally we were going to leave on Saturday and take the real slow way down, but then friends from the MMC decided to hold their wedding reception on Sunday (they got hitched in Vegas a couple weeks ago), so we postponed leaving until Monday morning to take the just plain slow way down.
Well, we did OK on Saturday, but by this morning the call of the road was too great. At 7:30AM we got out of bed, by 8:45 we were packed and on our way. Sorry Rudy & Patti, we’ll give you our wedding gifts next week at the MMC Holiday Party, hopefully you’ll be able to end up with them after the swaperoo gift exchange.
Breakfast at the New Moon and then US78 East, destination Charleston and it’s aquarium which opened in 2000 and we have yet to visit. I had checked the SC Aquarium’s web page for times and ticket prices, but neglected to get directions. How hard can it be? Bound to be signs directing visitors to it when coming into town, right? Wrong. After driving around town in frustration we decided to head out of town on I-26 and see if we could find a sign for it or a visitor’s center. Nope. After about 10 miles we got off at an exit and turned back around towards Charleston. Guess what? There are signs directing you to the aquarium if you come into the city on the Interstate.
Of the half dozen or so major aquariums Donna and I have visited this one ranks at the bottom. It was nice and all, but the big tank wasn’t that interesting and all the side exhibits didn’t really flow right. Everything seemed small, except for the gift shop, and some of the best things about the aquarium were the outside overlooks facing the new Cooper River bridge and the USS Yorktown at Patriot’s Point.
After our aquarium visit we walked the 6–8 blocks down to Market St and the main touristy section of town for a late lunch. The first place we came to was the Noisy Oyster and in we went. The food was good and it might b worth another visit if we ever get back this way just to see if they can get the food uniformly hot.
Our drive out of town was similar to the drive in as we made several wrong turns before finding our was back to I-26. I could have sworn Donna said she wanted to see the Citadel…
Started down, went up, back down, up again, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 469
 After a cold start the day warmed up nicely and the top stayed down from Savannah until we got to St. Simon’s Island.
We stopped in Savannah to look at the Roundhouse Railroad Museum. Very interesting place, but definitely a work in progress. Seeing as it only cost $4.25 per to get in we agreed that even though a lot of stuff is unfinished and you can’t get in any of the display railroad cars it still offered more bang for your buck than yesterday’s aquarium.
Lunch was a killer Greek salad and two slices of pizza at The Upper Crust in Richmond Hill, GA. Boy once you get 15 miles south of Savannah it is pretty much trailers and marsh along US17.
Saint Simon’s Island is kind of a quaint Hilton Head without all the golf course/plantation housing areas. It has a charm all it’s own and in what seems it’s best efforts are failing to hold on to it. There are creeping pockets of national chains of hotels and fast food with a lot of 3 story beach view blocking million dollar homes. We are staying at the Village Inn & Pub and it is nice and at this time of year quite empty, there are 5 cars in the parking area, counting the Emperor. With a recommendation to it from a co-worker and the desk clerk here, dinner was a small place called Barbara Jean’s. Good call. Food & service was excellent.
Started up, went down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 471
 Somewhere just north of St Augustine the Emperor glided past the 50k mark. I guess I was wrong the other day when I said there would be miles left to travel on the warranty when we ran out of time. Just the opposite, the 3 year/50k warranty has expired with three days left.
We drove out of Georgia on I-95, but 36 miles was all we could take. Just after stopping and getting some free OJ at the welcome center, we got off the ugly Interstate and picked up A1A. We then drove the whole way down to New Smyrna Beach following the coastal road. Sometimes beautiful, sometimes tacky, sometimes crowded and sometimes nearly empty, taking the slow road, if you have the time, is the way to go. It helped that it is off-season which kept the crowds way down. The big trouble for us was that the weather was way off-season. Average high this time of year along the middle Florida coast is is 75, but today is wasn’t even 55. Combined with the 10–20 MPH mean that the top was up all day and any ventures out to look at the beach and waves was very brief.
Even though I was running right at the speed limit, Johnny Law shadowed me for a couple mile when we drove through Daytona Beach.
Before dinner tonight we took a walk around a mile and a half circular boardwalk that is at the north end of New Smyrna Beach’s coast. It was a quick walk over about 50,000 pieces of treated wood. The sun had finally popped out from under the clouds, but it was too late to raise the temperature any as it traversed the last 10 degrees of it’s arc before disappearing beneath the horizon.
Food for today consisted of the “deluxe” continental breakfast at the Village Inn, bah. Lunch at another Barbara Jean’s (which turns out to be a mini chain of about 6 restaurants), very good, but finished off any possible crab cake cravings for a month or so. Dinner was at Vincente’s in New Smyrna Beach, a small Italian place whose baked ziti was just the right amount to split and very satisfying.
Started up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 471
 The trip from New Smyrna Beach to Palm City was rougher than we expected. To make some time and arrive early enough to go to the airport with sister Sandy to pick up brother Steve, we just went ahead and got on I-95. It went pretty well for a while, but then the traffic density picked up as the morning wore on, so we decided to get over and finish the last 30 miles on US1. Big mistake, traffic was worse. It ended up taking us 3–1/2 hours to go the last 130 miles of our trip.
We are here now and the second order of business (after lunch) was to wash some clothes. Sandy and Paul have a nice super capacity front loading washer that we could stuff all of the last three days worth of dirty laundry in in one load. And when the cycle is done you know your clothes are clean because the machine tells you so by illuminating this handy little light.
Started up, went down, back up, down again, up again, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 475
 Happy Thanksgiving. This morning we went to a little local park to watch Kyle & Lee play in the sand and use the vacant half-pipe of the skate park as a slide. Brian married Donna. Donna has a sister Sandy. Sandy married Paul. Paul has an older brother Charles. Charles has a son named Tom. Tom is the father of Kyle & Lee. Does that make me Kyle & Lee’s great uncle-in-law?
In the great American tradition of eat ‘til you drop on this day, I had breakfast of cereal and Danish at the hotel and then when we got to Sandy’s house I had a second breakfast of fruit and egg casserole. The parade was watched while nibbling on chocolate candies. Now the football game is on and the vegetables with ranch dip have made an appearance. The turkey is scheduled for a 3:30 date with serving platter.
Enjoy.
Started up, went down, went up, back down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 479
I know someone who will never get a flu shot again. Tuesday before last Donna got a flu shot at work. Everyone told her it was a good idea because even though she is long finished with chemo and radiation, her immune system is probably in a weakened state. Nice theory, lousy execution.
The two days following the shot she felt pretty crappy and once that kind of cleared up she developed a cough. The cough is still hanging around 9 days later. Even with taking cough medicine the cough has been keeping her from getting a good night’s sleep. Without a good night’s sleep Donna has been feeling a little out of it. Not feeling up to spending 12 hours riding in the car on Saturday to get home, after lunch today we decided to head back to the hotel, pack our bags and get a few hours head start.
Our northward momentum petered out just south of Ocala, FL. When we unpacked the luggage tonight we realized that I was a couple pants shy a load (and a sweatshirt and some loungewear.) Ooops, Donna had packed the suitcases back in Stuart by emptying only the two top drawers of the dresser in our hotel room, not realizing that I had put some stuff in the bottom one too.
I called the hotel and explained the predicament to the clerk and she said she would leave a note for housekeeping to bring the clothes to the front desk. I then called my brother-in-law and begged him to go over to Stuart tomorrow and retrieve the baggage. I expressed the importance of getting these items back because one of them is my favorite Levi 501 jeans. These are the ones so are so broken in they are getting holes in places that make them almost unsuitable for public wearing, but the still have a long life ahead of them as “knock about the house” wear.
Started up, went down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 481
 After fifteen hundred fourteen miles in six and a half days, we are home again.
When we left last Sunday we ate breakfast on the way out of town at Aiken’s New Moon Cafe and as a nice bookend to the trip, our last meal on the road was a quesadilla for lunch at Statesboro, Georgia’s The Blue Moon. While I’m not really ready to call it a theorem, it is definitely a postulate: Moon=Good Food — to wit, any restaurant in the downtown area of a small to medium sized town with the word Moon in it’s name will serve good food in a funky hip kind of style.
Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 482
 Ate the end of yesterday’s drive we were one mile short of 1515 for the trip and the Emperor was just two miles shy of the 51k mark. We took care of the short coming on the way to the store for our weekly grocery shopping. Seems like we must be driving the heck out of this car recently as the mileage milestones are coming fast and furious. 51,000 — 11/26 • 50,000 — 11/21 • 49,000 — 11/08 • 48,000 — 10/28 Last November 14th we were just at 31,000…
Donna’s cough was a little better today and her voice didn’t crack but once. She still needs to talk to the doctor tomorrow because she should be getting over this by now. Of course the reason she might be feeling better is she has passed along some of those flu germs to me. Started feeling a little off last night and continued on to today. No cough or fever, but body aches, headache and a general out of sorts feeling. We have stayed pretty much indoors all day and both of us have caught naps on the couch twice. We are going to try and get to bed a little early too.
The photo was taken by Donna’s brother Steve as we got ready to leave for home on Friday afternoon.
Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 483
I took about 114 photos on our trip to Florida and back, but most of them are dreck. The ones I took inside the aquarium came out blurry or dark. Because a flash would just reflect back off the glass I turned it off, so in the hand held shots (I steadied the camera against something) the fish appear as blurs because the little buggers won’t sit still. I took a few at the railroad roundhouse museum, but the light was wrong or the caution tape keeping you out of certain places was prominent in the frame… I think if I have ten worth posting in a gallery I’d be lucky, so I probably won’t bother.
Donna had a list of state parks that we were going to use as breaks by visiting on the trip down, but the weather was so cloudy, cold and windy that when we did venture out of the car, it was not for very long. On the way back the weather was a little nicer, so we did take a walk around a park in northern Florida. The most interesting photo from that was this tree that had a whole flock of woodpeckers on it:
Continue reading Florida Trip Photos
 Here is a photo from the trip that with a little help almost isn’t dreck. It was underexposed and not very interesting, so I cranked up the contrast which washed out the colors. I then ran it through a sepia tone filter and viola, an old locomotive.
Most of the photos from the railroad roundhouse would look improved once run through a sepia filter. You know, I think if I work at it I can get 20 decent photos for an online vacation gallery, just don’t hold your breath waiting for it, OK?
It took me a couple hours of starring at the paperwork on my desk before I could decipher where I left off 10 days ago, but once I got my bearings it was off to the races and I had a fairly productive day. I hope the company doesn’t expect that everyday now…
Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 484
 …but a new place to put my old Japanese license plate.
A co-worker has sort of inherited a Miata from a relative. It is a ’91 or ’92 and it had a bra on the front of it when he got it. Trouble was the bra was right over the top of the front license plate bracket. It was that way either to try and cover up the fact that the nose had dimples in it from the bracket being pushed into it or it was to cover that ugly bracket and it thereby caused the dimples. He removed the bra, but had to leave the brackets on to camouflage the dents. I told him if he was interested I had an idea to help cover those dents, he could have my replica Japanese license plate and mount it on the brackets. The holes I had put in the plate were non standard, so he would have to drill two new ones for mounting. When he did he could put them in spots that raise the plate and the dents would no longer visible.
Over the Thanksgiving weekend he put the plate on. For whatever reason he didn’t put the holes in the right spots because the top of the brackets and the dents are still visible. Sigh. I still think it looks good on the front of his car, but it would have looked a lot better if it was a touch higher. I guess if it really doesn’t matter to him, who am I to whine.
Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 486
Finished up the images for my 2007 Emperor Calendar. It is titled Must Have Been Those 400 Acid Trips I Took because I have taken some of my photos of the Miata and ran them through a few different Paint Shop Pro filters to give them that slightly twisted look. See the Miata — 2007 Calendar gallery on the side bar a preview.
Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 488
Uncle Brian is not feeling too well right now. Blogging will be suspended for a short time.…
Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 490
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The picture in last Wednesday’s post was on TV. After I showed the image to a couple folks at work I was told I should sent it in to the local morning weather guy because every morning he shows a picture that a viewer has sent in. I emailed it to him on Friday and he replied that it would get shown on Monday at 5:15 and 6:15AM. When Donna asked if I wanted to get up a little earlier so I could see the picture, I told her no, I’d already seen it.
