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When Mazda introduced the car there was already a national Club in the works. The crown jewel benefit of belonging to the national Club has always been a glossy full-color magazine published quarterly and now bi-monthly. When I bought my first Miata in November 1989 I received Issue #2 free as an enticement to join the Club. The magazine was chock full of stories and letters dealing with how-tos and best of all ads for all kinds of geegaws to make your Miata faster, prettier or just different. I ordered Issue #1 and the collection started.

It has been a tumultuous last couple of years with the magazine changing hands and the first Club folding because the “President” and founder were cooking the books. They almost took the Magazine with them, but the Miata community got behind the publisher and saved the day. And now with Mazda behind it, we have a new Club and it’s members get the magazine.

My membership expired in March, and I don’t plan on renewing it. I’ve gotten the last 2 magazines anyway, but I don’t enjoy it or need it anymore. The informative letters have been replaced by the internet, the ads with cool products have been replaced by bookmarks to websites and the stories are no longer a mix of fiction and product reviews, but seem to be just quasi-ads to upgrade to high performance turbos or $2000 big brake kits. I’m sure there is a market and clamor for this stuff, but it is not me.

I guess in the 13 years I’ve owned a Miata, I have changed and the magazine has changed, so it is not for me anymore. I just hate to see the Magazine collection stop.

The medical insurance plan at work has it where if you have your lab work done by a company called LabOne it costs you nothing out of pocket. There is a local lab (Mullins) that acts as a drop off point, they forward the samples off to who knows where for LabOne processing.

A couple of month’s ago I went in to my primary physician (and again, it costs nothing to see him) to have an ugly little mole-like thing on my forehead looked at. He removed it and said he would send it off to the lab for analysis. Unfortunately he didn’t label the sample as LabOne and the local lab ran the sample.

In case you care it was nothing, but that is not why I writing this.

Mullins Lab is not in our circle of friends, so when Mullins billed my insurance, my insurance said no money for you. I have a $200 yearly deductible normally, but for out of service work it is $400, so it denied the claim. Now I owe Mullins Lab $160 for the work. Well I figured the doctor messed up he should pay.

Last week I mailed him a letter outlining what had happened and since it was his error he should pay me the $160. Got a certified letter from the doctor today for the $160. The contents of the letter told me that I was no longer welcome as a patient any more. He would treat emergencies for the next 10 days, but after that, too bad. Just tell him where to send my records.

Did he object to the word error? Oh, well, got to start hunting a new primary doc tomorrow.

We spent last night in a brand new Holiday Inn Express in Anderson, SC. They put us in room 315. It wasn’t until we were leaving the next morning that I noticed that the room next door was 311. In this place all the odd numbered rooms were on one side of the hall and all the even numbers were on the other. That means we were really in room 313. Would they have gotten complaints about staying in that number room?

Tonight and for the next 3 nights were are staying at the Holiday Inn Choo-Choo Hotel in downtown Chattanooga. Our room number is 1015. In this building all the rooms are on one side of the hall and are numbered consecutively. The room to our left is 1014 and to the left of that is 1013. Go figure.

Just on the infinitesimal chance that someone who is reading this, is considering having some screen printing done and is thinking of having The T-Shirt Shoppe in Aiken, South Carolina do the work, DON’T.

Two reasons:
1) He will put a little change, barely noticeable twist on your design. The only person who will see it will be the designer of the shirt. I can’t be sure of this, but knowing this type of individual, it is probably so that if for what ever reason this design takes off and sells millions, he can come back and demand a cut of the profits, because, he’ll claim it wouldn’t have sold as well if his twist was not there.

2) He will convince you to pay up front by offering a “discount” and once he has the money he will only print the shirts under pressure. Gentle reminders don’t work, you have to go and demand your shirts on such & such day. Then when you go to pick them up, he will invariably be printing right then and you’ll end up watching him print the last of your shirts.

I know this because I have had a first hand experience of #1 twice and #2 once and now the President of the Master’s Miata Club can say he has experienced #2.

I can’t remember why I rented it, must have been a fawning review on some site or something, but Rock Star has been sitting on my coffee table for about a month. This is a bad sign, since it has been laying there ready to be watched, The Harder They Come, Apocalypse Now, Heist, Blazing Saddles and The Center of the World have been watched and returned to Netflix. Seeing as it was the only one in the house at the moment, I decided to watch it. I watched the little 10 minute behind the scenes thing while I waited on Donna to join me. I almost didn’t watch the movie – Wednesday’s Law & Order was cued up in the VCR – but I said I’ll give it 15 minutes. Mark Wahlberg with long hair seemed to old for the part, and in spite of my eagerness to bail, we watched the whole movie. Hints of Spinal Tap, combined with a heaping dose of irony and lots of 80’s metal music overcame the tired ass plot line. In the end I enjoyed the 103 minutes spent with it.

I feel so cheap, so used. Manipulated by the Hollywood machine. I should have been watching IFC Fridays on Bravo, but instead I watched a lamo movie and liked it.