Took this picture on my way in the door to work today:
The security guard didn’t try and stop me.
Practically every year since 1992 the folks at Mazda have released a special edition Miata. Usually unique in color and loaded with extras. Some of these are particularly sought after, especially the 1993 Limited Edition black with red interior and the 1999 10th Anniversary models. For 2007 there has been an SE in Japan and England, but not the US. It is similar in color to my car, but more like the 2000SE with a dark purple exterior and light beige interior.
The Japanese market is lucky enough to get a lot of other stuff that we don’t get over here. The best is something called Web Tune where you can order your car online after customizing it with all kinds of goodies that you can’t get here.
I found an image of a Mazdaspeed MzTuned Roadster on the web somewhere and it has been my PC’s wallpaper for a while. The car is in silver and it is kind of boring, so during a dull moment today I played around coloring it. They have made Miatas in a bunch of colors including a plethora of blues, several reds, a bunch of greens, most primary colors, including three shades of white, but they have never offered any kind of beige. I think this color I call Champagne would look pretty good on a Miata. Maybe it will be next year’s special edition color?
Tonight was the May meeting of the MMC, but at the last meeting they though it would be a good idea to meet at 7:00PM. This is later than Donna and I like to eat so we stopped on the way home from work and picked up our usual 14″ pie at Ferrando’s.
I think they have adjusted the crust to something thinner than they used to do, it was still good pizza, but slightly different. We ate 2 pieces each finishing half the pie. The second half is earmarked for Saturday lunch.
The most exciting thing that happened today was I finally, nearly 3 weeks after the fact, completed all the captions of the 48 photos in the Northeast Trip 2007 gallery.
The second most exciting thing is I’ve completed my second shelf of CD burning with Deep Purple’s Made in Japan disc. If Lynyrd Skynyrd ‘s Free Bird is considered the Redneck’s National Anthem, Smoke on the Water is definitely the Stoner’s.
We ended up at the grand hotel
It was empty cold and bare
But with the rolling truck stones thing just outside
Making our music there
With a few red lights and a few old beds
We make a place to sweat
No matter what we get out of this
I know well never forget
Smoke on the water, fire in the sky
Fifteen hundred fifty-five files in 207 directories taking up 5.66 gigabytes.
Jerry the Condo King called me about a week ago to ask advice about buying a bicycle. Not for him, but for his mid-30’s daughter. She is mostly a runner, but has enjoyed borrowing his balloon tired bike and speeding around the bike paths on HHI. She mentioned graduating to a road bike and he said if you join the local bike club he’d buy her a bike. Little did he know. He check a local bike store and was flabergasted that an entry level hybrid/cross bike was $750. I suggested he check with the local Club and see if anyone had a used bike for sale. Once you get into it, it is like anything, you keep upgrading equipment until you can’t afford it any more, usually long eclipsing your competency level.
When I told Donna about Jerry’s call, she said, “What about my old road bike?” I didn’t even think about that. We both have fairly decent road bikes that were near top of the line about a dozen years ago that we don’t really ride anymore. I called Jerry back and asked how tall his daughter was. Five foot three. Bingo, Donna is 5′-2″, the bike would fit. I emailed him pictures and told him it she was interested, for $200 he could have it. Last Saturday he drove up from Hilton Head with two crisp Ben Franklins and drove home with a 1994 Bridgestone RB-1/7 with upgrade STI shifting. I tried to foist my road bike off on the daughter’s boyfriend, but he wasn’t biting. If you know anyone who might be interested in a 12 or 13 year-old Bianchi with full Ultegra 600 stuff and a cool dark purple/silver paint job let me know. I don’t know the frame size off the top of my head, but if you are 5′-9 to 6′-0 it should fit. $200 +shipping if you can’t drive here to get it.
We have two older (from the early 80s) bikes that we used to use as commuter bikes that we haven’t used for 5 or 6 years now. Each spring we think, maybe we’ll start back to riding to work and never do. Trouble is that they are so old (even though they have seen some upgrades over the years) that they are hardly worth much at all, but they are perfectly serviceable as commuters, but talk about a limited market. If I could get a hundred dollars a piece for them I can’t say as I’d be happy but it would be better than them hanging in my garage serving as spider homes.
We really have found a home on the tandem. Went for a little 11 mile ride this evening at dusk and it was very enjoyable. We are even concocting a plan on how to commute on the bike for two. I bought a front low rack for panniers and some extenders to retro fit an older rear rack off the internet last night from JANDD Mountaineering. When they get here we will be able to carry two sets of bags, one set each and then add a trunk bag for lunches.
Oh yeah, we had the breakfast of bicycle champions this morning too. Hardee’s Biscuit and Gravy for her and 2 Sausage and Egg Biscuit for me. We shared a water and order of Hash Rounds.
I posted another email joke forwarded from Mark (I think that needs an acronym – EJFFM), so if you like quasi-dirty humor, click on the Joke category for a look at it.
A wedding took place just outside St. John’s, Newfoundland. In keeping with tradition, everyone got extremely drunk and the bride’s and groom’s families had a storming row. They began wrecking the reception room and generally kicking the living daylights out of each other.
The police got called in to break up the fight and the following week, all members of both families appeared in St. John’s court. The fight continued in the courtroom until the Judge finally brought calm with the use of his gavel, shouting, “Silence in the Court!”.
The courtroom goes silent and Paddy, the Best Man, stood up and says, “Your Honour, I was the Best Man at the wedding and I think I should explain what happened”.
The Judge agrees and asks Paddy to take the stand.
Paddy began his explanation by telling the court that it is tradition at a St. John’s wedding that the Best Man gets the first dance with the bride.
The judge says, “Okay. Continue.”
“Well, said Paddy, “after I had finished the first dance, the music kept going, so I danced to the second song, and after that the music kept going and I was dancing to the third song when all of a sudden – the groom leapt over the table, ran towards us and gave the bride an unmerciful kick right between her legs.”
Shocked, the judge instantly responded, “Lord Jesus that must have hurt!”
HURT?” Paddy replies, “HE BROKE THREE OF MY FINGERS !!!!!!”
The Emperor has been surviving on sponge baths, AKA Meguiars Quik Detailer, for a while now, but today after work I gave him a proper washing. Then I decided to lay a coat of wax on there too. I used some Meguiars paste cleaning wax I had under the cabinet. Looks a whole lot better now, but the finish doesn’t feel baby butt smooth. Maybe tomorrow when I get home from work I’ll put another layer of wax on. I have a bottle of something else under there, I think it is called Black Magic and maybe that is what I used last time. If one layer is good, two have got to be better. Right?
While I was taking off the wax, getting it off around the edges of the chrome Mazda logo on the back end, it came loose and one side fell down. The badge is held on by 2 pins and one was broke, so I pulled the badge off the car. There are usually these fancy one way push washers on the pins, but there wasn’t one on the non broken pin and there was some adhesive behind the lettering holding the badge on. What the heck, I might as well take off the MX-5 Miata badge on the other side too. On my ’95 the Mazda was held on by two pins, like this one, and the Miata was just held on by double stick tape. I went in the house and got a piece of dental floss to “saw” through the adhesive. The floss broke three times in about the same spot. That is when I realized on the ’03 the MX-5 Miata badge was held on by two pins as well. I wrapped a screwdriver in a rag and pried off the badge. Turns out it was held on by no adhesive and only one push on washer.
I now have 2 small holes on both sides of the license plate. With the dark color car they are hardly noticeable, but I think I may fill them in with something and then use touch up paint to hide them better. When I debadged the rear on the ’95 I replaced both badges with hand cut replicas made of blue reflective vinyl. The blue on blue was very subtle in the day but really stood out at night when headlights hit them.
Now, as I write this, I know why the badges were held on so haphazardly. The body shop weasels did it when they repaired my little trunk bender from last year. The adjuster put in the cost of new badges when he did the estimate. Satcher Ford’s Body Shop reused the old badges and charged the insurance company for new ones.
We bought this morning’s breakfast from the New Moon Cafe after yesterday’s hike, a low fat Blueberry muffin for her and a Raspberry Coconut muffin for him (which we ended up splitting 50-50.)
After breakfast we tried to make up for the last 3 weeks on non-activity in the Post Office quest by heading to the capital city of the Great State of South Carolina and getting a photo of all 13 POs. Mission accomplished. The only Post Office not accounted for that lists Columbia as the city is the one on the Army base, Fort Jackson. (They have an Open House on the 18 & 19 of May for Armed Forces Day so we might try and sneak in then.)
A few years back a favored Sunday lunch spot was an Italian fast food chain called Fazoli’s, but they closed up shop here in Aiken and we have missed eating their food quite often since then. Well, Columbia has two Fazoli’s and both are close to some of our destination Post Offices, so we thought it might be a treat to eat there for lunch. I guess our memories have been colored by time (or maybe it was this particular restaurant) because it didn’t seem worth the trip. The Twice Baked Ziti with Hearty Meat Sauce was good and the bread sticks were practically dripping in butter, but the salad and the dressing left a lot to be desired. I had a fountain Coke and Donna had water.
Five out of six isn’t half bad. As a matter of fact it is 83% good. After looking lackluster on Fox yesterday the FRS came out swinging against the dreaded Yankees today and came out on top of a 7 to 4 score. Big Papi contributed a homer, as did the coming out of his funk Manny Rameriz, but those guys are expected to smack the long ball. A nice bonus was a homer from our utility infielder Alex Cora. Now we have 19 warm up games until we come back to the “House That Ruth Built” on the 21st of May.