There Goes Another Year Shot To Hell

Tomorrow is New Year’s Eve. My wife and I will celebrate it in our usual fashion, in bed by 10:00 PM and we’ll try and sleep through the fireworks. This is the first place we have lived, and we’ve lived a lot of places, that celebrates the New Year by firing off bottle rockets and noisy-whizzing-spinning things. Every year we exchange gifts with our friends with the 2 kids we baby-sit for. For like the past 4 or 5 years the boys have given me an X-Files calendar. This year I got a page-a-day calendar entitled “The 365 Stupidest Thing Ever Said.” Another year further removed from the death of the series and merchandise for the show is no longer a viable commodity. In another 5 years the re-runs will fade from cable. In ten years, the last stop before oblivion is Nick-At-Late-Night for one run through of all the episodes.

Dust Off

It’s Sunday what did you expect. I went outside early to get the 2 morning newspapers and in the beautiful 60 something degree weather went for a couple miles on rollerblades. Sitting on the stairs in the garage removing my wheeled shoes I couldn’t help but notice that the car was pretty dusty. So I took the California Duster to the dash and then the outside of the car too. Less dusty and it will have to do until a couple more weeks. No drive today, so the Miata will “reward” me with some lifter tapping tomorrow when I start it up for the ride to work. It is time to change the oil and I’ll try and remember to get a filter when I’m over at Rader using the postage meter to mail the Master’s Miata Club’s newsletter on Friday. Which reminds me, I better get busy writing that sucker.

Started down, still down.
Top Transitions since 02/02/02: 352

Shoot, I Did It Again

Yesterday we were in the mall as my wife and her mother were hunting Christmas bargains. I was killing time waiting for them to finish by digging around on the bargain tables in the bookstore, nothing better than buying a hardcover book for less than the price of a paperback. I had some lawyer book, not a Grisham, already picked out when I spotted a Robert B. Paker book. Flipped open the cover and noted it was a Sunny Randall novel, so I took it instead. Wasn’t until I got home and started reading the book that I realized I had already read it. I hate when I do that and I do it a lot. Fortunately my short-term memory is shot from all the dope I smoked as a teenager and while I know I’ve read it, I can’t for the life of me remember how it all shakes out.

Snick-Snick

Put the Short Shifter Kit in today and it went surprisingly well. The upper boot was not torn so that was a relief, but I’m still running on the old turret oil….maybe at the Club’s Tech Day in February. Lowered the height by about a 1/2″ looks good and if it affected shifting effort I don’t notice and for that matter the shifter throw doesn’t seem any shorter either. Worth the $120? Not really.

While I was in the mood I decided to fix the flashing 3rd tail light. It is a wire that keeps breaking right at the trunk hinge joint. I added a 4 inch piece of wire to the repair which I hope will alleviate the bending at one spot that has doomed this connection from the get go. I also took this opportunity to move the relay back to the end of the trunk next to the light itself. I added the flasher unit when the wire first broke, instead of splicing it back together I just stuck the flasher in between the break. This in retrospect was a bad move, because that made the flasher hang right near a short tunnel to the interior and consequently the click-clicking could be heard when the brake was being applied. Now it is silent once again in the cockpit at stoplights.

Started down, still down.
Top Transitions since 02/02/02: 352

Updates

5 Minute Infomercial – Stumbled on the 30 minute version of the very annoying infomercial for the Ionic Breeze this morning while laying in bed channel surfing until I absolutely had to get up to go to the bathroom.

What Color Is Your Pee? – Everyday is like St. Patrick’s Day now. It is a loverly shade of green, like I’ve had way too many green beers…

No Task Is Too Large… – I have at least straightened out all the IDv3 tags on the Christmas MP3s, still need to weed out the marginal ones. I did meld my 2 different version of My Favorites folders (home & work) and delete a few duplicates and dead links, but it has ballooned to 533 links in 42 folders!

5 Minute Infomercials

My wife was watching some of a marathon of yet another sneaky redecorating show on the Discover Channel, Surprise by Design. At about at the 50 minute mark of the show they went to a commercial (nothing unusual there.) The commercial was for The Sharper Image’s Ionic Breeze Quadra Silent Air Purifier (nothing unusual there.) The difference was it looked like an infomercial with the snappy pitchman, the perky woman hype-cheerleader and the testimonials from users. Plus it just kept on going. At first I figured it was one minute commercial (which in themselves seem long in today’s 15 second spots) but no it went on some more. I’m guessing 5 minutes but it could have been three. We no longer have the time for whole 1/2 hour infomercials, 5 minutes is enough. I only wish that what I saw was 1/6 as annoying as 30 minute jobs.

Like A Cat With The Mange

Went to Sam Goody this evening to return the M*A*S*H mistake. Since I have no receipt, I have to accept a gift card. Whilst the manager is helping others (he has to OK the form) I wander the store looking for stuff I might want. I find nothing, for three reasons; a) I’m particular (some might say peculiar) in my tastes, 2) I live in a small town so we have what amounts to a 3/4 scale store and III) it is 2 days after Christmas so everything is pretty well picked over (the shelves were full of empty patches like a cat with the mange.) Good news is that the gift card is good at SunCoast movie stores too, of which they have one in the Augusta Mall, so it seems like my Saturday has developed a plan. Almost as an afterthought the manager tells me that I can use the gift card online….wait a minute, I don’t have to drive to Augusta at all, I can shop for movies in my underwear! I burned up all but $2.04 of the card’s value by buying M*A*S*H and Ronin just a few minutes ago. 🙂

Started up, went down, still down.
Top Transitions since 02/02/02: 352