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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Miles Per Gallon

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30,000 Particles Of Dust

Con­struc­tion here con­tin­ues at a slow pace while the Pur­ple Whale racks up miles at a fast pace, 30,000 miles in about 22 months.

Because the kitchen is a mess and unus­able yes­ter­day we had a rare week­day tri­fecta of din­ing out. Break­fast at Dunkin Donuts, natch. Lunch at Betsy’s on the Cor­ner and din­ner at Cracker Barrel.

29,000 Palm Trees

The Purple Whale Goes To Sea

As soon as we got into Florida we took the sec­ond exit off I-95 and got on A1A head­ing east towards the ocean where we had a pic­nic lunch on the beach in the city of Fer­nan­d­ina Beach. Because we were not in any hurry we just stayed right on A1A all the way to Day­tona Beach Shores where we are spend­ing the night over look­ing the Atlantic Ocean from the sixth floor of the Hol­i­day Inn Express (mmm, cin­na­mon buns.)

In the early part of the trip along the coast we get a very short (0.9 mile) ferry ride across the St Johns River between Fort George Island and May­port Vil­lage. It departs every 30 min­utes on the 1/4 & 3/4 hour and costs a whop­ping six bucks. We arrived, pulling up behind 2 wait­ing cars, with 6 min­utes to sail­ing, talk about great timing.

Just north of Day­tona Beach the Pur­ple Whale passed the 29,000 mile mark.

28,000 Mental Lapses

Ran out to the store this evening to pick up a cou­ple pre­scrip­tions. When I parked the car in the dri­ve­way on my return I noticed the odome­ter on the Pur­ple Whale read 28045. Huh? I passed the twenty eight thou­sand mile mark and didn’t blog about it when it happened.

To the store and back was 2 miles. The round trip to work and back today another 13. That takes us to 28030. Yesterday’s round trip to work was another 13, 28017. New Year’s Day we did a small trip to the BBHIW, a friend’s house and out to eat. That was prob­a­bly 8 miles, so I’m think­ing we were then at 28009 the morn­ing of 1/1/13. This means the Sonata crossed the mark on the way home from work on the last day of last year.

Only we didn’t take it to work that day we drove the Miata. That means it hap­pened over the week­end, crap, what did we do. On Sun­day I think all we did was gro­cery shop. On Sat­ur­day we did some dri­ving around while granite/tile shop­ping, so it had to have hap­pened then. As long gro­cery shop was all we did on Sun­day. I’m going with Saturday.

27,000 Falling Leaves

Its fall, quite lit­er­ally around here. Sun­day of Thanks­giv­ing week­end we raked up all the leaves shed buy the dozen or so hard­wood trees on our lot. A lit­tle less than a week later we had to rake again, this time we just did the front yard.

Less than 4 days later, upon our return from Hilton Head, it was hard to tell we had done any clean up at all. So this time we opted to do the “Let’s At Least Make It Look Like Some­one Lives Here” min­i­mal sweep, I took out the leaf blower and forced about 27,000 leaves off the side­walk and dri­ve­way into the street.

Dur­ing that return drive from Hilton Head, the Pur­ple Whale rode through its twenty-seven thou­sandth mile.

26,000 Granules of Sugar

We took a lit­tle trip to Flo­rence to visit Cousin Lau­rie and cur­rent beau Harold. With one cup of cof­fee each for Lau­rie and I, plus a refill or two, between us, we used 8 lit­tle creamer con­tain­ers and about 26,000 gran­ules of real sugar. The lit­tle bowl for the creamer cups was empty and the sweet­ener packet holder was left only hold­ing those blue, yel­low or pink pack­ets of syn­thetic stuff.

Maybe because it is past the sum­mer I-95 Florida tourist time and not late enough for the I-95 Snow­birds, the Cracker Bar­rel was not really busy. As a con­se­quence of this we ended up with an overly atten­tive waiter which became a source of both amuse­ment and irritation.

But some­how atten­tive didn’t trans­late into effi­cient. We didn’t get our food to us in a very timely man­ner, it seemed to take longer than usual and when it arrived noth­ing was out­right cold, but noth­ing was really hot, just warm. Plus Harold’s break­fast meal came with­out any bread (every­thing at Cracker comes with bis­cuits), when he asked for some toast, it came very quickly, so much so that it almost didn’t look toasted. No but­ter or jelly came along with it though. Now, sud­denly, the guy that was ask­ing how every­thing was, seem­ingly between bites, was nowhere to be found.

After we parted ways, Donna and I did a lit­tle geo­caching (9 for 9) on one of the sec­tions of Florence’s wooded trails that is near the Mall. On the drive home the Pur­ple Whale passed by the 26,000 mile mark.

25,000 Cars A Minute

We pulled off I-95 in near Mel­bourne, Florida to do a dri­ver change. We turn right and make a u-turn to stop in a spot on the left hand side of the road. This allows Donna to just turn right out of the park­ing and turn right again to get back going southbound.

At the inter­sec­tion at the bot­tom of the off ramp there is a red light. No prob­lem we should be able to go right on red. Ha. It is a very busy road and we watch 25,000 cars go by until a light turns red some­where back to our left. I zip across 4 lanes to get in one of the two left turn lanes and get caught at another light. We wait for another 25,000 cars to go every which way until it is our turn. Of course to two left turn lanes promptly turn into one lane cre­at­ing con­fu­sion and jock­ey­ing for posi­tion. After nav­i­gat­ing that mess we find our­selves in a giant Tar­get park­ing lot. I make a left and then another left to head back out to the road where we run into a stop sign and no place to pull over to swap dri­vers. We do it any­way and rush through the pro­ce­dure. Only to have to wait at the stop sign for another 25,000 cars to pass by before a big enough gap appears for Donna to pull out and get on the Inter­state. What takes 3 min­utes on I-95 in SC or GA takes 15 min­utes in FL. If Donna’s sis­ter didn’t live in this state we would never get any­where near it.

On I-95 near Fla­gler Beach, Florida the Pur­ple Whale passed the 25,000 mile mark. Since we bought the car we have been dri­ving the heck out of it, in the five hun­dred and fifty eight days of own­er­ship we have aver­aged 46.5 miles a day. We only live 6 miles from work…

24,000 Round Bales

Some­where close to the Mall of Geor­gia the Pur­ple Whale passed the 24,000 mile mark.