Month: July 2003

W & L Trident Sweatshirt

The first year we visited our friends after they moved to Lexington, VA I stopped into a local screenprint/sporting clothing store, Sayre, and picked up a navy blue hooded sweatshirt with a large white Washington & Lee trident logo on the front. I literally wore that sweatshirt out in the ensuing 5 years. Every time we have been back since, I stop in and look for a replacement sweatshirt, with no luck yet. Every time I ask about when they might have some in, the response is always the same, “We will be getting some new stuff in for the fall/winter/spring, check back then.” And every time I leave empty-handed and disappointed. This time I went ahead and bought a white T with the logo on the back, but it is just not the same. Sigh…

Freewayless Friday

We tried to avoid the Interstate today on our way to Lexington, VA. Mainly because that is our preferred way to travel, but we also hoped to avoid the construction delays we seemed to encounter every 50 miles. Nice try. We found delays on the back roads as well, from slow drivers to lane closings with flagmen because of grass mowing. Turns out we made the best time on a road we normally avoid. Although beautiful to travel, the 45 MPH speed limit of the Blue Ridge Parkway usually means slow forward progress. I’m sure we weren’t going as fast as Interstate travel, but today compared to the trip thus far, we were flying.

Spent the afternoon wandering the quaint downtown of Lexington. I of course was hoping to replace my long deceased Washington & Lee trident sweatshirt while Stuart (the HS senior son of our friend) was looking for a feather for his cap, literally. Claire (the college senior daughter of our friend) was there too, but no fun at all because her allergies were in high gear and could do nothing but sniffle and wipe her watery eyes.

When Sally (friend) arrived home from work we had just enough time for her to change before we headed out for Fridays Alive in Davidson Park, a short 5 block walk from their house. Tonight’s free music was provided by the Ammon/Bassett Band. They played what we in South Carolina call “beach music,” you may call it 50’s Rhythm ‘n Blues. We hung around for about 1/2 of the three hour show. Just about as much of that as a person could stand, unless of course you live to shag.

Purchased Today: $10.50 in gas
Money spent since 03/03/03: $897.13
Started up, went down, went up, went down, up, down, back up, still up.
Top Transitions since 02/02/03: 160

Fuddrucker’s For Dinner

Way back in the 80’s when they first started appearing on the landscape, Fuddruckers were the be-all-to-end-all of hamburger places. I remember when the first opened a store in New Orleans there were signs posted outside that said, No Photography Allowed, so no one would steal their decorating idea of leaving empty food cases arranged around the place.

Well it is twenty years later and the bloom is off the rose. The burger I was served was good, but not up to my memory and certainly not the “Worlds Best” with which they billed themselves. Which is why perhaps some truth nazis made them paint over that particular phrase on the awning outside the door.

If you click on the link to the company’s site you will find that they still use the slogan “Worlds Best Hamburgers” in their logos and I presume advertising. The one we ate at in Columbia, SC looked way run down and probably hasn’t been changed or updated since it opened. Makes me want to go to a different one and see if perhaps it was just this particular restaurant, but I probably won’t as there is usually plenty of other places that I would rather eat.

Thursday Thunder

For the second day in a row I put the top up with less than an hour of the work day left. Unlike yesterday, this time it was a very good thing. It poured. It was a mini gale. At quitting time it was still coming down very hard, but because we were leaving town to go on our long weekend we left promptly, instead of the sensible wait it out we would normally take. We got soaked walking to the car, even with an umbrella.

Maybe later I will enjoy the irony of this evening’s drive to Statesville, NC, but right now I am cursing the North & South Carolina Departments of Transportation. As we traveled north on I-77 towards Charlotte, we couldn’t help but complain about the sorry state the pavement was in. The concrete was full of potholes and big cracks caused by the passage of huge number of 18-wheelers and heavy SUVs not considered in the initial design studies. Plus, where they had made an attempt to fix these defects, they did a lousy and/or cheap job, making it no better and sometimes worse than before. Where we could get away with it, we drove in the smoother, because of less traffic use, left lane. Later in the drive while in NC we encountered 2 places where the Interstate was narrowed down to one lane which caused a 20 minute 1st gear creep to cover 2 miles. The reason that they had one lane closed was of course to repair the very damaged road surface we had been complaining of earlier.

Purchased Today: $12.50 in gas
Money spent since 03/03/03: $886.63
Started down, went up, went down, back up, still up.
Top Transitions since 02/02/03: 154

Wednesday Work

Going away for a few days starting right after work tomorrow. Burgular Notice! My mother-in-law is staying home. She is pretty good about aiming for an extremity with the shotgun – that is when she remembers to put her glasses on first.

So tonight I worked on the car topping off the fluids (oil, gas, coolant & windshield washer) and filling the tires up to 35 PSI. Our bags are packed and all we are doing is coming home, changing and heading out – destination Thursday evening is Statesville, NC. Friday morning we finish the trip to Lexington, VA. We are staying there until Sunday morning when we will drive the 8 straight hours to get home. Don’t worry I’ll analog blog the highlights so I can fill you in later.

Purchased Today: $0
Money spent since 03/03/03: $874.13
Started down, went up, went down, still down.
Top Transitions since 02/02/03: 151

Sunday in Aiken

Just another spectacular day in my home town. We (Donna, I, Fellow ABCers Chuck and Cindy) went for a 25 mile bicycle ride this morning. Got at it early to avoid the traffic and the heat. The sky was beautiful, in that religious cliched sort of way, sporadic big clouds covering the morning sun, but allowing streaks of sunshine through to illuminate the green fields. Just awesome.

The rest of the middle of the day was spent indoors in front of the computer. I finished up the mix for my upcoming CD swap. It is supposed to be “music that makes you hot. Music that makes you sweat. Music that turns you on.” I don’t know any of the music titles from those cheesy porn movies of my youth, so I made up a mix of songs that have the word summer in the title.

Tonight around 8 o’clock Donna wanted a top down drive in the Miata and being the accommodating guy I am, I agreed. After the first turn out of the neighborhood we knew we couldn’t go north, dark ugly storm clouds were brewing. I headed east and then south. After a 20 mile loop or so we headed back into town to stop at the store to get some odds and ends. As soon as we turned north we realized that all the while we were driving east and south those clouds we saw earlier had continued their relentless march south. We needed gas anyway so we ducked into the first station available to top up the tank and put the top up. We made it into the store before the rains came, but had to use the little emergency umbrella to get back to the car without getting entirely soaked. The drive home from the store was very similar to the drive home from work on Friday.

Purchased Today: 14.50 in gas
Money spent since 03/03/03: $874.13
Started down, went up, still up.
Top Transitions since 02/02/03: 144

Mr. Fix-it Strikes Again

Today was day two of my air-conditioning repair marathon. After the filter replacement, I’d walked around the house holding my hand near all the outlets to feel if we were getting cool air out of them. Found one, the one near the back wall of our bedroom, that was not really working. Damn, no wonder our bedroom has been warmer than normal for a while. Shown a flashlight down there and it looked like the ductwork had fallen off the register.

It figures it would have to be this one, as it is almost the furthest one from the little door into the crawl space under the house. I got on some old clothes, grabbed the flashlight and a roll of duct tape. Crawled around on my belly like a dog soldier creeping up on enemy lines and dodged other ducts and pipes like bullets and tracers to get to where I needed to be. The actual repair went pretty fast and smooth. Duct tape is a marvelous tool and I have used it for a hundred different things, but this was the first time I actually used it for its intended purpose.