Month: September 2007

Early Success, Later Disappointment

When I first started my Spenser Crime Buster Rules page I had read 4 books and found 3 rules, since then I have only come up with 5 more rules in the last 17 books. Clearly, I got lucky and found the highest concentration of rules in my first few books.

I still have 14 more to go, maybe I’ll hit another vein of Crime Buster Rules in these books. I have found a few other referrals to crime stopper tips, gumshoe manual excerpts and Dick Tracy, like this one from the book, Crimson Joy, which I just finished:

“Is this in the bodyguard manual?” Susan said. “Take the woman you are protecting to look for the man you’re protecting her from?”…

“I can’t leave you alone, and I have to find Felton. So we do it together,” I said.

“I know,” Susan said. “If it weren’t so deadly, I’d kind of like it. Makes me feel like Lois Lane.”

“Well, you are with the right guy,” I said.

I uploaded the balloon photos to my gallery here, but haven’t edited he titles and captions yet. Why let Flickr! have all the fun. I’m probably going to try to separate the Post Office photos into their own gallery soon. I’m thinking of sorting them by zip code. All the SC zips start with 29 and I’ll make 10 directories using the 0 to 9 of the third digit. The number of Post Offices in each directory will vary from just fifteen in 292xx to seventy-three in 296xx.

Started up, went down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/07: 389

OK, OK, I’ll Post Some Words

US's Second Smallest Police StationThe building on the right is billed as the World’s Smallest Police Station on RoadsideAmerica.com, but it isn’t even the smallest in the US, there is one in a phone booth in Florida. When the town of Ridgeway, SC outgrew it in 1990 they moved into a much larger place – the building on the left. 🙂 Ridgeway is one of 8 towns we visited this morning on our Post Office Safari. Blair, Blythewood, Jenkinsville, Peak, Pomaria, Rion & Winnsboro were the others. Their photos are already up in the gallery. 267 down, 193 to go.

Before we headed out of town we went over to the Balloon Fest to watch the morning’s mass ascension. We ended up volunteering to help one crew launch their balloon. They really didn’t need too much help, so I took a bunch of pictures as we they got ready. You can see the Internet worthy ones over on my Flickr! site.

Started up, went down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/07: 387

Blogger’s Night Off

Started up, went down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/07: 382

Post Office Mania

Duncan, SCI’ve got all 30 odd Post Office photos from this weekend uploaded to the gallery. I’ve got some sort of verbiage for each photo, but in a bunch of them you can tell I’m really reaching. In the beginning it seemed easy to write a blurb for each Post Office, but it is getting harder as the total goes up. It becomes especially hard when we take mass quantities of pictures in one weekend. They all kind of blur together. Tomorrow I’ll try and get them up on Flickr! and this weekend get them geotagged.

Before my keyboard was having trouble with the letter ‘O’, I took it apart and but it back together and the problem went away. For a couple of weeks. Now it is dropping the letter ‘T’. So if you read some of my photo captions and a word doesn’t seem right, add a ‘T’ to it. If that doesn’t work I probably just missed the connection between brain thought and finger press.

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/07: 379

Dedo de la Mantequilla

Drayton, SC Post OfficeOnce every couple of weeks I’ll have a snack attack and head into the cafeteria to quench it. My usual extinguisher of choice is Lance’s Peanut Butter on Nekot cookies. These have two draws, 1) I like ’em and 2) they are only 50¢. Today I opted to go wild and get a candy bar of some kind. It had been awhile since I had a Butterfinger bar, so I pressed E9. I know it had been awhile because the last time I bought one it was 65 cents, today the price tag below my selection said 75¢.

The only problem with buying a Butterfinger from a vending machine is you don’t usually get to bite off pieces to eat, falling from the E Row always busts the bar up into a bunch of uneven chunks. When I got back to my desk, I opened up the wrapper and sure enough there were 3 big pieces and one small piece inside.

As I savored that crispety and crunchety candy I read the label and discovered that each English word was followed immediately by it’s Spanish counterpart – Bar followed by Barra on the front for example. I’ve noticed some of the larger chain stores around here have goten ino the same act, Wal-Mart, Lowes, etc. Men with a smaller Hombres underneath. Doors -> Puertas.

I don’t like it. Not for the reason you think either, I don’t like the cacophony (ruido) of it, English and Spanish. Just pick one. Hell, I don’t even care if you pick Spanish. With immersion, I’ll figure it out.

Butterfinger in Spanish is still Butterfinger.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/07: 378