While walking a trail in Santee State Park we came around a corner to a small lake and heard a couple of small splashes. There, not 50 feet away was a 7-8′ female alligator lazing on the opposite shore with her brood. We counted seven small, 15″ to 18″, hatchlings in the water or right near her.
We would probably never noticed them if it weren’t for the splashes. Good thing they weren’t on our side of the pond…
Today was the monthly MMC breakfast run and our destination was the same place as it has been for the last two March’s, the North Augusta Optimist Club Pancake Breakfast at the Holy Trinity Lutheran Church.
The event organizer zipped off an email yesterday to remind everyone of the event and she listed the meeting location as “at the Circle K at exit 5.” That very same email said we would depart from there at 8 AM sharp.
When Donna and I arrived at Exit 5 we noticed that there was a Circle K [1] just past the Interstate on the northeast side, but it looked a little hard to get to and there were no Miatas visible. We were about 15 minutes early for the departure time, so we passed right by to grab a geocache that was just up the road. As we turned down the little road to get the cache we realized there was a Circle K [2] right at the corner. No Miatas there either.
We found the cache and after signing the log we looked into Circle K [2] again, it was now 5 minutes before the planned departure and there were still no Miatas there. Donna wondered out loud that our event planner must have meant Exit #1 as that is where we had met the last two years. We decided that if there were no Miatas at Circle K [1] we would just head on to the church via Exit #1.
Just about then we noticed a Circle K [3] on the northwest side of the Interstate and there were two Miatas there. We pulled in. As the six of us chatted while waiting for our event organizer to lead us to the the church we all wondered about the number of Circle K gas stations here. We weren’t too concerned as our leader was slightly late last year, so maybe she would be this year too. At 8:05, with our stomachs growling in hunger, we all decided to do what Donna and I were going to do before we stumbled on them, go to the church via I-20 Exit #1
As we passed by the previous year’s meeting spot, Circle K [4] there were no Miatas there either. When we arrived at the church, there was our event leader and one other Miata Club person waiting for us. They had met at Circle K [4] and by 10 after eight when no one else had shown, they drove to the church.
The event has been on the Club calendar since the January planning meeting and it has always listed the meeting place as the Circle K gas station off I-20 Exit #1 on Martintown Rd. Our group of six didn’t read the Club Calendar because of the email reminder. The person who did meet at the correct Circle K didn’t read the Calendar or the email either, she just went to where we had met before.
Anyway, all’s well that ended well. We did get together, have some conversation, some good eats and the cost went to a good cause.
Donna had a tough day at work and was in a kind of surly mood when we got home (thank goodness we rode the tandem to work where she got to work out some frustrations on the hills on the ride back.) She was sitting at the PC reading emails when the phone rang.
The phone ringing at 4:30 PM can only mean one thing, someone is going to try and sell us something. We have had overabundance of calls about home security systems recently and just last night I got one from my old friends at XM Radio.
She said,”Hand me the phone, I’ll answer it.” She hit the talk button and said, “Bogardus Whorehouse! How can we help?” All she got by way of response was a quiet, “I must have the wrong number” and a quick disconnect. We both got a good laugh.
That got me thinking that we should use that greeting all the time. Maybe add a catchy slogan instead of the “Can we help you?” part. How about, “A ten spot can get you a G Spot” or maybe, “A twenty gets you plenty.” Ooh, “A C-Note gets you a Man in Boat.” Feel free to leave your suggestions in the comments…
When we moved to Aiken we started banking at the Aiken County Bank. They had a whopping two branches, but one of them was right along our drive to and from work, so it was convenient as heck. Ten years ago they sold out to a larger regional bank called Carolina First, same two branches in town, but occasionally we would stumble onto another Carolina First while traveling and could save the ATM fees when we needed some cash. Middle of last year Carolina First was sucked up by the 15th largest bank in the US with assets of just over 200 trillion dollars, TD Bank.
When TD Bank loaded up their software into my old friend the ATM at 142 Chesterfield Street they added a nifty little personalization step that allows users to set what amount they want as their default Fast Cash withdrawal and whether you want a receipt with each transaction and I can’t really remember, but maybe one or two other things. This is really nice because 9 times out of 10 I just want $20 cash, but they left out one important setting.
The first screen that is displayed after swiping your card is one asking you to choose one of the eight different languages you could use to communicate with the machine. Oh, today I think I would like to practice my Arabic, no, no, French, nah…maybe Japanese. Come on, don’t you think that the language should be one of the things you could personalize?
I tried out the consumer preview of the next version of Windows last night and this evening. Then I deleted it. I’m guessing you smarty pants phone users will feel right at home. If I had a touch screen on the laptop it might have been cooler, but it wasn’t just the whole mouse gesture thing that was a bust though, there were a limited amount of “apps” available and most of them required a Windows Live and/or Xbox log-in. I couldn’t get an App to play my existing music or videos and if you wanted to open a file explorer you just ended up back on a very familiar looking desktop indistinguishable from any version of windows from 95 and up. I think for desktop computing I’ll be sticking to Windows 7.
Just like I predicted, although raining in the morning, it was absolutely a perfect afternoon for driving around in a convertible, of which ours was home in the garage.