Year: 2015

The Goods

On season three of Orphan Black to go along with the serious business of finding out the who, what & why these women were cloned and what is making some of them sick, we have one clone off on their own to provide a few light-hearted moments to balanced with the dramatic stuff.

Soccer Mom Alison has decided to run for School Trustee (I assume the Canadian version of the US’s School Board), but at about the same time, hubby Donnie loses his job. Alison comes up with a brilliant idea to finance her campaign. They mortgage their house to buy out the local kid drug dealer who wants to go straight and go to college. She will sell homemade soap cooked up in the garage as cover.

I have gotten several co-workers addicted to watching Orphan Black. Most have the correct cable or satellite package to get BBC America and can watch it on Saturday night or more than likely off the DVR on Sunday. A few buy the show from Amazon Instant Video, but there are still a couple folks who can’t get it legally, so I feel obligated to kind of get the show for them from the back channels of the net.

One of those individuals is so excited to get her copy on Monday morning that as soon as she sees me she whispers inconspicuously, “You got the stuff?” Well, Monday before last when she asked me that way, I flashed in my head the image of Alison’s illicit goods delivery system and decided to make something up just for her.


Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1492

Too Much Red

If you tuned in last night or today you would have noticed that I changed the style of the blog. The style itself wasn’t bad, but it came out more redder than I liked.

So tonight I changed the color scheme to something lighter. My wife viewed the page on the desktop and proclaimed it looked like Easter. I didn’t see it on the laptop, where I picked the background, here the blue and greens are a touch darker and what she saw as yellow on the desktop, looks khaki here.

Come back tomorrow, probably be some more different colors. And if you are lucky, maybe a story.

Wish Upon A Car

There was a car show this morning in Aiken to benefit the Make A Wish Foundation, so we thought we’d go to it score a Motoring Challenge point and see some cool cars.

Mission accomplished, although neither were as good as we hoped. The turn out for the show wasn’t that great. The largest class of vehicle seemed to be the 10-20 year old slammed pickup trucks finished in a 50-50 mix of Custom & Rat Rod. Instead of just photo bombing the car show as we have done in the past, drove up to the registration tent and donated $5 (about a 1/4 of the entry fee) just to take a photo actually in the show.

The first photo looked weak with the limited turnout. Turning around to get a photo of the Registration Tent and you couldn’t I was in a car show. To get a picture of the banner for the show, we ended up back where we belong, on the outside looking in on the action on the inside.

You can tell we are in South Carolina by the USC Gamecock tent and the propensity of the people to buy maroon cars.

Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1490

Motoring Challenge Points 1, Approx Miles Driven 10
Totals So Far: 40 points & 940 miles

Dead Mans Pants

In a Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee Jerry Seinfeld tells Seth Meyers of his 1972 Porsche 911 Carrera RS that, “Well it’s a Dead Man Car. I bought it from a dead guy, and it’s not getting sold again until I’m dead.”

This last weekend before we made it to the Cub In, we took a trip to Lexington to get some bagels at a chain called Brueggers that purports to New York Style bagels. Because, try as we might, we just can’t get a decent bagel in Aiken.

Every time we get to Lexington we have to stop at their Goodwill store because they have this awesome Dollar Rack where Donna can get tons of stuff for the nephew and nieces in Washington. While she shops for them, I shop for myself and if you search long enough, you can get lucky. Over the years I’ve found a couple of polo shirts in my size that still had the store tags and stickers on them.

This time I scored a couple pair of pristine Wrangler jeans in my size. They didn’t have the tags still on them but the material had that new denim stiffness to them that they couldn’t have been through the wash more than twice. The shirts I can explain, somebody must not have liked the colors, but these jeans, they’re perfect, somebody must have died. Because barring mishap, I can keep a pair of jeans at least ten years…

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1489

Cub In

Cub In

The last post’s photo came as we were leaving the Aiken Radio Control Society‘s 3rd Annual Cub-In on Saturday. It’s called a Cub-In because if you are flying a Piper Cub replica you get extra point credits, but you can fly anything you want. There were Piper Cubs there with wing spans ranging from 2′ to 6’ and there were also a lot of other types of aircraft on the “tarmac.” It seems like most of the folks in attendance had one Cub and then some other flying thing.

The wind did seem to die down a bit as the morning progressed, but it would still gust at times causing some of the planes to end up in the weeds or upside down even while doing the Ground Pylon Event. It may have not been the fun event the participants had hoped for, but Donna and I did enjoy watching the planes fly when they could. By lunchtime though, we had had enough sunshine, and headed back home.

Raggedy Andy

After 7-1/2 years the Emperor’s top is looking a little worse for the wear. When it is down and you look at the window, it appears that the cloth that holds it in place is starting to separate. From the outside it looks just fine though and it is not loose when pressed on. There are several dark stain spots at points where the canvas is stretched tight over the frame. Inside a couple of the stains there are tiny little holes that look like they go all the way through. Even if they do go through, they are so small that they probably wouldn’t leak unless we get caught in a frog strangler. But because we have taken to only driving the Miata on nice days, the likelihood of that happening is slim.

A new top is on the horizon, but I’m waiting until we get the new shocks and springs installed. For that we are just waiting on our turn in the queue at Panic Motorsports. We are near the top, so hopefully it will be next week.

Then will come the top decision; what color and what material? The Emperor came with a tan cloth top from the factory. When that one was replaced in 2008 I went back with a tan cloth top. Because the Miata has become a fair weather ride nowadays I’m thinking that I could save about $125 dollars by going with a vinyl top this time. Trouble with that plan is I’ve seen some older tan vinyl tops and they get dirtier looking easier than the cloth ones (although this might not be a problem for the Emperor because he lives indoors.)

Then there is the black vinyl roof option. Black would not look bad on the car because it was standard on the lower trim levels of the car and I remember seeing a couple back in 2003. And it would give the car a whole new look on the few times the roof is up. Maybe even get some black stripe vinyl and black out the windshield header like Mazda is doing with the 4th generation of the car, that way stifling my desire to but a brand new Miata. 🙂

Started up, went down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1487