Month: June 2017

Hot Meat

Regular readers know that our go to Sunday morning breakfast is about a 10 mile bike ride to Ridgecrest Coffee Bar in east Aiken with a 3-5 mile ride home. Well, our go to meal is to split one of their signature Breakfast Paninis: large pieces of thick crusty sourdough bread surrounding a layer of white American cheese, a 1/4″ thick layer of baked scrambled egg patty and 3 or 4 slices of deli ham and toasted/melted in a industrial panini press.

The pressing does a great job of toasting the bread in a perfect “ruffles have ridges” way and melts the cheese, but the ham can be an issue. Depending on who was cooking on Sunday mornings the meat, which comes out of the fridge, was anywhere from lukewarm to actually cold, which totally ruins the combination. In the beginning we made a “suggestion” to the owner one morning when she was there that they should heat up the ham first. She said, “They are supposed to, but I’ll reiterate that to them.” Since then we have had slightly better luck with the results. So recently Donna has specifically reminded me, because I’m the one who traditionally does the ordering, to remind them to really make sure the meat is hot before making our sandwich. And most of the time I actually do tell them to, “Make sure the ham is hot.”

Today when I ordered from the young girl at the register I started with, “Please make sure the ham gets heated up real well because my wife likes her…errr-likes it that way.” I almost said, “…my wife likes her meat hot.” I self corrected mid-sentance because I just wasn’t sure if she would have understood that I wanted to make sure the ham was hot in the sandwich for my wife, groaned at my double entendre, thought I was flirting with her or maybe even bragging about my imagined sexual prowess.

Aborted Assault on Atlanta

or A Key Failure

We have Atlantaphobia and really don’t like going to there. It is too dang big with too many people and the traffic is awful. If it wasn’t for the airport offering the best prices on direct flights to Seattle we would would probably never go there. There is only one other possible reason that might make us go there – Moss Motoring Challenge points.

For 2017 we need a Haberdashery. One with a sign. And there is one in the Buckhead section of the Big Peach. There were a couple of other possible points selected for the way over and or back too. Plans were made to drive over Sunday the 28th of May. We hoped that this would lessen the traffic madness levels considerably because 1) it was going to be real early on Sunday morning and 2) it was in the middle of the Memorial Day weekend and a lot of people would be off somewhere else.

By 6:00 AM were were on our way west on I-20. I drove the first leg, but we stopped at the Rest Stop at mile marker 182 to swap drivers. Donna got in the drivers seat and when she started up the CTBNL it almost immediately stumbled and died. She tried to start it again and it would turn over but never start. I asked, “Are you sure you have the clutch all the way in?” “Yesss,” she replied derisively. I asked because 1) she is a lot shorter than me and occasionally in the past she hasn’t moved the seat forward enough so that she could get the pedal depressed far enough and 2) since she retired she hasn’t driven the Miata once (and it is not like she drove it much before.)

I said, “Let me try.” We swapped sides. I slid the seat all the way back, twisted the key and no start. Well crap. Got plenty of gas. Do we call a tow truck? I try one more time. The car still doesn’t start, but this time I notice a brief red flash in the dash. A clue! The light is shaped like a key. Synapses fire in my brain – immobilizer. I took out her key and put mine in, turned it…the car started right up.

I wanted to test my theory, but hesitated. Both keys are the same age, if hers failed, what makes it so sure my key wasn’t far behind. Not wanting to be stranded in a rest area on a Sunday morning, or worse, downtown Atlanta, we opted to turn around and head home before shutting off the car. Because it was a nice morning we took the long way home and it turned out that the aborted trip was more of a Motoring Challenge point success anyway. Haberdashery was worth a whopping one point, but we managed to score 2 points for a Lumber Mill and 28 points for Scrabble Challenge section when Donna spotted a street sign for Jacqueline Dr. while zipping merrily along GA 150, north of Appling, between the thriving metropolises of Winfield and Phinizy.

Good Thing I Hadn’t Totally Given Up

Once I got stuck on those extra rooms of the Orphan Black game last week, I basically quit playing it. If you follow the 2 hints the first one is fine, but #2 is impossible to accomplish. There is a flying evil angel that sweeps across the room from one corner to the next each time my clone moves a square. There is no way to line up the characters in the proper spots because it takes an odd number of steps to get where the flying angel can’t kill you or the paramedic pursuing you but the path, no matter how circuitous is always an even number of steps.

Today at lunch I thought, ‘There has got to be a way. I’m going to try just one more time.’ When I opened the game I was presented with a whole new “world.” I’m now Cosima on the secret island where we left the show at the end of Season 4. Cool, they have tossed in some more frustrating maze-type action for me to play. For free. Not a bad deal for my initial $1.99 investment. This is probably a veiled promo for the premier of Season 5 of the show this Saturday. I’m cool with that.

The first room is kindergarten level just to introduce you to the new twist of the new world. And it is a twist literally, if you get one of the bad guys standing on a certain spot when you throw a switch the square under the bad guy rotates 90°. Room 2 was fairly simple, but I got kind of stuck in #3. There are 8 rooms, we’ll see how far I can get.

Straps On, Straps Off

We have used a cockpit cover (the grey thing you see above) on the Miata for 15 years now. Not all the same cover, there have been several since the first in 2002. After awhile the car cover fabric that they are made of deteriorates due to sun exposure, and continually being folded and tucked into the side of the trunk, so they need replacing every now and then. The one above is a hold over from The Emperor and is only a couple years old, so it probably still has a couple more years left.

Do you see that black strap hanging down by the front of the door? It has a felt covered hook that is supposed to be hooked into the edge of the wheel well (sort of like the strap on the back.) These straps have a tendency to fall off like this if the cover doesn’t get hooked around the mirrors just so. I’ve tried adjusting them longer or shorter and re-positioned in the wheel well to no avail. Invariably, even though the seem solid when put on in the morning, one or the other will be dangling uselessly by lunch or quitting time.

Today both of them were just hanging by mid-day. This is the straw that broke the camel’s back. I am going to cut them off. They really aren’t needed because the front of the cover gets tucked under the windshield wipers. I’m thinking if the wind is strong enough that it can get under the cover with the wiper arms holding it down and lift it up, it then has to break the velcro bonds around both mirrors to make it flap off. And if this is the case it is way too windy to be using the cover in the first place.

Yooge Pothole

We have been nibbling around the edges at this year’s Moss Motoring and this is the latest example. The other day on our way somewhere we cut through the almost entirely empty Aiken Mall parking lot to avoid dealing with the Whiskey Road traffic and noticed a big old hole in the ground. We both went, “Oooh, we need a ‘huge pothole’ for the Challenge.” I didn’t want to get a picture then because we were on our way to that somewhere. We did make a mental note of it and scheduled a near future evening drive at dusk to get it. That future happened Monday.

I was thinking about maybe trying to photoshop some fish in the water, but gave up after it turned out to be more work than it would have been worth.

Possibly Profitable Shopping Trip

or Why Donna Could Never Be A Politician

Donna had to pick up a prescription at Kroger’s today and while she was there she also opted to pick up literally a couple other items, some bananas and some watermelon. You can pay for other stuff at the Pharmacy counter, but not anything that is sold by the pound – no scale. So after paying there she headed over to the self-checkout. The two purchases came to a whopping $2.75, so instead of check or debit card, cash was called for. She slipped a ten dollar bill into the slot and instead of the expected seven and a quarter, she got $22.25!

Donna called the attendant over and pointed out the error and told him maybe they should shut the machine down and check it out. He took her offered $20 bill and gave her a five back. She was raised right.

Me, I’d have slipped all the change in my pocket and walked slowly out the door, whistling softly to myself. Which makes me a perfect candidate to fill one of the 39 out of 46 top science posts in the Trump administration. I was in the Navy, maybe I could get one of those 48 of a possible 53 Pentagon openings. How about one of those 56 open Ambassadorships? But seriously, with that kind of shady ethics I think I’d be best suited for a job on the board of the Eric Trump Foundation.

Another Mileage Chart

At the beginning of the year I made a quick spreadsheet of the CTBNL’s thousand mile points and created a nifty little chart. Trouble was I neglected to save the file, so I couldn’t just add on to it a month ago when we hit 53,000 mile mark. Instead of just recreating it, maybe I could make it better.

If some data is good, more is better right?! When we bought the silver car I said that it felt like going back in time 10 years, this made me wonder how the mileage we were putting on this car compared to how many we drove The Emperor 10 years ago (August 2006 to May 2007.) As you can see, in 2006 we started a thousand less, but by 8 months later we were 4,000 higher. It is not really a fair comparison though because in 2006-7 we only had the one car while now we have 2 to chose from any time we go for a drive.

Maybe I should chart the Purple Whale’s miles for the same stretch of time, from say 5 years ago, and add that on top of the CTBNL’s mileage to even out the playing field.