It Was A Banner Day At ASCO

Back in January when I designed my very own retirement banner, because I’m the only person making banners, I cheekily added the words “making”, “last” and “banner” in a smaller text so that it read “Congratulations Brian On (making) Your (last) Retirement (banner.) Well, as it turns out, not only was it not my last retirement banner, it was not even my next to last, but my 3rd last. I printed mine out on the Monday before last and the very next day HR asked to make one for somebody on 3rd shift whose last day is the same as mine, March 2nd.

Once my banner was put in the company cafeteria for people to sign, the word was out, and people started to show up with requests for banners that would be needed after I’m gone. I made 4 birthday banners last week, one for each person in a department. One for someone who was actually celebrating her birthday, but the other three were for later. They asked me to have them just say “Happy Birthday So and So” and they would save them and put them up every year.

Today was a banner day at the Valve Store, my work load had slacked off a bit, so I decided to work on knocking out the 7 requests I had collected over the last few days. First up was another retirement banner, next was a birthday banner for the same person. Next I did a birthday one for someone’s granddaughter and a birthday one for that very same someone. Then I had a pair of aunts and another person’s uncle. I rolled up the last banner just as the bell rung signifying the end on my work day. Only seven more to go, working days, not banners, but who knows have many more requests I’ll get between now and next Friday.

5 More Pairs of Glasses from Warby Parker

If you hover over the images of the glasses you will see a photo of them planted on my ugly mug. Donna took the pictures yesterday while we were on the screened porch (it was kind of overcast.) That and whatever the camera does make the frames look darker than they are in real life. The frame colors more closely match Warby Parker’s online images, but those studio photos are then again slightly lighter and brighter than they appear in person.

The sixth pair shown are my current glasses and is on the upper right. From there, I have ranked them in descending order from 1 to 5 moving right, down, then to the right again. Current plan is to go to Specs on Monday afternoon to compare the top two against the two they have put aside for me. But if you are placing bets in Vegas, both the Hudson and the Split-C are at even money.

The Past 4 Days

Things that have happened in the past 4 days, listed in no particular order or level of importance:

  1. I managed to get two photos posted to Instagram.
  2. The Mini got a bath.
  3. Managed to bike ride to work on Friday.
  4. Donna got a flat on her bike ride home.
  5. Watched Up in the Air on HBO – again.
  6. The Miata got a bath.
  7. Bad breakfast sausage?
  8. Got 5 more pairs of glasses from Warby Parker.
  9. Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue

Today on the Internet

After annoying both Google with my badly worded searches and my co-workers with badly worded questions, I had enough knowledge of what not to do, that I finally figured out how to share a post from my timeline to the timeline of a Facebook group.

I joined Instagram with the lofty goal of taking a random photo each day, running it through a filter, or not, with the goal of showing the cool kids that we adults are just as lame as they think we are. So far I have yet to post a photo or for that matter figure out to use it. My preferred user name, any variation of Brian the Red, was unavailable so I used mistermiata1.

I read this so sad, on point, state of our country’s politics today: The military parade debate is just the latest example of Americans missing the forest for the trees.

How Was Your Weekend?

In between raindrops and watching the Olympics, we managed to donate some books for the AAUW book sale coming up the first weekend in March (where we will probably spend money on books), stopped by our usual local eyeglass place and tried on some frames and gathered a bunch of Moss Motoring Challenge points. I also installed and uninstalled a pneumatic hood lift on the Miata, but that is a whole ‘nother post.

The first glasses shown are made out of something called TR-90 and they weigh next to nothing. Also they are close to what I wanted two years ago because they have blue temple pieces, but instead of clear face pieces, these are gray translucent. The second one is a wild card like those clear frames I so wanted a couple years ago, I like the idea of round frames, but I’m not sure if I love the way they look. I am going to get another set of 5 from Warby Parker and will probably include a couple rounder ones in there too.

This year’s Motoring Change has spots for 5 “clever” Vanity License Plates and they have waved the “your car must be in the photo rule” for it. So we opted to laminate another catalog cover and keep it in the Mini. This paid off on Saturday morning when we were dropping off those boxes of books. We knew this was a personalized plate by the look, but we were not sure what it meant, until we saw the accompanying bumper sticker.

Sunday we were in the Miata, so we included it in our second Vanity Plate, which was instantly understandable because of the car it was attached to. The bare trees were our third and last Sign of Winter and I hope to recreate that shot for each of the other three seasons, flowering in spring, green leaves in summer and reddish-brown for fall.

I Just Want To Remember How It Was

I was a big fan of the X-Files from back in the day. My interest dipped sharply in 2000 when Season 8 started without Mulder. But, I hung in sporadically because I still enjoyed the format of the mystery/monster of the week. While I didn’t care for the UFO mythology shows anymore, they had come completely nonsensical by then, it was still better than TV than any “reality show” clogging the airways. Of the 19 shows in season 9, I probably watched all of 5. Including the tiresome show finale which really soured me on the franchise.

So needless to say, I wasn’t too thrilled when they dragged the show out of retirement in 2016 for a 6 show special event miniseries. And I was not disappointed, it was pretty bad, expect for maybe one show, “Mulder & Scully Meet the Were-Monster” and that was merely alright.

April 2017 rolls around and Fox decides that they can milk the dead cow once more and produce 10 episodes for an eleventh season in early 2018. So, like a moth to a flame on January 3rd I tuned into Fox to watch the first new episode. Can you say hot mess? The Cigarette Smoking man was still alive? Wasn’t he killed in a helicopter rocket attack back at the end of season 9? I didn’t even make it to the series title sequence, I turned it off.

I recorded the show anyway figuring I’d gather all ten shows and maybe binge watch them, so once I got going I would get into them. After about 3 weeks, there was nothing else to watch, so I tried to re-watch the first show again. This time I got past the intro and maybe 10 more minutes in before giving up in disgust.

When I learned the fourth week’s episode had been written by Darin Morgan, I decided that I was going to watch that particular show. Mr. Morgan has written 5 other X-Files episodes, 2 of which are among my top 5 favorites (Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose and Jose Chung’s ‘From Outer Space’), 2 are in the top 20 (Humbug and War of the Coprophages) and the 5th was the only barely watchable episode from season 10 (Mulder & Scully Meet the Were-Monster.)

Well, unfortunately, The Lost Art of Forehead Sweat was a lot more like the last one Mr. Morgan wrote and not the other four. Even though there are 6 more episodes left in this season, this is the last one I am going to bother to watch.

At the end, Scully and Mulder are sitting together on a couch (in his place I guess) and they are about to dig into a batch of Goop-O ABC (think Jell-O 123) that Scully remembers fondly from her childhood. She had molded it in Mulder’s fake Sasquatch footprint maker because that was all she could find. As Scully scoops up a spoonful and brings it towards her mouth, she pauses, shakes her head, puts the spoon down and says, “I just want to remember how it was. I just want to remember how it all was.” Fade to black.

A pitch perfect ending for me to go out on. And apparently for the actress who plays Agent Dana Scully, Gillian Anderson, to go out on too, because at the very end of last year she announced flat out that she was through playing the character.

If Fox wants a season 12 of The X-Files it will have to be without the two of us.

Here We Go Again

Every two years I get some new glasses. In 2012 I tried the Warby Parker Home Try-On program. Of the 5 frames I tried, I rejected all of them and ended buying a pair from our local eyeglass place. In 2014 I stuck with the local place, but in 2016 I went full on Warby Parker and after trying two separate sets of 5 glasses each chose my current frames.

So here we go again. For 2018 I’m going to try Warby Parker again and my first 5 frame choices arrived yesterday. I choose 3 that are sort of the same shape as the current frames and two that are more round. And while the current blue frames have received rave reviews from practically everyone who notices them, all 5 of these are not blue (although the Hardy in Striped Pacific looks that way on the website.) We really just have a couple of greys, a couple of browns and a green.

Of the five, I kind of like the Seymour in Sage, but wish it was more green. My next choice would be the Lyle in English Oak, but I’m not sold on that color. Donna sort of likes Baker in Striped Sassafras, but I think they are too dark. So you know what this means, let’s mail ’em back and pick another five.