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.

Truck Day

You know baseball is just around the corner when they pack all the equipment in a big old tractor trailer and drive it down to Florida for spring training. It’s Truck Day in Beantown. When they are finished loading the trailer this year, before they lock the doors, they better double check for stowaway Patriot players trying to sneak out of town…

Motoring to a Miata Club Meeting

Thursday was the Masters Miata Club February Dinner Meeting and because they were meeting at a restaurant we like and haven’t been to in a dog’s age, we went. Also factoring in was the weather, for once in a quite a while we caught a day when the temperatures were actually above normal, so we could ride with the top down. For an appetizer, we took a couple of motoring challenge photos on the way over and for dessert, we grabbed one, on the way home.

Runners-Up Again

The results of the 2017 Moss Motoring Challenge are in and we finished solidly in the Runner-Up field once more. We scored a total of 243 points and ended up tied with 4 other people for 16th place. Although if you go to the winners list on this page we are marked as tied for 19th with another person even though the two of us have the same point total as the 3 tied for 16th.

The first year we did it, 2014, we finished in the #20 spot of the runners up with 128 points. In 2015 we scored 172 points and finished in the number one runner-up spot just 7 points shy of cracking the top three. The year 2016 was a lost cause. The Emperor stared giving us fits, so we didn’t feel comfortable taking road trips in it. We racked up a mere 60 points and didn’t even submit the results. Even if we had, we would have been 27 points shy of making it into the runner-up category.