A priest was invited to attend a house party. Naturally, he was properly dressed and wearing his priest’s collar.
A little boy kept staring at him the entire evening. Finally, the priest asked the little boy what he was staring at. The little boy pointed to the priest’s neck.
When the priest finally realized what the boy was pointing at, he asked him, “Do you know why I am wearing that?”
The boy nodded his head yes, and replied, “It kills fleas and ticks for up to three months.”
When we commute to the Valve Store(TM) in the Miata I get to check the mail when we get home. When we drive the Sonata I just pull into the driveway and Donna gets out and walks back to the mailbox. The driver’s side mirror on the Purple Whale is the same height as the mailbox and I almost tried to force the two of them into sharing the same space at the same time when I checked the mail for the first time in the Sonata. The Miata on the other hand glides easily below the mailbox level.
Spring seems to be here, so the Emperor was our chariot of choice for today’s trip to and from work. When I pulled open the mailbox lid there was a big padded envelope in there. As I pulled it out, I remarked, “What’d I buy?” Donna answered back with mock seriousness, “You better tell me.” Probably thinking I bought another BlipShift T-shirt with a Miata on it. But then the light bulb went off over our heads, it was the prize package from Moss Motors. Inside was a T-shirt, a sticker and my $50 gift certificate. The shirt is in the wash (a small phobia of mine) and the sticker has already found a home on the trunk lid. The fifty bucks? Maybe I should buy my wife something nice, like a T-shirt with a Miata on it?
Saturday, up late, and drove over to Augusta to go see the One Year Anniversary Edition of Cars & Coffee. We arrived just before 8:00 AM and the lot was already crowded. Having never been to one of these, I had this idea that it was one big happy car guy gathering, but in reality it turned out to be a Gathering of the Clans. All the like marquees bunched up to seemingly prevent any intermingling. The row of Mustangs ran 50 cars long from Washington Road to nearly the Pottery Barn store front. Finding no other Miatas to get next to, we parked one row over from the Fords and went into the Sunrise Grill for breakfast. When we came back out about 40 minutes later there was one pickup truck two spaces over, but nobody else was in the same row as us. Donna and I walked one circuit of the lot to look at the cars and then left to go get some Motoring Challenge points.
Sunday, up later than Saturday, and went to breakfast at Ridgecrest Coffee Bar. After, it was home to watch Sunday Morning and finish up the last 4 episodes of Season 3 of House of Cards. This afternoon we got off our lazy butts and went for a walk in Hitchcock Woods. Last time we were there is was in early January. Because it was probably the first really nice Sunday weather-wise this year, the woods were full of walkers, dogs and horseback riders. Our destination was the Horse Show Ring (see picture above) to eat a snack and then headed back out. Because we didn’t have a map, the walk turned out to be longer than first planned, so while never really lost, there were a few times where I wasn’t exactly sure where we were. Not that we complained any, because it was a beautiful day to take a 4 mile walk.
A little thing called Cars & Coffee, an informal car guy gathering, started out in California 7 or 8 years ago and has been spreading around the country. Mostly in big towns, but now some of the smaller places are picking up on it.
Turns out there has been one in Augusta, GA on the first Saturday morning of the month for a year now, but I never knew about it. Someone in the Miata Club brought it up at the yearly planning meeting and requested I put it on the MMC’s event calendar.
Shoot, I like cars and I like coffee, so Donna and I are going to go over there tomorrow to check it out. We also have an ulterior motive, it will count as a car show point in the Moss Motoring Challenge…
The 11-1/2 year-old, 149,000 mile Miata got a bath tonight. I even used a bit of some spray-on wax to gussy it up more gooder. When you get that close to the Emperor you can see it is starting to show its age in paint chips, scratches small dents, so I made up the little sign you see above to place on the dash.
My height was listed as 5′-11″ on my very first driver’s license when I was sixteen. 6-00 is what it reads now on my current South Carolina driver’s license. I grew an inch in Navy boot camp and this height is what has been listed on every subsequent driver’s license, in whatever form required by any of the several states I’ve lived in since. In the intervening *cough* *cough* years I’m thinking that if measured it stocking feet today, I’d be back at the five foot eleven inch mark. In shoes though, still six foot even.
Back in May 2011 we bought a metal awning to park the Purple Whale under. The bottom edge of the powder coated mild steel side edge is 6′ 3″ from the surface of the driveway which allows for me to walk right under it. Normally. Sometimes I forget, like I did the day before yesterday, and step on the 3″ square tubing that serves as its base.
This caused me to bop the very tippy-top of my slightly pointed head. Fortunately I was wearing a hat so that instead of scraping off a dime sized layer of skin, I only ended up with a 1/4 inch long cut. Still it’s a head wound, so stopping the slight bit of bleeding took a while and a band aid.
In the past four years this happened with some regularity and you would think that I would avoid doing this and you’re right. I remember to step over the base or duck slightly when stepping on it for about two months, just about the time the previous wound heals.
This morning I was cleaning out some of my old files at work. Tossing out stuff from the previous century that were one-time things, stuff for people who have since retired and others that I can’t image I would be using as a template in the future.
About three year’s ago the Valve Store’s(tm) Ocupational Nurse held a little contest for employee suggestions for a new safety poster. So I worked up this cute little idea based on the movie poster for Forrest Gump and submitted it. I don’t remember what won, it wasn’t mine, so I’m sure it was fairly lame. 🙂
The only thing I can think of is they were afraid of a law suit from the legal department of Paramount Pictures. Or maybe the then nurse was smarter than she looked and saw through my sarcastic twist on the Forrest quote of, “Stupid is as stupid does.”
We were dressed and ready to go out for a dinner & theater evening. We turned on a ‘night light’, turned the answering machine on, covered our pet parrot and put the cat in the backyard. We phoned the local taxi company and requested a cab.
The taxi arrived, and we opened the front door to leave the house.
As we walked out the door, the cat we had put out in the yard scooted back into the house. We didn’t want the cat shut in the house because she always tries to get at the parrot. My wife walked on out to the taxi, while I went back inside to get the cat.
The cat ran upstairs, with me in hot pursuit. Waiting in the cab, my wife didn’t want the driver to know that the house would be empty for the night, so she explained to the taxi driver that I would be out soon. “He’s just going upstairs to say good-by to my mother.”
A few minutes later, I got into the cab. “Sorry I took so long,” I said, as we drove away. “That stupid bitch was hiding under the bed and I had to poke her butt with a coat hanger to get her to come out. She tried to take off, so I grabbed her by the neck. Then, I had to wrap her in a blanket to keep her from scratching me. But it worked, I hauled her downstairs and threw her out into the backyard. She’d better not crap in the vegetable garden again!”
The silence in the taxi was deafening.
