Behind The Green Door

Green Door

We finally broke down and bought a new front door.

The old one (left) has been serving as the axillary entrance for us since we moved into the house 24 years ago. For all we know it was the primary entrance for the 34 years prior. It had a crack in the upper right wood panel that when the sun was going down it would cast a thin bright line on the back wall of the living room. When the summer humidity set in the door would swell up making opening and closing a job that required a lot of force. The top hinge on the storm door in front of it was broken so that closing it required lifting on the handle to get it to line up with the frame. Because we normally come in and out of the house using the garage door it didn’t bother us too much, but the effects of the newness of the kitchen has made us realize that some other things really, really needed updating too.

The new door (right) is made of foam filled fiberglass and weighs about half of what the wood door did. It will keep the winter chill at bay much better and only allow the setting sun to sneak in through the very small peep hole. The storm door is a neat full view door that has one bar across the middle, so that when the top half of glass is lowered and screen unrolls from the top. In spite of the kitchen remodel we bought and had the door installed through Lowes. This time it went off without a hitch.

What goes on behind this green door is nothing like what happens in its famous movie namesake from 1972. If you don’t know what I’m talking about you can read about it here. And if that peaks your curiosity, you can watch the first 53 or so minutes of the 71 minute film here.

Horsing Around

Horsing Around

Just trying new stuff with the blog. Bigger pictures for one. And I may just do a restyle for the new year…

Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1280

Resurection

While updating a blogging software plugin this evening it some how crashed and took the whole site down. I restored the database from a weekly backup that runs on Sunday nights. Everything previous came back, but things are just a little off.

The top transition text has changed and weirdest of all is when I try to edit a post, the text box where everything is entered, is blank. There is nothing to edit, yet the post still exists. And now I also have a yellow bar across the top of every backend page telling me that an automated WordPress update has failed to complete – please attempt the update again now. When I try, nothing happens, and the bar remains.

And if you would like a different take on the resurrection of the dead, I highly recommend a French (oh, no, subtitles) eight episode TV show called Les Revenants, or The Returned for us English speaking types. Very creepy story of the dead come back to life in a small mountain village, but not as shuffling zombies, but as exactly as they were just before they died with no recollection of the passage of time.

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1279

He Who Hesitates Is Lost

On last Thursday, the official opening of the holiday shopping season, I assembled my 2013 Christmas Wish List. After crossing out the hundreds of unreasonable expensive items, I was left with three things, only one of which was going to make it onto Santa’s sleigh.

Item #1 was something that would benefit the entire household for years to come with “blazing” networking speeds and extended range viewing of streaming video, a NETGEAR N600 Dual Band Wireless Router

Item #2 was something that would benefit myself for the next couple of years with “snuggly” warmth and proudly proclaim my allegiance to a certain baseball team, a Red Sox Shoutout Full Zip Hoodie

Item #3 was something with no real benefit and be used for probably about 2 weeks before getting sidelined to collect dust that has “gee-whiz” wonderment and a cool factor that would make me the envy of my small group of peers, a Micro Drone 2.0 With Aerial Camera

After spending the previous 6 days trying to decide which item I really wanted, last night I made my choice. Now, in hindsight, the decision was obvious, if Item #1 would have brought me that much joy I could have easily justified it sooner, Item #2 as a practical piece of clothing, could be purchased no questions anytime, but the only way I could possibly get Item #3 was under the guise of Christmas present.

With 3 days left on the discounted price time frame they had sold out of the Micro Drones! They mention they are getting some more by possibly December 12th. Should I wait? Or is this an omen telling me to go ahead and buy one of the other items?

On a related note, here is a 7-year old’s Christmas Wishlist dissected by her father: My Kid’s Insane Christmas Wish List

37,000 Creeping Cars

House Of Refuge
Gilbert’s Bar House of Refuge No. 2

We started our drive home from Florida this morning just like we started our trip down on Tuesday, under cover of darkness and in the rain. This morning’s rain did not rival Tuesday’s, but at times it still caused us to slow a little bit for safety (although quite a few fellow travelers didn’t subscribe to this theory.)

The rain mostly disappeared around Cape Canaveral at about the same time as the Purple Whale passed through it’s second milestone in a little more than a week at 37,000.

We had an early lunch at a Cracker Barrel just into the state of Georgia and we were making pretty good time until about 30 miles later when all three lanes of traffic came to a grinding halt. Unlike last time we stumbled onto an Interstate Parking Lot, this time we were just coming up to an exit. Donna crept the 1-1/4 miles to 36B and started our back roads journey about 60 miles sooner than planned.

We both agreed that it would be fine even if the detour took us an hour longer than it would have had we stayed in the crawling traffic, as traveling at 65 MPH was literally and figuratively 10 times better than 6.5 MPH.