Rachel Green Does The News

The Rachel

I guess Jennifer Aniston was fed up with all the Hollywood nonsense after her 38th failed attempt at marriage (this one was going to be to Justin Theroux) and left that paparazzi infested place for small town America. Augusta, Georgia. But she just couldn’t stay away from the TV business entirely because she took a job as the morning /mid-day anchor at the local CBS affiliate, WRDW.

Just kidding, that is really Jessica Dill, but when I first saw that haircut the other day…

Salt Lick

Out behind our plant in a wooded spot, co-worker Mark has a trail camera where he captures photos of the wily white tails that live out there. Tired of capturing just one or two deer per photo he started to seed the ground in front of the lens with something called Deer Crack to create an irresistible mineral lick. Within a day or so he was capturing 5 or 6 deer in each frame.

Last night was the monthly MMC Dinner Meeting over in North Augusta at a Ryan’s Buffet. It was lightly sprinkling when we left the house and by the time we got to US1/78 (AKA: The Aiken-Augusta Hwy) it was raining pretty hard. And for the entire second half of the trip it was coming down in buckets, so much so that 40MPH seemed like a dangerously high rate of travel. I wish we\’d taken the hint and turned around.

We had the worst meal we have ever had, as far as we can remember. My salad was fine (although the kitchen help should learn to slice the onions and bell peppers instead of whacking them to bits with a cleaver), but it went downhill from there. The green beans were cooked to complete water loggedness and the corn had no discernible flavor whatsoever. The piece of steak I got off the grill, when cut into, looked medium-rare, which is fine when it is a nice cut of meat, but this must have been cooking over the low temperature side the grill for several hours as it had the taste and texture of, pardon the cliché, shoe leather.

Donna’s meal was no better; she stopped eating her soup after a couple of spoonfuls, with the piece of white fish she tried getting dumped in that bowl shortly afterwards. And after listening to me grumble about my meal, she tried to help by sharing some of her skinless chicken breast with me. Which after one bite I learned was a clever ploy to rid herself of this, so dry it was crunchy, bit of poultry. We both agreed that if there was a predominant flavor that did show through, it was sodium chloride, salt.

Even dessert couldn’t save it, as her cake, although covered in soft serve ice cream, still was almost too dry to eat. My chocolate chip cookie was stale and somehow they managed to remove the every bit of flavor from a crumbled Oreo cookie and Cool Whip mixture.

The meeting itself was a nearly typical MMC meeting in which the Treasurer announces our bank balance, we briefly discuss past events and then quickly go over the upcoming events, what set it apart were the elections of new officers. The current President has held the post for several years now and has wanted to find someone else to take the reins for at least the last two years, but no one wants to take the job. This year when he asked for nominations there was the usual silence and looking at the floor, just when it looked like he was ready to sigh and reluctantly accept the office for yet another year, his wife nominated someone else. It was quickly seconded and the nominee had the choice of being a schmuck or accepting the job. He took the job, but only under the condition that we actually get someone to fill the VP spot (for the last few years Sarah Palin has held the position in absentia.) One of the newer members stepped up and agreed to fill the #2 spot on the ticket.

The meeting broke up and as we left the “party room” heading for the door I noticed that the restaurant was pretty full and there were families in line at the cash register to get in. With the food tasting so crappy and it not really being cheap (for the two of us it almost $30) the only explanation I can come up with is that this place acts as a human salt lick.

Started up, went down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1237

Watch This

I feel like an evangelist in the Church of Orphan Black. I have now have converted the Accounting Manager from work and her family. I may have the Payroll Clerk interested. There are still a couple more people at work I want to preach to about the gospel of Tatiana Maslany.

But first, you’re next, take about three minutes and watch the opening scene from episode one:

If you want to watch the rest of the series, and why wouldn’t you, it may be still available On Demand somewhere or you can get it digitally from iTunes, Amazon, etc or pre-order the DVD – Linkage

King’s English

We needed a longer than 25′ tape measure at work to do some department layouts, so instead of buying a 100′ wind up tape we bought an inexpensive laser distance meter. For a little more than twice the cost of a nice tape we bought a Prexiso X2.

It came with an 10 page instruction manual, 4 of which cover how to use it and the rest is full of the usual button meanings, safe practices, battery replacement, troubleshooting tips and FCC compliance statements.

It also came with a 144 page manual that included instructions in 27 other languages (there were about a half dozen I couldn’t even make out.)

My favorite is the one comes labeled GB for Great Britain. If you thought the US is very litigious or has too many government requirements for labeling, the first page and a half of their small print, 5 page segment is several sections of symbols, safety, areas of responsibilities and such. In Section 2, Safety and Dangers you are asked to “Avoid blinding other persons intentionally.” and to “Avoid aiming directly at the sun.”

My favorite comes from Section 3, Correct Ways of Employment, “Use the device exclusively in an atmosphere that is permanently inhabitable by humans.”

Bird Feeder

When we eat at DD we always sit at the “bar” that is at the window looking out at the parking lot. It is always fun to watch people park as they try and fit their cars in parking spaces, especially getting an SUV into a spot that has cars in both adjacent spots. We also get to watch the resident sparrows swoop down on the crumbs left behind from dropped food around the two outside tables on the sidewalk.

One day last week we were in the Miata and had it parked in a spot in the front. We were early enough that the car traffic was light, but there were a couple brown sparrows dining on the sidewalk. I guess they finished everything on the ground because at one point they hopped up on the lower lip of the mouth the Emperor. They sat there looking inside the mouth inquisitively for a second or two before disappearing into it and coming right back out.

They couldn’t go far because I have a mesh grill in there to sort of protect the AC condenser. But that is only as far as they wanted to go, they were picking at the dead bugs collected in the grill.

By the time I thought that’d be a cool picture and I grabbed the cell phone, then fumbled around trying to figure out how to take a picture, someone pulled in next to the Miata and spooked them off.

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1235

132,000 Spider Webs

Lake Greenwood

We did something this morning that we haven’t done in what seems like quite a while, got in the Miata and drove a ways for the express purpose of geocaching. It started out as a big overnight trip that included 3 South Carolina State parks, but settled in as a shorter, day trip that went to one State Park and back. Lake Greenwood State Recreation Area is about 50 miles from us and had 4 caches to find.

One cache was on a nature trail that started near Campground #1 and we got about 20 yards down the trail and the results of all our recent rains presented us with a water crossing that would have left us with wet feet, so we doubled back and found an alternate way to the trail. We made a good bit of progress on the loop before realizing we might have already passed the closest we would come to the hide, about 350 feet. During our bushwhack through the woods to the cache I must have ran into thousands of spider webs. I even kept walking into them after I started waving my walking stick in front of me like a machete to knock them down.

After finding the cache and signing the log we headed back to the trail and because we didn’t follow the exact same route, ran through a ton more spider webs. Upon reaching the trail we just headed back the way we came, never finishing the loop. It was hot, humid and muddy and we still had 2 more caches to find on the other side of the park. Did I mention there were a lot of spider webs? Even on the trail we had just walked 15 minutes ago?

The other trail was way less muddy and only slightly less spider webby. It followed along the shore of the lake and after finding both of the caches on it we headed over to the nearby road so as to enjoy the slight breeze available out of the woods and the lack of spider webs.

The last cache was actually not on the park grounds, but on the road to the park from the state road that passes by. Seeing as Donna had found the first 3 hides and it seemed like the only reason I was here was to part any spider web for her like Mosses parting the Red Sea for the Israelites, I was very happy to spot the final container before she did.

As we got in the car to come home the odometer in The Emperor stood at exactly 132,000 miles.

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1233

Its Thursaturday!

Walking On A Horse

It is a day off of work because of the holiday, so even though it is Thursday it feels like a Saturday. Tomorrow won’t feel like Sunday because it is back to work. We went for a walk in Hitchcock Woods this morning and this afternoon I listened to the FRS on the radio while Donna baked brownies to send over to a local National Guard Unit in Afghanistan.

Last night we missed out on the fireworks at Fort Gordon in Augusta because we were scared off by the weather (they had them anyway.) So tonight we got on the tandem and rode over to the east side of town to a small festival that was going to have fireworks. They didn’t have them for budgetary reasons. They will have fireworks at the end of tomorrow night’s Augusta Greenjackets game. Maybe we’ll go see them if the weather cooperates and if we feel like sitting through 2-1/2 hours of stupid corporate sponsored, fan participation stunts interrupted by a baseball game to get to them.