Somebody Made A Mistake

We made a trip to Augusta after work and while we were there we passed a gas station that was advertising gas for $3.94 a gallon. This reminded me to check the gas gauge in the Purple Whale, it was below a 1/4 tank. Enough to get back in SC where the gas tax is smaller and gas is usually 10 – 20¢ cheaper.

We decided to fill up at our usual haunt, Krogers, where we get a dime off the price of gas because we are frequent shoppers. The sign on Pine Log Road said regular was $3.52 so it would only cost us $3.42 a gallon. As I was filling the tank I noticed that the price on the pump read 52 cents and I could have sworn that I hit yes when the pump asked if I wanted to use my reward points to save 10¢ a gallon. Then I did a double take, the cent figure did read fifty-two, but the dollar figure read TWO! Oooh, somebody made a mistake, somehow they shifted the decimal point one place to the right, so we got nearly 15 gallons for a little over 38 bucks when it should have been over $50.

Then I remembered the weekly flyer saying something about saving a dollar a gallon. Sure enough when I got home I checked on the Kroger site and there it was in pixels, redeem 1,000 points and save a buck a gallon, so no mistake.

New Aquarium

Today in the span of about 50 minutes the Purple Whale got his new aquarium enclosure. Three young guys showed up in a dually hauling a 40′ long trailer and made short work of it. It is 12 feet wide and 21 feet long and it’s amazing how much bigger it seems than the 10′ x 20′ tarp style it replaced.

You might remember that about a month ago the tarp was pierced by a small tree limb, so we opted to go for something a little stronger than vinyl infused cloth. On Sunday we pulled down the tarp, disassembled the mild steel tube frame and donated it to my neighbor for him to put over his boat. Surprising how empty it seemed on that side of the driveway with the tarp gone.

What was also surprising was when I looked up, I could really see where that branch fell from and what I saw was that it was just the end of a much larger diameter dead branch. Yikes! If something like that fell, 14 gauge mild steel wouldn’t offer any more protection than that tarp did. Gonna have to call a tree trimmer stat.

Wish I’d Thought Of That

Our Kroger store is almost finished with an interior remodeling. This is a stressful time for loyal shoppers like ourselves because our old familiar layout gets shuffled around as they fix one section then another. Trouble now is that they didn’t put everything back exactly where it was before.

I know they do this on purpose because the more time you spend in the store wandering the aisles the better the chance you will buy something not on your list. But some of the moves seem almost nonsensical. The little six packs of applesauce and fruit cups are now 2 aisles away from the jars of applesauce and canned fruit.

Tonight we were out because I needed a bottle of Cran-Raspberry juice and we found out soon enough that the bottled juice is not on the same aisle as the juice boxes. As we walked deeper into the store I began to wonder if we had missed it. As we got past the food and into clothes soap and light bulbs, I decide to ask someone. The next aisle was shampoo and body wash and luckily there came a Kroger employee, “Where is the bottle juice?” His reply, “Have you tried the juice aisle?” “Oooh,” I thought, “Wish I’d thought of that.” “Aisle 21,” he said. It used to be on like aisle 6, now it is nearly all the way on the other side of the store with the frozen foods.

The Get Away

Plan A was a bike ride this morning, but some early morning fog kept us off the roads. So we put Plan B into action, a walk along the Augusta Canal. Donna nd I were frequent visitors here back in the day when would come over with our mountain bikes. Today, we walked.

The trail along the Augusta Canal Tow Path is probably the last place left around here where we can take a walk along a path lined with a fairly high density of geocaches, with about 20 caches along it’s 5-1/2 mile length. We started our walk this morning at the canal head gates and walked a little more than a mile and a half of it. Some of the hides along the canal are really close to the water so as to be accessible by kayak as well as by walkers and cyclists. This makes for some tricky descents down the steep 7 or 8 foot drop fro the path.

I was wearing jeans and not my usual cargo pants so I had the small notebook I use to record finds and DNFs in my back pocket instead of a side pocket. When I went to log in find number three I noticed that I didn’t have the notebook. The wallet was still in that pocket, but no notebook. The last place I used it was at find #2 so we walked the couple a tenths of a mile back and scrambled down towards the water. It wasn’t there.

We turned to continue down the canal to get couple more caches and wouldn’t you know it, before we got back to cache #3, there lying on the ground on the path was the notebook. Back in the pocket it went. We passed the already found cache and made our way further along the trail to cache #4. Another scramble down the hill and number four was in hand. I reached for the notebook and it wasn’t there! The wallet was still there, but I did take the hint and stored the wallet in the knapsack for the remainder of the day.

We walked further down the trail to get one more cache and then on the way back we kept an eye out, but never did see that notebook again.

At one point along the trail there was a set of stairs that led down to the Savannah River and that is where the above photo was taken. I have never seen the river so glass-like.

Started up, went down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Tran?si?tions since 10/24/08: 1017

Forget Something Patti?

Donna and I led 4 other Miatas to breakfast at Ms. Shelby’s in Millen, GA for the May Edition of the MMC Monthly Breakfast Runs. We formed a short line of cars along 4 lane US 25 for the 40 miles south of Augusta, where we ate in the huge, but nearly empty dining room. Rudy and Patti were the first to leave the restaurant and it wasn’t until ten miles down the road back to Augusta before she realized she had forgotten them. It was as the last of us had paid our bills and I was leaving a tip, that anyone else (me) noticed the left behind item.

The four cars remaining took the slightly longer, slightly more rural, slightly more scenic two lane roads back to Augusta. As we traveled north the train of cars slowly shortened as folks fell off the route to do other things or head home. Donna and I continued on into the heart of the Martinez shopping district to return Patti’s sunglasses to her before heading home.

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Tran?si?tions since 10/24/08: 1015

Plated

As I was parking the tandem in the garage when we got home from work today I could hear the slightly muted beep of the answering machine. It was salesman Jerry letting us know that the Sonata’s South Carolina license plate was in and we could come get it whenever we wanted. Well, we wanted it now, so we changed clothes and headed over to Augusta.

The above picture does not show spiffy new SC plate because it was taken last weekend at Tignall Cemetery somewhere in Georgia where we DNF’d a cache. I ran it through an infrared plugin and then added the car’s color back in.

2,000 Foot-Candles

A few months back I moved into a new addition to our building. Today Donna got to move into the newly remodeled office space on the opposite end of the front office from where she was. Like those of us out back, every one up there got shiny new cubicles, with shiny new modular furniture inside shiny new short walls.

Several years back, when the company president made one of his quarterly state of the company addresses he told us that he likes low walled cubicles because they fostered communication, so now instead of the previous 60″ high walls everyone now has 48″ surroundings. Foster communication is corporate double-speak for I want to be able stand on one end of the office space and survey my row of minions like a proud farmers looking over his acres of rows of corn. What I have found out on the serf level is that fostering communications really means that you can hear everyone’s conversations, business and personal, every shuffle of paper and every burp and fart for a 6 cubicle radius.

More interesting is in Donna’s area, as opposed to mine, is that they installed alternating rows of 2′ x 4′ florescent light fixtures and the same size white tiles for the entire length of the 70′ long room. The effect is literally blinding. The carpet is a light tan/gray, the walls are a light beige, the cubical walls are light gray and the desk surfaces are light beige. The effect is somewhat akin to standing on the side of the planet Mercury that faces the sun. OSHA states the minimum lighting for office spaces is to be 30 foot-candles, they don’t list a maximum, but my guess is the title of this post is not too far off to what it is in this new area. By the afternoon, Donna’s eyes hurt so bad that she put on her sunglasses at her desk. Tomorrow she is taking in a visor…

The Purple Whale passed the 2,000 mile mark on the way home from the brightly lit cube farm.