71,000 Lights

Christmas TreeWould you believe 7,100? How about 710? 71? There are probably somewhere between those last numbers decorating this spectacular Christmas tree on the back wall of my cubical/office. It is two sections of mesh net lights that go on the shrubs in front of a house. They used to grace our old artificial tree, but now that we have a smaller tree they are obsolete. When I first put them up I just hung them as a big ol’ rectangle. It looked awful, but I didn’t know what else to do. When my wife showed up for lunch she suggested the tree shape by letting the top panel hang from a center point. Smart girl.

Christmas DecorationsWe gathered some small bits of discarded valve parts for decorations, but more was needed. So I brought in a box from the attic at home that contained all my old drafting supplies from way back in the day — pre-computer. I probably have the only tree decorated with circle & lettering templates, pencils with different grade leads, technical pens of varying line widths, a compass for drawing big circles and a pocket protector. Plus there are even some small actual Christmas ornaments on there.

On the way back from checking the MMC P.O. Box in North Augusta tonight the Emperor clicked over the 71,000 mile mark.

Started up, still up.
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Wednesday

This silly little holiday themed joke didn’t start out as my Wednesday post when I put it here this morning, but…

When four of Santa’s elves got sick, the trainee elves did not produce toys as fast as the regular ones, and Santa began to feel the pre-Christmas pressure. Then Mrs. Claus told Santa her Mother was coming to visit, which stressed Santa even more.

When he went to harness the reindeer, he found that three of them were about to give birth and two others had jumped the fence and were out, heaven knows where.

Then when he began to load the sleigh, one of the floorboards cracked, the toy bag fell to the ground and all the toys were scattered. So, frustrated, Santa went in the house for a cup of apple cider and a shot of rum.

When he went to the cupboard, he discovered the elves had drank all the cider and hidden the liquor. In his frustration, he accidentally dropped the cider jug, and it broke into hundreds of little glass pieces all over the kitchen floor.

He went to get the broom and found the mice had eaten all the straw off the end of the broom, just then the doorbell rang, and irritated Santa marched to the door, yanked it open, and there stood a little angel with a great big Christmas tree.

The angel said very cheerfully, “Merry Christmas, Santa. Isn’t this a lovely day? I have a beautiful tree for you. Where would you like me to stick it?”

And so began the tradition of the little angel on top of the Christmas tree.

…things conspired against me having any time to peck out a real post, so this is it. To bad too, as a lot of exciting things happened today, a haircut, putting up Christmas “decorations” at work, a summons to jury duty in the Aiken County Court for the first week of next year and much, much more.

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Tuesday

Posting Avoidance Syndrome strikes again. PAS – another acronym to add to the sidebar maybe? Too bad I couldn’t figure out an ‘s’ word to put on the end to make it PASS.

I spent the evening adding captions to the latest Post Office photos and locating them on my Flicker map. I now need to find a photo representing heat for the Tuesday Challenge. I’m seriously considering using a photo I used for a meme in the long ago past, but will probably use the HHI sunrise photo from a couple weeks ago, at least it is a little more current.

I can’t even come up with descriptive titles.

Started down, went up, still up.
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Monday

Stating the obvious.

We bagged a total of 18 Post Offices this weekend bringing our total to 345, which is almost exactly 3/4 of the state’s 461 total. Pictures are up on Flickr! and the old-school gallery, but as usual on the Monday after, there are no descriptions yet.

Westville, SC 29175I shot most of the photos using the auto-bracketing feature of the camera and then ran them through the Dynamic Photo HDR program and I discovered three things: 1) no matter how hard I try I can not hold the camera still through all three exposures, but the software does a pretty good job of aligning images. 2) I really need to do the tripod with ±2 EV bracketing for best results and 3) the effect is cool, but the over saturation of colors makes it more of a gimmick filter, than a useful tool, but this last statement might be way wrong if I knew how to use the program better.

Started down, went up, went down, still down.
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Young Old Hickory

Young Old HickoryIn another Postal Safari serendipitous history lesson, we visited a state park that is located near Lancaster and is dedicated to the 7th President of the United States. The park encompasses the property that belonged to James Crawford, the brother-in-law to Andrew Jackson’s mother and is where Old Hickory grew up.

On the way into the park we had to stop and wait for a couple of white tailed deer to cross the road in front of us. There are a couple short hikes in the park and we decided to walk the one mile nature trail. I’m not too sure about the hunting regulations on state park land, so after about a half mile I took off my bright white Hilton Head Island ball cap and tucked into my waistband under my jacket.

We attempted to get a bagel for breakfast this morning after discovering that Rock Hill’s Durango Bagel had kettle boiled and oven baked, real bagels. We found their web site which let us know they moved, but no mention of hours. I called their phone last night, but there was no mention of hours on their answering machine. Mainly because there was no answering machine. Up and out early we pulled up outside the place a little after 7:00 AM. We could see someone in the back, probably cooking bagels judging by the smell outside. There were no hours posted on the doors, but there was a 8-1/2 x 11 sheet of paper with the text, “Since moving to our new location we have tried various closing times on weekends and have discovered that 4 PM works best for us, so we will be closing at 4 until further notice.” No mention of opening times though. We went out and shot photos of the other 2 Rock Hill Post Offices and came back 45 minutes later they still weren’t open. We ended up at Hardee’s. I really wanted a bagel too.

The USPS giveth and the USPS taketh away. Yesterday we found an extra Post Office in Clover and today we found one missing in Lancaster. After several passes along Memorial Park Drive looking for number 1979 and the Post Office that was supposed to be there we pulled into a likely strip shopping center, not there, but the building next door with only two small shops in it had the right number over the door to Hidden Treasures, a lingerie store with no sign of ever being a Post Office. When we got home I rechecked the USPS locater page and now there is only one PO listed as being in Lancaster.

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Not A Corvette In Sight

Bowling Green, SC 29703Bowling Green was one of 10 Post Offices we photographed today. The others included a going ghost town with a bunch of interesting buildings in the downtown (Great Falls), one that should have been open but wasn’t (Lando), one with a quite friendly Postmaster who made fun of me because I misspelled Edinburgh (Edgemoor), one where we had to bob and weave around the town’s Christmas parade to get to (Fort Mill) and one that was right where it was supposed to be, but turned out it was a CPU with a much larger one that wasn’t on my list closer to town (Clover.)

We are spending the night at a Courtyard by Marriott in Rock Hill and Donna summed up our experience so far by saying, “Maybe we should stay in Super 8 Motels, that way we won’t be disappointed because of our lowered expectations.” The first room we were put in the bathroom tile was missing grout over a large section and the floor underneath felt spongy. The second room was better, but the water pressure is weak and the wireless internet is lame, the connection is good, but the speed is hovering around only 5.5 Mbps, so I can’t even stream RP. Plus breakfast isn’t free here. Unfortunately there wasn’t a HIE anywhere near here.

Started up, went down, back up, still up.
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You Would Think I Would Learn — Part 2

You would think that if I would take anyone’s advice, especially if it was based on personal experience, it would be my own; but no.

We are off for a couple of days of Post Office hunting tomorrow morning, so I ducked out into the garage to give the Emperor a sponge bath (Meguiar’s Quik Detailer and an old T-shirt.) After I was finished I realized what the car really needed a full waxing, so in spite of a couple of previous lousy wax jobs in the garage at night, I went ahead and tried again.

Looks pretty good under the light of two 60 watt bulbs. We’ll see what it looks like in the morning sun…

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