It doesn’t really qualify as a real wash, but yesterday morning before embarking on our little trip, I gave the Emperor a quick de-dirtifying with Meguiar’s Quik Detailer.
Changed the oil and filter this afternoon. And as I usually do I rotated the tires. It was nice not to have to tippie-toe around the partially stripped thread of the right rear wheel stud and lugnut this time. They were fixed a couple of weeks ago at the MMC Tech Day.
While I read on one end of the couch, Donna was on the other watching TV. Mostly the reruns of yesterday’s World Ice Skating Championships, but during commercials and lapses in excitement she would surf the channels. At one point she nudged me to remove my headphones. CNN was doing an interview with someone involved with a new IMAX movie called Wired to Win: Surviving the Tour de France. Looks interesting, but it is not playing at any IMAX theater within 600 miles of us. Sigh.
After the movie segment we hopped to the other CNN where they were into something about the increasing number of major hurricanes. Seems it might be because since the 70’s the surface temperature of the oceans has risen 1 degree Celsius. Last winter was the warmest on record. Glaciers melting! Global Warming! The reporter pinned down one scientist to say that it is because of human actions that this happening. We are ruining the very environment we need to survive.
From there she jumped to Bravo where Real Housewives of Orange County was on. After watching a couple of minutes of this very weird show I came to the conclusion that if this is what life is all about, causing our own extinction via global warming can’t come soon enough.
Aiken, SC to Washington, GA where we lunch on the square at a place called the Jockey Club. Donna had, appropriately, a Club Sandwich, with soup and a salad while I had a Chicken Salad Sandwich with french fries. The food was good, but the highlight was definitely the fries. Real potatoes, hand-cut and deep fried to perfection. After lunch we walked off our meal by doing a lap around the square where we discovered a cool old hotel, The Fitzpatrick Hotel, built in 1898 and operated for 50 years. Then sat neglected for another 50, before being bought and totally renovated and has been open for only the past two. Donna walked into the lobby dragging me with her. We poked around on the ground floor for a while when an employee invited up to look at some of the guest rooms. Very classy. We are going to go back in May when the town holds one of its two big cruise-ins and spend the night, if we can get a room…
After Washington we headed northeast to Watson Mill State Park. we had visited there way back in 1998 on one of our covered bridge tours. We have a little book we bought that has a bunch of Georgia attractions that we bought back then and right there in the margin was the date we visited (4/10/98) and the notation, “Very nice, need to come back.” Well we did and it was worth it again. Guess we’ll schedule another visit in 2014.
We are spending the night in the Holiday Inn Express in Elberton, GA. Us and a bunch of bass fishermen, because there is a team tournament being held on Thurmond Lake this weekend. The only problem with that, besides worrying that somebody will drag their boat trailer across the hood of the Miata trying to park 60′ of vehicle, is ice is very scarce. Neither machine in the complex spit out any frozen water, pushing the button resulted in nothing but whirring noises. I had to go to the front desk to get my little plastic bucket filled. We have 4 channels of HBO on the TV and for our viewing pleasure this evening, on two of them, is Catwoman with Halle Bery. I’ve got a whole ‘nother rant post about our stay which may come your way later.
No bedtimes. No alarm tomorrow morning. Road trip. Granite Capital of Georgia.
No, not TDTVS, but First Daughter.
I put this movie in the rental queue at the behest of my lovely wife. I’m not exactly sure what prompted her to want this movie (maybe because it starred the future Mrs. Tom Cruise,) which is fine because sometimes I’m not sure where I get the idea to add a movie either. The disc showed up in Saturday’s mail and we decided to watch it that evening. We endured about 25 minutes of it before hitting the eject button.
It went back in the mail to Netflix on Monday. It still hasn’t arrived back at movie central, so tonight I reported it missing. They say they forgive an occasional missing disc, but if you pass a certain level they might cancel your membership. I just hope they don’t think I liked the movie so much that I decided to keep it, I don’t need that kind of reputation.
We stopped by the Aiken County Museum this afternoon to check out the entries in the 2nd Annual Sculpture Competition. Last year there were about 20 displayed outside with the rest indoors. This year there were only about 5 outdoors with the majority inside. This picture is of the 1st place sculpture, Gretchen Lothrop’s ?A Subtle Miracle.?
I didn’t bring a tripod, so shooting indoors was really out of the question, but I saw one that was interesting and seemed to have enough light. But when I snapped the picture, the flash went off, causing one of the elderly volunteer ladies to come over and chastise me. I apologized and made sure it wouldn’t happen again. As it was it didn’t matter as there was nothing else I found photogenic anyway.
Sorry about the low impact posting around here recently. I have something to write about, but I can’t seem to get started. At first I was waiting for a certain point for, maybe not closure, but a natural break. That target keeps shifting though. Eventually I’ll get it here, promise, so until then expect more lame jokes that I get in my email or gripes about the less than expected weather.