My Sureal Life

Boy I wish I typed faster because then I could relate all the very weird stuff I witnessed this weekend because there was so much of it and I’m not even counting the Shark Boy & Lava Girl movie.

Cool Shades
(That’s me, second from the right, Donna is peeking out over my shoulder)

Here is a sampling: When leaving the parking lot of the grocery store this afternoon, because the spot in front to me was empty, I pulled out straight through instead of backing up. I pulled slowly through in between a new BMW 5 series on the left and a Toyota Tacoma pickup on the right. As I eased my nose out I had to wait on some kid in a several year old Honda Civic hatchback pass in front of me. He was going slow because he was thinking of pulling in on the other side of the BMW. He finally gets far enough past that I can pull out. I look back to give him the evil eye for going so slow when I notice the reason he was going so slow was about half way down into the spot there was a shopping cart sitting there. Instead of pulling 10 feet further down the aisle (away from the store) into an empty spot or stopping, getting out and moving the cart he decides to push the cart out of the spot with the front of his car. Even though he is moving forward at a walking pace, the cart bounces off his nose and, you guessed it, rolls into the side of the BMW. Donna and I both witnessed this, just shook our heads and drove home thinking that we had just seen the topper of all the strange things we had seen this weekend.

But we were wrong. Halfway between the store and home a Don Martinesque (sample DM toon) parade of two old ladies with dogs crossed the street in front of us. The first woman was 6′ tall and weighed, maybe, 75 pounds with an unruly shock of white hair, wearing a white shirt, white shorts with black knee socks. She was carrying her Maltese dog with matching white fur which weighed 5 pounds soaking wet. Her friend, following a few paces behind and wearing a dark brown skirt weighed 250 pounds and was dragging by a leash a large brown mixed breed dog who probably weighed more than woman #1.

Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 185

Dodging Rain Showers

Started up, went down, went up, went down, back up again, back down again, up, down, up still another time, down yet again, back up, back down, up one more time, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 184

Washing In The Rain

No postings here tomorrow as we are spending the night in a motel in Beaufort, SC. We are heading that way with a few of the Master’s Miata Club folks to meet up with a bunch of Low Country Miata Club folks to go to the drive-in there. So you can share in some of my furor, I’m going to let you in on the two movies we will be seeing tomorrow: The Adventures of Shark Boy & Lava Girl in 3-D, followed by Madagascar. Damn, I’m all a tingle with excitement.

As I do for any Miata gathering I participate in, I wash the car before so it will look nice. Afternoon showers were popping all over the area, so I tried to time my washing just right. I almost made it. I had at least finished washing it before the next shower passed through. I was under the awning in the driveway that is for the MSV and drying the car off when it started raining. The top, hood and trunk were dry, but the sides kept getting wet down with the splashes of the heavy stuff. I waited a bit and when the rain intensity slowed some, I quickly backed out from under the awning and drove into the garage where I finished drying off.

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 172

Next Time Let’s Wait More Than 87 Years

The last time the Boston Red Sox played the Chicago Cubs was in 1918 when the Bosox beat the Cubbies in the World Series. I think the Cubs were still holding a grudge because they, like St Louis (who the Sox beat in last year’s World Series) earlier this week, whooped up on the FRS like they were little leaguers. Or maybe the Cubs are upset that the Red Sox won the World Series last year after only 86 years since their last, while the Cubs are only a couple of years away from a century since their last World Championship team of 1908.

My local cable company doesn’t carry WGN, so I can’t watch the games, like I could with the Braves and TBS, until Sunday when the match-up is the ESPN Sunday night game of the week.

62 II

Remember a couple weeks ago when I asked everyone to concentrate on the number 62? Well, after over two weeks of just needing that number to win the Safety Bingo Game, it was called last Friday (must not been a lot of you putting out the right vibes.) Because we had been 2 weeks without another boo-boo, they had added $100 to the pot making it worth $260. Monday after all three shifts had had a chance to check their cards, I was a winner. But so was someone else. We had to split the pot. Hey, $130, is $130 more than I had the day before, so who am I to complain. Today I got an extra check to go along with my regular paycheck. It was for $120.05. Not only did I have to share the pot with a co-worker, but Uncle Sam had to get his cut too.

Started up, went down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 171

Girls Night Out

Two women who had been friends for years, decided to go for a Girls Night Out, and were decidedly over-enthusiastic on the martinis.

Incredibly drunk and walking home, they needed to use the bathroom.

They were very near a cemetery and one of them suggested they wiz behind a headstone.

The first woman had nothing to dry herself with so she thought she’d take off her panties, use them, then throw them away.

Her friend, however, was wearing rather expensive underwear and didn’t want to ruin hers, but was lucky to salvage a large ribbon from a wreath that was on one of the graves. She dried herself with the ribbon. After finishing, they then made off for home.

The next day the first woman’s husband phoned the other husband and said, “This girls night out thing has got to stop right now. My wife came home last night without her panties.”

“That’s nothing.” said the other husband, “Mine came home with a card stuck to her butt that said, ‘FROM ALL OF US AT THE FIRE STATION, WE’LL NEVER FORGET YOU.'”

Curse You HGTV

We have one of those single arm kitchen faucets and it has developed some leakage. Anywhere from a drip to a small stream depending what the angle of the arm is when it gets pushed down. The work around for this bit of annoyance is to shut off the faucet and then lift the arm ever so slightly. I am perfectly happy with this arrangement, Donna is not.

All it probably needs is a replacement washer inside the faucet. Because she watches a lot of HGTV, Donna sees a 15 minute job rated 1 screwdriver at a cost of under a buck. I see an all day job costing hundreds of dollars because I know my limitations and luck.

Here is how I see it going: I turn off the 50-year old shut off valves under the sink so I can work on the faucet. Because they are so old they don’t shut off the water completely. So I then have to go outside to the main water shut off. (Fortunately this works because it was replaced 4 or 5 years ago when we had lawn sprinklers installed.) I now disassemble the faucet and extract the mangled rubber piece. I will then spend 15 minutes looking thru the junk plumbing bits I have in the garage in hope of finding a match. With no success, I head over to the local mega home repair place and spend 30 minutes wandering the aisles and pulling open plastic drawers looking for a match. I find something I think might work, spend $2.98 and return home. With the new piece I reassemble the faucet and close the outside valve and am greeted with barely any water pressure. Oh, yeah, the inside valves. I open them up and the faucet now leaks all the time because the rubber piece I brought home was not an exact match. To compound matters, now that I have disturbed one of the inside shut off valves from its comfortable spot it proceeds to start dripping from the packing around the handle. Outside to shut off the water to the house again. Back to the mega home repair store. This time, in disgust, I just buy a whole new faucet. Back home I spend the next 3 hours pulling out the old faucet, scraping the old caulking and plumber’s putty off the sink and installing the new one.

The nice new shiny faucet won’t drip, but it will make our well-worn kitchen sink look, well, well-worn. This will bring about talk of replacing it. But to do that, the tile counters will have to be replaced which would then make our well-worn cabinets look, well you get the picture?

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 167