Curry Shrimp

Donna’s mom has been our designated cook every since she moved in with us back in May of 2000. I like her cooking and Donna, well as we all do, loves her mom’s cooking. Not only because she grew up eating it, but it means she doesn’t have to do it. Mom is famous for picking a recipe and starting to cook it, before checking if all the ingredients are in the house. Most of the time she will find something that will substitute, but other times she just fakes it and adds anything. For tonight’s meal, when she came upon a missing ingredient, she just didn’t put anything in its place. As a result the meal came out a little bland; it is tough to make Curry Shrimp, without any curry power…

Here’s A Couple Of Them

They are fresh, not really new experiences. They mirror my previous experiences with these same places, so you would think I would have learned my lesson, but I am dense.

The first is Wal-Mart. We were in Hilton Head and needed one item and wanted another, figuring we could get them both at Wal-Mart we went there. Hoping that it would be different, but it was not. It must be corporate wide, because it was Saturday night, prime Wal-Mart shopping time, they only had 4 checkout lines running and there were at least 8 people in each line. We placed our purchases on an empty conveyor belt and walked out.

Second was at my old friend Popeye’s here in Aiken. We have had the worst luck at lunch time during the week, but we figured it was Sunday, might be different. What do you think? Right, same old song and dance. Both Donna and I love the food, but it is such a pain to get anything. They had a total of 3 employees handling the Sunday lunch rush, 1 counter person, 1 drive-up person and 1 cook! Not only that, but the cook was deep frying each person’s order separately or something because it was taking a long time to get each person’s order to them. So long that they asked you to sit down and they would bring it to you. This is smart, now the time that would be better spent making or taking orders was spent delivering food to customers. I vowed never to return. Who am I kidding, I’ll probably go back, I think it makes the food taste all that much better if I have to suffer for it.

Hi-Ho, Hi-Ho, It’s Off To HHI We Go

Time to go pack the trunk with our custom fitted luggage for the weekend get away to Hilton Head Island. It is a semi-working trip as Saturday morning I will taking condo interior photos so the web site can get updated some. Hope to snap a couple new Post Office pictures for that gallery on the trip too.

Picked up the framed new caricature tonight. I’m going to hang it on the same wall as the old one. They are going in a vertical arrangement and I can’t figure out which one I should put on top. Should it be the new one as the top would be considered a position of dominance, or should the new one go in the lower position as that is more eye-level? Stay tuned….

I really should be out with the California Duster and/or Quik Detailer erasing the pine pollen dust off the car in prep for the trip, but instead I sit here typing away.

What Would Jesus Do?

A friend at work has acquired a DVD of a movie that is still in theaters. He has gotten another fellow to make copies of it using a piece of pirated DVD copying software. Knowing that I had said I wouldn’t see this one in the theaters, but instead would probably rent it when it came out, they asked if I would like a copy of my own for viewing now. I said, “I’ll let you know.”

The movie, “The Passion of the Christ.”

I Forgot To Mention

One other “Mod” I did on Saturday was to stop the buzz when you leave the key in the ignition and open the door, etc. It was a simple enough procedure and everything you need to know can be found right here – 1999 Miata Key “Buzzer” Disconnect.

While I was swapping interior bits with Dave I asked if he would like me to disconnect his too. He said sure and I went ahead and did it, but I was thrown for a small loop when I located the wiring harness to disconnect it. The instructions on the page said locate the connector with two wires coming out, he didn’t have one with just two. I went back and looked at what I disconnected on my car and then matched up connectors to one on his car. If you look carefully at the bottom photo at the above link you can see the connector will hold 4 wires, but it only has two in it, that is the way mine is. Dave’s had 4 wires coming out of it. The only differences in our cars is that his is an automatic transmission, so we figured the other two wires must have something to do with that. When disconnected, his buzzer stopped and all other functions seemed to work as before. I wonder what those extra wires might be for?

It’s Where?

Yesterday afternoon Donna’s mom had a doctors appointment. She still can’t drive because of the recent surgery on her left arm, so she had Oliver from across the street take her. Mom being kind, offered to let Oliver drive her car so he could save his gas (which is slowly creeping up on $2 a gallon around here.) Mom was scheduled to get a shot because she was anemic at discharge from the hospital after the arm thing. They tested her blood and told her she didn’t need the shot after all, woohoo, good news.

When they got back in the car, it wouldn’t start, uh-oh. Mom didn’t have her purse with her Triple A card in it, so she called me. I couldn’t break away, so Donna headed over in the Miata to rescue them! I guess if worse came to worse she could make two trips. 🙂

By the time Donna made it to the doctor’s office Oliver had trouble shot it to a dead battery (I initially thought starter as it had been acting up lately.) Donna’s mom had some jumper cables, so Oliver directed Donna to pull up close to mom’s Civic. A little closer than Donna was comfortable with, but nobody hit anybody. Oliver then told Donna to open the hood, but Donna had never done this, so she was at a loss as to how to do it. With a little direction she finds the release and pops it open. Oliver lifts the hood and starts looking around, but he can’t find the battery. He asks Donna where the battery is, but she is so flustered, all she can think of is, “Maybe because our car is so small it doesn’t need a battery.” As soon as she is finished saying this, she remembers, “Its in the trunk.”

“Its in the trunk?” Oliver replies incredulously. So they close the hood and Donna turns the car around and backs up, under Oliver’s direction, once again closer than she felt comfortable with. When you open the trunk of the Miata the first thing you see is the CD changer on the left hand side. Oliver points to it and asks, “Is that the battery?” Now seriously doubting Oliver’s ability to accomplish this battery jumping task, Donna waves over a passerby. Before the man even makes it up to where everyone is, Oliver has found the battery under the carpet on the right side and has the cables hooked up. The man asks Donna what is up and when she replies, “We are jump starting the car,” looking at the way the cars are aligned, he must really wonder about the mechanical aptitude of this older couple and one woman. About the time he peeks in the Miata’s trunk, Oliver gets the now rejuvenated Civic to start, so our kindly stranger turns and walks away shaking his head. As he retreats, he is heard to mumble, “Its in the trunk?”

Folks, it is in the trunk to help the Miata attain a near perfect 50/50 weight distribution between front and rear.

Mats Make It

They are here. Arrived on the doorstep around 2:00 PM according to my mother-in-law. I slipped them in the car as soon as I got home. Niiice. As a bonus, Donna likes them too. I am now officially done personalizing The Emperor.

The only thing that gets done now will be to add some of theses cool looking black body trim pieces found on the Miata Coupe that go around the bottom of the body – here, here and here – probably never happen though, the coupe is for the Japanese market only, so I doubt my local Mazda dealer will be carrying these items.