New Tires Get Mounted

$50 was spent on getting the new tires mounted and balanced. For future reference the mileage was 116,050 at the change. Fourteen twenty-five was for petrol. Made a lot of transitions today. Rain was all about and there were extended stops for work, tires and shopping. Sears had a 2-1/4 ton hydraulic jack on sale for 50% off making it just $19.99. I finally decided to break down and get a nicer jack. For ever I have been using the scissors jack that comes with the car and when I did the brakes a couple of weeks ago I decided that that was enough. They were all gone when I got there. This started me on a hunt for a jack. The first place I looked was for advice on the Miata.net Tool Talk forum. Lots of advice there, so much so that I’m now convinced that I should buy an aluminum race jack for $170 from Harbor Freight. Or I should just go to Wal-mart and spend $60 on a jack and some stands – Jeez, thanks guys.

Purchased Today: $64.25
Money spent since 03/03/03: $673.47
Started up, went down, went up, went down, went up, back down, up, down, still down.
Top Transitions since 02/02/03: 122

Just Give The People What They Want

And it ain’t Hillary Rodham Clinton. According to this morning’s paper around 13 million people watched Barbara Walter’s interview with the Senator. Which is approximately half the 25 point something million chuckleheads that tuned in to see Barbara Walter’s interview Monica Lewinski a few years back.

Master’s Practice Round Tickets

It is really tough to get tickets to the actual tournament unless you know somebody with an in or want to spend big bucks on scalped tickets. When Donna and I moved down here practice rounds were sold on the day of in unlimited amounts. We are not golfers, but not going to Augusta National when you have a chance would be like living in Indianapolis and not attend the 500. We went for the first 3 years on Monday because it was always the least attended day. After the third year the crowds were getting so big that they decided to limit the practice round tickets to a certain number (they’ve kept that a secret) by having a ticket lottery. For the next 3 years we got tickets, but for the last 7 we have been shut out. A lot of other locals that used to go regularly have also not gotten tickets in a while. There is a lot of speculation that out-of-town applications get special treatment because that way more money is pumped into the local economy. There have even urban legend type talk of people putting their out-of-town relatives addresses on the applications and they have gotten selected for tickets.

The reason I’m ranting about this April event now, is that in today’s mail, I got my application to get in the practice round ticket lottery. I am seriously considering putting my Mom’s Connecticut address on there to test the theory. It is not that I’m really desperate to get in and see the golfers or the course again, but I need a new hat. My hat from 7 years ago is getting disgusting looking. I’ve checked eBay and can’t find the right one – just the word Masters in script with no flag or year.

Missed Me

Went I came up back up front to my office this afternoon I was met by a friend who said, “You better go put your top up. Russ already did.” (Russ is the other Miata owner where I work) I went to my desk and fired up the Weather Channel’s radar and after watching the radar loop for a bit almost decided not to go out. But something told me to go ahead and do it, just in case. Good thing I did, about 5 minutes after I did, it rained big time. Too much for the cockpit cover to have held back.

While rummaging around in a draw looking for something, I stumbled onto some Miata logos in blue reflective tape I had hand cut out a few years back. I already have some on my car, so if you would like these (two 7″ and one 4-1/2″ long) let me know and I’ll mail them to you.

Purchased Today: diddly
Money spent since 03/03/03: $609.22
Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Top Transitions since 02/02/03: 112

Tires Arrive Alive

My new tires are HERE! They will probably get mounted on Friday. That is the day we have a half-day off because of working 9-hour days Monday through Thursday.

Purchased Today: nothing
Money spent since 03/03/03: $609.22
Started down, still down.
Top Transitions since 02/02/03: 110

Movies, Movies, Movies

Last night we made it 45 minutes into Welcome to Collinwood before turning it off. This morning we only got to the 30 minute mark of All or Nothing. This got me to thinking just how many of the movies I’ve picked from Netflix have we not finished watching. Because I’m that sort of anal retentive person I have a spreadsheet that keeps track of every movie I’ve rented and how long I kept it before watching it and how many movies we average watching in a month. I went back and ran through the list and added another column for the DNF (Did Not Finish) marking. I had to look up some of them so I could remember them, but I think I got a pretty accurate count. Turns out it is pretty damn close to 20% of the movies rented were not watched all the way through.

Here is the data:
1081 Total Days Member
236 Total Movies Watched
47 Movies Not Finished
19.9% Percentage Of Movies Not Finished
6.5 Average Movies Watched Per Month
$3.23 Cost per Rental
18 Average Days Out

Blue Sky

Had a real nice turnout for our Meet and Greet with the writers from the German Miata Magazine, Blue Sky, with dozen cars and about 18 people. We hung out and chatted while Eberhard took photos of the cars. Afterwards most all drove into Augusta to eat pizza at the Pizza Joint. On our way back to our cars Rudy said too bad we didn’t take them to the Blue Sky Kitchen a few blocks back. The only thing that salvaged us from this major missed opportunity is that after checking the web page Blue Sky Kitchen isn’t open on Sundays.

Purchased Today: nada
Money spent since 03/03/03: $609.22
Started up, went down, still down.
Top Transitions since 02/02/03: 110