Bicycling

Flash Fried Squirrel For Brunch

They must have done a prescribed burn not too long ago on the Gopher Tortoise Nature Trail in Seminole State Park in Georgia. You can tell by the proliferation on nothing but bright green ferns with not much else for underbrush. Plus the blackened lower bark on the pine trees pretty much gives it away.

This past Sunday we got up and did the pay the bills by bicycle thing and stopped at Atlanta Bread Company for breakfast and a paper at an outside table. When we got home and typed in the code on the garage keypad, nothing happened. At first I thought that Donna had punched in the code wrong, but on further review it looked like the keyboard was dark, maybe indicating the batteries were dead. We don’t carry a key because this entry method has never let us down in the decade or so we have had this option of getting in the house.

Another look at the keypad and the lights were on, but the remote still wouldn’t open the door. It was then that we noticed the light at the end of the driveway that we always leave burning (so we know which house is ours) was not lit. That meant the power to the house was out. The neighbors kitty-corner across the street were out on their porch, so Donna went over to ask what happened. The neighbor said that she heard the transformer pop, so she walked outside and was just in time to see a smoking squirrel fall to the street. Poor thing must have stepped in the wrong spot and completed a circuit.

Not longer than 15 seconds after our cooked critter hit the ground, a neighborhood cat darted from under an azalea bush, picked up the fried squirrel and carted it off.

BC BROOKIE

After a short and very chancy bike ride this morning, we did a bit of running around to pick up some things. It was time for both cars to get new windshield wipers and there were also a couple of grocery items needed. The only place that you can get that mixture of stuff at 8:30 AM on a Sunday morning here in our fair city is Walmart.

We checked the radar before setting out on the tandem at dawn this morning and it looked like the rain was was going to pass to the south of us. And to validate this, as we exited the garage the sky was dark and the sound of thunder was heard from that direction. We mounted up and headed north. We only made it about 5 miles before we opted to turn around as the gray clouds were closing in from all sides. On the ride back a confluences of events, sun rising in the east and dark clouds to the west, led to a wonderful rainbow, often fully complete. Should have brought my camera.

After lunch we headed back out to pick up some more stuff that were not available at our local Wally World, from places that don’t open until later. Goodwill for the male equivalent of the little black dress, a blue blazer. We also had to go to Kroger and buy some of the last available Girl Scout cookies and fill up the Miata with gas.

Later as I entered all our receipts into Quicken I started reading the items on the one from Walmart. 18 Rain-X, check. 26 Rain-X, check. Wiper Blade Qty 2, check. Q-Tips, check. Cheetos, check. Bcbrookies, Qty 2, $2.24 each. What the heck is a BC BROOKIE? I have no idea. It was only 7 hours ago…

It took Donna a minute or two, but she remembered. She is making something for a March of Dimes bake sale at work. It was two boxes of Betty Crocker Cookie-topped Brownies.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Tran?si?tions since 10/24/08: 1122

House of Ill Repute

Donna had a tough day at work and was in a kind of surly mood when we got home (thank goodness we rode the tandem to work where she got to work out some frustrations on the hills on the ride back.) She was sitting at the PC reading emails when the phone rang.

The phone ringing at 4:30 PM can only mean one thing, someone is going to try and sell us something. We have had overabundance of calls about home security systems recently and just last night I got one from my old friends at XM Radio.

She said,”Hand me the phone, I’ll answer it.” She hit the talk button and said, “Bogardus Whorehouse! How can we help?” All she got by way of response was a quiet, “I must have the wrong number” and a quick disconnect. We both got a good laugh.

That got me thinking that we should use that greeting all the time. Maybe add a catchy slogan instead of the “Can we help you?” part. How about, “A ten spot can get you a G Spot” or maybe, “A twenty gets you plenty.” Ooh, “A C-Note gets you a Man in Boat.” Feel free to leave your suggestions in the comments…

Yo te Mostrar? el M

We rode the tandem to work today and had the afternoon off, so as I gathered up Donna to go change for the ride home, I overheard Trina, another planner in the cubicle behind her, say to Ian, “You show me yours and I’ll show you mine.”

Now, taken out of context in an office environment, you just might wonder what was going on there…

Fridays at ASCO for lunch we get Mexican brought in. We don’t have a cafeteria, but the sister of a woman who works on a Assembly line fixes the food for delivery to the Valve Store(R). It started small, just the folks that work on her line, but once word got out how good the food is, especially the green chile sauce, it has branched out to all around the plant.

Us office types give our order to Ian, one of the Assembly Engineers, who gathers the money and gives the order sheet to the woman. I was kind of bummed that I missed out on the Mexican this week as one of the offerings was a burrito with white rice and the green chile sauce on the side and this is my favorite. Apparently Trina is fond of the sauce as well, because her container was not full to the top. She was complaining to Ian about the quantity of it and he must have been dismissive of her concern. So that is why she said, “You show me yours and I’ll show you mine.”

Title Block

Finally feel like writing something, but I can’t think of title…

We drove the Miata to work on Thursday because we *could* ride home with the top down. But we didn’t drive it today even though it was warmer than yesterday. We rode the tandem.

I found a fool proof method on how to get your wife to agree to let you buy a new computer: While she is in the middle of shuffling the contents around in the kitchen cabinets (for who knows what reason other than to confuse me) just walk in and ask if you can spend $425. Well, that and the fact that I have been moaning about it’s slowness for a couple years (it was purchased just shy of 9 years ago.)

Like the plethora of fragrance commercials that show up on TV before Christmas, you can tell it is January because of all the ads for diet plans and gym memberships.

Which leads us to: “A gym is not designed to make you feel instantly better about yourself. If a gym wanted to make you feel instantly better about yourself, it would be a bar.” which is Rule #1 for Conquering the Gym, go read the other 26.

Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Tran?si?tions since 10/24/08: 1098

124,000 Footsteps

I know it was nowhere near that many, but sometimes it feels like that when you are walking in circles, kicking over leaves, looking for and not finding a cache.

We set out this morning with a list of the 13 geocaches left in the 47 cache Risk Series. Those were all that were loaded in the GPSr so we couldn’t get distracted by other near by hides. We were out for 9 hours, walked almost 4 miles, drove almost 150 miles and found 8. There were 3 DNFs and 2 we couldn’t even attempt. One, the final cache, World Domination, we were lacking 3 numbers in the coordinates. Those 3 numbers would be found inside the other cache titled, Capture The Flag. We couldn’t find that one because its coordinates were wholly located inside a random cache in the series and it must be one of the three we couldn’t find today. Maybe next weekend…

Yesterday was a car-less day as we rode the tandem to work and when we got home we just stayed inside for the rest of the evening. The temperature Friday morning was anywhere between 35 and 38 depending on which weather source you believed. Whichever one it was we know it was down right cold bike riding in. The only thing that got really cold were our hands, which prompted a stop at a bike store in Augusta to buy some winter cycling gloves.

The Emperor passed through the 124,000 mile mark not long after leaving the garage for our trip this morning.

Started down, went up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Tran?si?tions since 10/24/08: 1092

Car Free Sunday

We slept in a little this morning and then got on the tandem for a bike ride before the weather got stinking hot. We rode a long looping 15 miles before ending up at the west side DD for our usual. By the time we were done we had gone 22 miles and change. After parking the bike and closing the garage door, neither of us ventured outside again.

We watched the last 2 episodes of Season Eight of Law & Order: The Mother Ship on a DVD from Netflix with lunch. This disc was the end in two different ways, first, it marks our return to one DVD out at a time from Netflix and secondly, Season 8 is the last of L&O seasons of the 20 that is available for rental (except for inexplicably, season fourteen.) The afternoon was spent watching the FRS beat the CWS on TBS. And tonight, well, when do you think I’m writing this.