Cars

Disappointing

We rode the tandem in to work today, and with Wednesday’s trip on it as well, this is the first time we have commuted by bike twice in one week in a looong time.

That bike ride was the highlight of my day. I managed to only finish half of the front brake job I had planned for the Emperor this afternoon. The left front went fairly easy. I say fairly because after 6-1/2 years and nearly 90,000 miles the brake rotor and wheel hub become very fast friends. The folks who make cars know this and they put a nice threaded hole through the disc so you can separate them by cranking down on a bolt screwed in there. But, it takes a scary lot of torque on that bolt before you hear that satisfying pop when the two pieces of metal finally separate. Also one of the caliper slider pins took a bit of coaxing to go back in because with the lube spread on it, the little noise abating rubber sleeve tended to slide out of it’s groove, preventing the pin from fitting in the hole.

On the driver’s side I got the pads off, pulled the caliper and then the bracket off, the second rotor came off easier than first, but then I hit a snag. The top caliper pin was frozen solid in the bracket with corrosion. I sprayed some penetrating fluid on it. Cleaned and lubed the other pin while I waited for the magic. I hammered on the pin and tried backing it out with a 17mm wrench with as much force as I felt comfortable with to no avail. I might have upped the force level by 50% or more, but I didn’t want to break the pin or bracket because we are a one car family and I needed to at least be able to put the car back together and have it operational.

Calls to the Augusta Mazda place, a Miata.net sponsor dealer and Advanced Auto asking about a replacement caliper netted me quotes of from “Can’t Get It” to $185 and we can order it. I then tried the Mazda dealer in Columbia where they still have to order it, but they will sell me just the bracket and pin for less than half the other guys wanted for a re-manufactured caliper and bracket.

I reinstalled the old parts back on the right side and took a drive around the neighborhood to set in the new stuff on the left. The car stops fine, but there is about 4″ more pedal travel. I’m attributing this to the increased travel the left caliper needs to make up for the nearly worn out pads on that side. Still I’ll be taking it easy though until I can get the new bracket and pin on Tuesday.

If that wasn’t bad enough, the motion sensing light quit working again. 🙁

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 147

Daufuskie Island

The main reason for ferrying over to this small barrier island off the South Carolina coast was to take a picture of the Post Office, we also wanted to enjoy a place that the primary mode of transportation is a golf cart. There are cars & trucks on the island, but only the full time residents, of which there are only around 200, are allowed to keep one. We also wanted to try and find the one and only cache there, Life of Leisure. It is a micro, which we aren’t having too much luck with, but listed as “not at all hard to find.”

I’m sure we were right on it and with the clue given as eye level, it should have been easy, but we couldn’t find it. The location is right near the 18th fairway of one of the Daufuskie Island Resort’s golf courses, so we had to dodge golfers and balls. There was a dead tree right on the spot that looked like it was a woodpecker buffet line with lots of holes that a micro could have fit in, but I didn’t see one, nor did I find one hidden under all the chips. Dang.

We were now 0 for 3 on micro caches this trip with the two failure to finds in Beaufort yesterday. Not only didn’t we find this cache, but we didn’t find a full size one on Hilton Head that we tried before boarding the ferry. We suck at this. But we aren’t about to give this up yet, instead of being discouraged by the failures we are now more set in our resolve not to be defeated.

The round trip ferry ride is $23 a person and a 3 hour rental of a golf cart is $50, so we crammed quite a bit of traveling into our day. The boat arrived on the island at 11:00 AM and we covered a bunch of ground before heading back to the landing for lunch at the Old Daufuskie Crab company. After lunch with not much time left until our return trip, we decided to stay until the 5:15 ferry, if we could keep the golf cart. We I asked if it was alright if we kept it over the 3 hour limit the fellow told me usually they charge an additional twenty bucks, but he said don’t worry about it, just be back by 4:00 PM. I’m sure his answer would have been different had it been high season, but I thanked him and we set back out to poke around in some places we hadn’t been yet.

Most of the roads in the resorts and planned to be resorts were paved, but all of the internal main island roads are dirt. Donna, who is normally driving averse, actually loved driving the golf cart around the island because with traffic being almost non existent and with a top speed of 14 MPH down hill, piloting the cart is a blast. We will definitely be visiting again, may not be for another year, but a return trip is going to happen sometime. There are lots of little stories to tell, but my fingers are getting tired from typing, so maybe another time. The island is only 2.5 miles wide by 5 miles long, so just look up at the attached picture and note the green line, that is our track from the GPS and some of those routes we traveled more than once. We covered some ground.

Started up, went down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 142

Mother, Jugs & Speed

Every time the MMC goes out for a breakfast run I take a few pictures, usually shots of the cars in the parking lot, people at the tables, the place we are eating at, what we might be eating, etc. While standing outside the restaurant lining up one more photograph of a row of Miatas I decided no more generic photos. This picture is the result. Fresh & New? Or Lame & Amateurish?

Stumbled on the last half of M, J & S on Fox Movie Channel tonight and instead of watching the news we opted for classic cheese. The cast included a Battle of Network Stars Dream Team: Raquel Welch, Bill Cosby, Dick Butkus & Larry Hagman. The soundtrack listing was fun too, the only mid-seventies band missing was Geronimo Jackson.

Started up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 128

A 35mm Film Canister Well Intigrated Into The Enviorment

The MMC had a breakfast rally to Waynesboro, Georgia. We went, ate and instead of driving back with the group, we went, that’s right, geocaching.

There were four located in and around downtown, three were listed as easy and one was a difficult, rating 4 out of 5 stars. Based on our results those ratings were pretty much dead on.

Donna was really interested in the difficult one because we had to solve a puzzle, which looked like fun, to get the final coordinates and that was our first planned stop, but when after breakfast the group made a short drive to a local Mennonite bakery we passed right by the location of an easy one. Because it was on our way to the puzzle one, we stopped at the Confederate Cemetery first.

Being recent converts and flush with excitement for our new endeavor we did what any other neophyte might, convert others to our way of life and managed to get two other couples to join us down the rabbit hole. This cache is actually rated 1.5, but we had read the logs (which often contain spoilers) so we had a pretty good idea of what and where it was, so it turned into a 1. Neither Donna nor I found the cache, Rita did. It was literally, the title of this post, and all there was room for was the rolled up paper log. Because we are still novices at this we learned one of the hard and fast rules of geocaching, bring a pen. The only person who had one was Rita’s husband Larry, but it has been traveling, unused, for several years in the pocket of the jacket he was wearing, so was not the best, but we skipped our names and date on the paper. After re-hiding the cache Rudy and Patti (couple #2) had time constraints, so they hightailed it back to Augusta.

Larry & Rita had no other real plans, so they came along with us to tackle the hard one, Historic Fob. Because of the description we knew we needed to visit the courthouse, so we ignored the coordinates for the parking and just found a spot on the street right there. There were 8 questions that the answers to made up the places after the decimal point in the minutes of the coordinates. A couple were head scratchers and one must have been interpreted differently than the four of us did, but an educated guess as to the misinterpretation and we headed to the hiding place of the cache (right across the street from the courthouse.) That’s went it went from bad to worse. The GPS lead us right to one side of the park right near where the Public Works department was working on a water meter or something, a hole in the ground that looked like it had been there awhile. We were there awhile too looking and poking and poking and looking, but with no success. We were disappointed, but shrugged it off because right there at the top of the directions it mentioned that you possibly might not find it.

There was another cache less than a quarter mile away, the Brown Fob, so the four us started walking. We cut through an alley and with about 500 feet to go came to an empty lot and when we looked through it and across the street all four of us simultaneously knew exactly where to find it.

Plugging in the numbers for the fourth, and last cache in Waynesboro, turns out it was 1.17 miles to the south of where we were standing. It was a nice day, so we opted to take a walk. We walked and walked and walked and I checked the GPS, .56 miles left. We walked some more and some more and I checked the GPS and it said .53 miles left. Walk, walk, walk, .49 miles left. The group told me to stop checking or we’d never get there. We walked and walked and walked and we walked so far that we came across the restaurant the Miata Club had had breakfast in. I checked the GPS and it said .36 miles, now we are getting closer. There was some bad news though, the directional arrow was now pointed perpendicular to our southerly route and it was aiming right at the lake the Lakeview Restaurant sits on.

I checked the map and sure enough we in the same situation Donna and I were in last week in the woods, a really long walk to get to the cache after we had already been on a really long walk. The four of us agreed the best thing to do would be turn around, walk the 3/4 mile back the cars and drive to find the the Red Fob. It turned out to be an easy find, only one u-turn required, and because it is still winter so the patch of woods it is hidden in was still barren of leaves.

Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 127

How Cold Is It?

60 above zero:
Floridians turn on the heat.
People in Minnesota plant gardens.

50 above zero:
Californians shiver uncontrollably.
People in Duluth sunbathe.

40 above zero:
Italian & English cars won’t start.
People in Wisconsin drive with the windows down.

32 above zero:
Distilled water freezes.
The water in Bemidji gets thicker.

20 above zero:
Floridians don coats, thermal underwear, gloves, wool hats.
People in Michigan throw on a flannel shirt.

15 above zero:
New York landlords finally turn up the heat.
People in Minnesota have the last cookout before it gets cold.

Zero:
People in Miami all die.
Wisconsins close the windows.

10 below zero:
Californians fly away to Mexico
People in Minnesota get out their winter coats.

25 below zero:
Hollywood disintegrates.
The Girl Scouts in Michigan are selling cookies door to door.

40 below zero:
Washington DC runs out of hot air.
People in Minnesota let the dogs sleep indoors.

100 below zero:
Santa Claus abandons the North Pole.
Wisconsins get upset because they can’t start the Mini-Van.

460 below zero:
ALL atomic motion stops (absolute zero on the Kelvin scale.)
People in Michigan start saying…”Cold ’nuff fer ya?”

500 below zero:
Hell freezes over.
Minnesota public schools will open 2 hours late.

This came from a fellow MMC’r who read it aloud to the Club when we gathered this last Saturday morning for breakfast on what has been the coldest day here all winter (so far) and Minnesotans had that last cookout.

French Toast

The MMC meet for their monthly breakfast event here in Aiken at the Sugar Magnolia Cafe (not to be confused with Sugar Magnolia’s Cafe in Lompoc, CA) and we got a nice turn out of 10 people in 7 cars, 5 Miatas and a Sebring (which counts as two Miatas), a much nicer turn out than the November one there which was just Donna and I.

Frakking Sony DVD player. I spent most of the late morning and early afternoon trying to get William & Mary burned on a DVD. No matter what I tried, none of the 4 discs produced would do anything but play the No Public Display warning, the production company logo and the “pirating is stealing” PSA before halting and giving an out of region error message.

All the forums posts I found on the net said that the programs I was using should take care of the Region Coding. Then I searched for a way to set the Sony DVD player to region free and found that there were no sure fire way of doing it with my model, but there were a couple of ways that I could try that worked on similar models. Ha, close, but oh so frustrating.

I’m not sure what prompted me, but about 3 o’clock I took one of the, what I thought were toast, discs into the other room and tried it in the old JVC player. It worked perfectly….

The JVC was exiled to the back bedroom a few months ago because it was refusing to play DVDs or lock up with increasing regularity. We bought a Sony DVP-NS57P for $40 at Walmart to replace it and it has been great; until now. I’ve moved the JVC back into the living room, now the two of them sit on top of each other in the cabinet ready for anything.

Started up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 100

Best of 2008

January

Juror #6…

Thursday the 3rd

…didn’t get picked.

I was glad I didn’t get selected, but would not have been disappointed had I been. This wasn’t for a regular trial session jury, but for Grand Jury duty. You would have to report one Thursday per month (more if needed) to decide if the prosecution’s case had merit for trial and if it did, hand down indictments. There are 18 Grand Jurors, 12 picked today for the year of 2008 and 6 returning members from 2007. So, although today’s lucky selectees were chosen to serve for one year, half of them would get held over and serve a second year.

First, all of us assembled in an unused court room and then at the appointed time we were guided into the actual court room. The judge came in and then the Clerk called the role. We were numbered alphabetically, so because my last name starts with a B I was a low number. As the clerk called our number, starting at #1 and going all the way up to #99, we had to stand and say aloud our name. They skipped quite a few numbers/names, leading me to believe some folks had called in with excuses already.

After everyone had sounded off, the clerk informed the judge he had 64 perspective jurors with one no-show. He asked the missing persons name and then told his bailiff to inform the Sheriff’s Office that he wanted a bench warrant issued for that person to be before him next Monday at 9:30. The judge then read a series of questions that if you could answer yes to you might be excused from duty. One person was excused because they had moved to Augusta (last weekend) and two more were excused for medical reasons. There were about a half dozen who had hardships that made it inconvenient to serve once a month and they got swapped into the regular jury pool for a two week session later in the year.

This left about 55 people eligible for the 15 spots (twelve plus three alternates) giving me a 27% chance of getting chosen. Our juror number and names were written on small slips of paper and loaded into a “high tech’ metal box the size of a cigar box and professional shaken up by the Assistant Clerk of Court. The slips of paper were then drawn out one at a time.

The first number called was for a woman seated right behind me. She muttered an expletive under her breath as she made her way up front. The woman sitting next to me went “Oh my,” in mock surprise. I whispered to her, “Yeah, she didn’t seem to happy about that.” About halfway through calling the 12 Grand Jurors, the clerk called out, “Juror number six – ty seven.” My heart skipped a beat there. I figured for sure that I was going to get picked as one of three alternates, but didn’t.

All of us unwanted jurors were directed back to the original room where we were given a written excuse for work and a check for $20.

Thanks Aiken County for buying my wife and I BBQ at Bobby’s for tonight’s dinner.

February

Scratch and Sniff Post

Wednesday the 20th

Smell MeWhen I entered the garage this morning to get in the car I was struck by an odd smell. A very chemical smell. I opened the garage door and it was quickly disbursed.

I didn’t recognize it, wasn’t motor oil, wasn’t gasoline and it was not anti-freeze. Wasn’t coming from the car at all. It really only smelled right on the stairs from the house to the garage. I opened the cabinet doors one by one and sniffed. It was faintly there, but I was unable to pinpoint it. Didn’t smell like paint and it wasn’t natural gas. It had a sweet odor, so it certainly wasn’t a dead critter under the house.

As I pulled into the garage tonight after work the smell was still there, so I started a more thorough search of the garage. Wasn’t the fire ant killer or the potting soil. Not the 3 in 1 oil or the liquid wrench. Didn’t come from the car wax or Amour-All. Not the Simple Green nor the tire shine. Wasn’t coming from the bicycle chain lube. Ditto the “clean” rags. Not the wallpaper paste or the wallpaper remover. Kind of smells like it was coming from the spray paint area. Didn’t smell like paint, but I started pulling out the dozen cans of partially full cans. What’s this?

AH HA! A pint can of Paint & Varnish Remover way in the back. As soon as I put it on the counter I knew I’d found the culprit. I don’t remember ever buying this. Probably purchased when we first moved into the place to clean paint off the molding or something. Pretty toxic stuff I guess, only took 18 years to eat right through the metal can.

March

Happy Daylight Savings Time Day

Saturday the 8th

If your family is anything like my family, today is a big day and celebrated by exchanging gifts. We are biding our time signing carols and drinking the traditional aqua vitae until the appointed hour when we gather around and watch the lower right of the PC screen as the hour magically jumps back from 2:00 AM to 1:00 AM.

Now excuse me while I go change all the other clocks in the house to tomorrow already.

April

That Was Unexpected

Thursday the 24th

Did you ever have a really cool idea for a joke and have it go horribly wrong, but still be worth it?

A co-worker (Hi Mark) and his sister are always trading gotchas and he has been after me to take some cheesy steering wheel cover on vacation out west and mail it to her so she won’t have a clue who sent it to her. Seeing as we are redoing bathrooms in lieu of going west this year he cooked up a different plan that I could help with. And it fit right into Donna and my Post Office picture taking.

Mark bought a deck of cards, a box of envelopes and 3 books of stamps. We would put one playing card in an envelope and mail it to his sister from each Post Office we visited. I used a laser printer and addressed 55 envelopes to his sister with a return address of John Smith, 123 Main St, Anytown, USA 123456. The first envelope contained the box so she would have a place to put the cards when they arrived. To ensure she kept the box I printed out a little note to go in the envelope with the help of the Ransom Note Generator. Two weekends ago Donna and I made a trip up to Greenwood, SC to mail the box. We picked Greenwood, the sister’s hometown, so she wouldn’t immediately suspect Mark (even though he knew she would think it was him anyway.) Mark didn’t even tell his wife what we were up to because he knew his sister would call her and get the truth out of her.

Because I didn’t want to just put a playing card in an envelope, I was going to put a piece of blank paper in with it. Then I thought maybe I’d put one word on the paper and when she had all the pieces of paper there would be a sentence that explained the whole gag. But I thought that was a little too much, so Plan B was to gather 52 quotes from the internet and put one on each page. For extra fun I made sure to get a quote that included a bolded word matching the card, i.e. “When I have to choose between two evils, I always try to pick the one I haven’t tried before.” – Mae West went in with the two of clubs.

This weekend when we went on our PO photo trip we mailed an envelope from nearly every Post Office on Saturday and a couple more on Sunday. Because the Post Offices were all closed when we got to them we mailed them inside when we could, but most ended up in the blue box outside. Because the blue boxes don’t get emptied until late in the day, almost all our “letters” didn’t make it into the system until Monday night.

Yesterday Mark’s sister got 11 pieces of mail that included a playing card and a quote. Now here is where it went off course, instead of thinking it was her brother having a little fun, she thought someone was harassing her and went to the local police. That’s right – the police.

This morning Mark’s sister called Mark’s wife to tell her about the ordeal she was going through. Now because Mark’s wife knows nothing of the prank she can only listen with concern about the problem. Naturally when they get off the phone with each other, Mark’s wife calls him. She tells him about his sister going to the police with these harassing letters and how the officer has told her it looks like the work of a sexual predator and if she gets anymore (which she will tomorrow) to bring them right in and they’ll try and get some fingerprints off them. At this point Mark realizes the jig is up and confesses to his wife that he was behind the letters.

Mark then came up front to tell Donna and I the story where we all had a great big laugh about it. Then, because both Donna and my fingerprints are on file from being in the military, and not being real sure how serious the detective was taking the case and not wanting to really worry his sister Mark emailed the quote file to her and then called to tell her to check her email while he was on the phone with her. She was somewhat relieved at not being stalked, but somewhat mad. We are hoping in a couple weeks she will see the humor in the whole thing.

May

Hail To The Emperor

Tuesday the 20th

There was a 40% chance of afternoon thunder showers. We took the umbrella to work, but left it in the trunk. My job was to keep track of the radar and if it looked like thunder rolling our way I was to go out, take off the cockpit cover, raise the top and bring the umbrella back in.

I failed miserably at my job. When it was time to go home at 4:00 PM I got up from my desk and walked down to the other end of the plant to get Donna. As I passed by some windows it looked very dark. Uh-oh! As we left the plant someone was walking in with an umbrella saying that it had just started raining. He was right and they were big fat drops too. As we walked quickly to the car the rain intensity picked up rapidly. We started running (this is the only time I regret parking in the north forty), it was coming down at a pretty good clip by the time we reached the car. I popped the trunk tossed in everything I was carrying and started to take off the cockpit cover. Tossed the roof up and Donna tried valiantly to click it down while I wadded up the soaking wet cockpit cover and tossed it too into the trunk. I started the car and raised the windows as the rain poured down. The interior was pretty dry, but we were pretty wet.

About a mile from the plant the skies really opened up, even with the wipers on high I had to slow down because of visibility. Then it sounded like somebody was shooting at us. Pow! Bam! Rat-A-Tat-Tat! Call 911 we’re under fire. It was hailing. Pea-sized up to grape-sized frozen water was pelting us. With absolutely no place to hide I just kept driving. I’m afraid to go out in the garage to look at the car and see if there are any little dents, but not as afraid as I was during the storm that the hail would get big enough to start tearing through the canvas roof and start hitting me on my noggin. After a couple more miles, and a couple more cloud bursts, the skies cleared, the rain stopped and we donned our sunglasses for the rest of the trip.

June

Cash Back

Monday the 30th

We did our weekly grocery shopping yesterday and as our custom I load the conveyor and Donna moves to the end and will start bagging if there is no one there. I have the coupons in my pocket (Donna hands them to me as we buy the item the coupon is for) and the loyalty card for the store in my wallet, plus I have the debit card for paying, so I stop opposite the cashier.

When the cashier was done scanning our items and deducting the coupons, I swiped the debit card. At this point, knowing my wallet is empty, Donna says, “Take out a couple extra bucks.” This is unnerving because I am used to requests for specific amounts. I ask Donna what she means by a couple. Her answer was even more unsettling, “Just round up the total.” Our bill was at that point ninety-four dollars and fourteen cents. Crap! She expected me to do math under pressure, the cashier was waiting, the woman behind me had her stuff on the conveyor belt…I couldn’t do it, I just knew I’d subtract wrong, forgetting to carry the one or something, and the bill would come to $101 or $99.

I punted, figured I would just take out ten bucks, that should be easy. I push the other key, hit the 1 and the 0 and hit OK. Your total is $94.24. Damn that’s ten cents! Cancel. Back. Cancel. Panic.

I just know everyone around is staring at the doofus who can’t operate the card console. In my head I imagine the kid at the service desk is making an announcement, “Attention Kroger shoppers. Gather around Register #5 and watch an old guy try to operate the credit card reader. Grab a latte at the Starbucks counter and come on up front because next he’ll be trying to pay using the change from one of those little rubber things with a split in it that even your grandfather is too cool to use anymore.”

Miraculously all my button pushing has brought me back to the “Would you like cash back?” screen without having to swipe the card again. Alright, I want ten bucks, not ten cents. I push the key opposite other and push the one and the zero keys, then the big green Yes button. There. That wasn’t so hard was it?

Apparently it was hard, because the cashier hands me my receipt and my dime change.

And while I’m sure she was trying to be helpful by pointing me to the ATM machine near the service desk, I wasn’t listening to the cashier, I mumbled rudely, “No thanks. I don’t really need it.” I just wanted out of the store.

My very supportive wife waited until we got outside in the parking lot before she started laughing at me…

July

Goo Goo Eyes

Wednesday the 16th

Today we rode the tandem into work and our arrival time was around 15 minutes before the opening bell, so to speak, for most of the hourly employees, so quite a few of them were sitting under the break area awning getting in one last smoke before going to work. Unfortunately the bike rack where we are supposed to park is like 15 feet from the awning, so Donna and I have to unload our lunches and change of clothes right in front of the crowd.

Now a person on a bicycle is a rare enough sight as it is, but put two people on a long ass bike and we are talking parade level attention. One of the engineers was arriving at the same time and as he walked up to the building he noticed us unloading, but what he found most eye-catching was not us, but the looks of all the other employees openly gawking at Donna and I. He said nearly everyone was looking in our direction with sort of an incredulous look, as if they were thinking to themselves that no sane person would ride that thing.

Yesterday we had a very busy day, so instead of coming home and cooking something we dined out at what used to be one of our favorite south side eateries, Wing Place (why it “used to be” is the subject of another post.) When we were finished eating and heading for the door there was also a mom leaving with her daughter just in front of us. The girl was somewhere between to ages of seven and ten, very cute, with long curly light colored hair, a big ol’ smile and the largest eyes you ever saw. I really noticed the eyes because they were aimed directly at me. This girl was staring at me like I was a movie star or a pony.

As it turned out, mom and daughter were parked next to us in the parking lot, so we were more or less following them. About half way towards the cars I got another look from the little girl. Donna wondered if I dripped a bunch of ranch dipping sauce down the front of my shirt and she hadn’t noticed. Mom loaded the little girl in the back of their Jeep Wrangler as we got into the Miata. The girl was looking over at me, with an almost wistful expression, like maybe she was wishing it was her getting into the Miata instead of Donna. As the mom was going around to the driver’s side of their vehicle we put the top down. The girl was still looking our way with her big eyes and her chin in her hands with her elbows on the side of the Jeep and I could swear she let out a sigh of regret, it was almost creepy.

August

What Is Love?

Monday the 10th

Sunday nights from 6 PM until whenever, Bravo runs a Law & Order: Criminal Intent mini-marathon and I like to watch the repeats of older shows until 9 PM when USA runs a new episode. The original L & O is still the best (although sometimes their twists at the end stretch credibility), occasionally L & O:SVU leaves me feeling like a voyeuristic pervert, but L & O:CI is a guilty pleasure with Goren, it’s quirky lead detective and Eames his sneaky hot partner poking and prying until they get to the bottom of the crime.

I’m sure because of contractual obligations Bravo only gets to show certain seasons of the show, so nearly all the time I will recognize the episode as one I’ve seen and watch it again anyway. Sometimes I get real lucky and I won’t have seen it for a while, meaning I have forgotten who the killer is, so the show is a real treat. Rarely, I will stumble on an episode I haven’t ever seen at all before. Tonight at 7 o’clock that happened and it was exciting.

At ten minutes after seven my wife came into the living room and asked if she could have the TV, the Olympics were on and there was going to be swimming, diving and gymnastics tonight. I said, “Sure, go ahead.” That my friend is love.

When it turns out they were showing synchronized diving right then I didn’t make her turn it back to L & O:CI. That my friend is true love.

September

Wild Life

Sunday the 7th

Sung to the tune of Scott McKenzie’s San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Some Flowers in Your Hair):
“If you’re going to walk Hitchcock Woods
You’ll be sure to get spiders in your hair
If you’re going hiking in the woods
You’re gonna see lots of animals in there”

On our walk in the woods this morning we saw several humans, some with dogs, some on horses and a couple on foot. We saw a fox squirrel and lots of spider webs, even some with spiders still in them. We heard several different species of birds. We saw a toad, a salamander and a snake. A SNAKE!?!

He was a decent size one too. just lying there across the trail, probably 4 foot long. When I first noticed him he looked like a little krinkle french fry, all wavy like. Must have been asleep because when I poked him lightly with the end of my walking stick he smoothed right out and kind of looked up at me. Flicked his little red tongue at me several times and just stayed where he was. I’m thinking he was kinda pissed at me for waking him up because he pulled his head back like he was going to strike. I was still standing back away, just close enough to poke him again with my 4′ walking stick.

He didn’t like me poking him, but he still didn’t move off the trail until I kicked sand at him for the second time. He looked up at me once more, as if to remember my face, and slithered away slowly biding his time, probably planning when he could catch me unawares at another time.

Just after he left the trail Donna said, “Take it’s picture.” Good idea I thought, if I only had a camera. I did, like I always do, it was right there on the end of my walking stick. I just didn’t think to use that end of the stick; I was too busy poking with the other end.

October

Cash Back II

Thursday the 9th

On our way to get our monthly haircut Donna wanted to stop at Walgreen’s, she had a couple coupons that were burning a hole in her pocket. Of the three, there was only one we ended up using, eight Halloween themed pencils for a buck. With tax, $1.07. Donna asked for five or ten dollars cash back because she would need a few bucks in a couple days when she went out to lunch with her department. I figured if I just rounded up the bill to $10 that would do it. Donna agreed because that would give her some singles for a tip. I skillfully guided myself to the other amount screen for cash back while subtracting a dollar seven from ten. I typed in the amount I wanted back, hit OK and OK again. The cashier handed me my receipt and change and we headed for the door. When I looked down at the receipt total it was then that I realized the math tutoring from Jethro Bodine might have been a mistake.

I had asked for $8.83 back making my total debit purchase $9.90!

Oh, so close.

November

Oh Goody

Thursday the 13th

At work a big chunk of the productive part of today was spent staring at nearly worthless PC. Half of everything that most people need to do their jobs and one major item, email, are controlled through servers in New Jersey and it seemed like maybe somebody parked their truck on the network hose and didn’t realize it. Started sometime mid morning and after lunch we got partial connectivity back and received this email:

From: Xxxxxx, Xxxxxxx [INDAUTO/ASCONUM/FP]
Sent: Thursday, November 13, 2008 1:08 PM
Subject: NETWORK OUTAGE

All Employees:

Our Datacenter is still experiencing network problems as a result of several outages by our local telecom carrier. We have failed-over to a backup link and will continue to work on restoring the primary link. We are severely limited in bandwidth so please suspend all non-work related web/internet activities until our primary link is restored. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and thank you for your patience and understanding. If you have any questions, please call me at the numbers listed below.

Xxxxxx Xxxxxxx
Manager, Network Systems

The highlighting is just as it came from the sender. My favorite part is the red letter words, “please suspend all non-work related web/internet activities” because I could swear that every employee has to sign off on a computer usage policy that expressly forbids using the net for anything non-business. I’m thinking that because this manager has to remind us not to use it for non-work, that perhaps he must think it is OK in other times to use it that way.

December

Identity Crisis

Tuesday the 16th

On our trip down I-95 in Florida on last Thursday I saw a most interesting car. I was in the center of the three lanes when I noticed a small black sedan with dark tinted windows approaching fast. In the center of the grill was a shiny oval badge with a large L in the center. The car was a Lexus. It looked smaller than their smallest cars the IS and as it passed by I didn’t recognize it. Now I’m a car guy, I read practically every major car magazine and check AutoBlog every day, so if Lexus has a car below the IS I would known about it. Once the car was past me I could see the back of the car and right there on the left of the trunk was a chrome Lexus badge, in the center of the rear panel was another oval Lexus logo where they were supposed to be. On the right side of the trunk was the clincher, a chrome IS250. A neighbor used to have an IS250 and this was definitely not one.

I wasn’t real sure what it was, but I had an idea and it was confirmed after I had internet access, it was a Toyota Yaris sedan. Props to the owner for a nearly thoroughly convincing job, he even stayed in the family so to speak. If he had just combined two badges on the back to give the car two letters that weren’t on a known model, like say IC250, I might have actually though I spotted a prototype.