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A Blog Almost One Tenth As Old As America

FRS

When The Going Gets Tough…

Friday, June 19, 2009

…the tough go shopping.

The FRS were on TV tonight because they were playing the Braves and if you live in the south every Braves game is on TV. The Red Sox had their 13 Trillion Yen Man (Daisuke Matsuzaka) pitching and there was much excitement in the Land of the Rising Sun because he was facing off against the Brave’s Japanese starter Kenshin Kawakami. Both guys have had rough starts to the season, but tonight’s rough start award went to Boston’s Dice-K as his first pitch of the game was belted into the bullpen for a home run. Then it went downhill from there. By the end of the 5th inning the Sox were down 6-0, so we went out to do our weekly grocery shopping.

For the second time in seven days we have left a store leaving our selected purchases behind.

I got in a checkout line behind what I thought was a woman who was nearly finished as she had a full cart and about a dozen items left on the belt. After unloading 2/3rds of the cart onto the nearly empty belt I realized it hadn’t moved and there were now two cashiers fiddling around at the scanner. I think they were trying to take an item off the woman’s order, they’d swipe something and the machine would boop and they’d both look up at the screen in unison, shake the heads, repeat. After the forth time I think it worked because one cashier left and the remaining one scanned another item and then immediately starting asking for the first cashier to come back. It was now becoming clear that she didn’t know what she was doing. And it also became clear that the shopper was separating the final 10 items into 2 separate orders and she had a paycheck to cash or maybe a substance check and that we were going to standing here awhile. There was one other check out line open, but there was no way that I was off loading the belt to put it in my cart to move over two slots. We looked at each other, shrugged and headed for the door.

We drove a mile down the street to another store, probably spent $25 more dollars than we would have at the first store, but we were in and out and on the way home like we should have been at Store #1.

The game was mercifully over by the time we got back, both teams each scored 2 uneventful runs, so they FRS lost by a score of 8-2. They play each other twice more over the weekend, so it is not too late to save face.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 256
Tagged: FRS, Rants

How Long Can They Keep This Up?

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

The Sox and Yanks are playing baseball this evening and for some reason the FRS are winning. And not only tonight, they have beaten the MFY the other 5 games they have played so far this season. I hated to say anything for fear of jinxing it and they’ll probably get their butts kicked tomorrow night while I’m watching the game on ESPN, but it feels pretty good.

I’ve been putting off washing the car for a couple weeks now because they keep calling for rain, well I couldn’t stand it any longer, so I washed the car tonight. So it will probably pour tomorrow, but the joke will be on Mother Nature because the car will be in the garage all day, we are riding the tandem to work….wait a minute then the joke will be on us anyway.

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 243
Tagged: FRS, Miata Washings

I Hate Plumbing

Monday, May 4, 2009

Sunday I got the screened porch cleaned off of pollen and we moved into our “summer” bedroom. Tonight I finished editing down the vacation pictures to 124. For most, the title will be enough, but I still will need blurbs for quite a few of them so they make some sense. I ordered the new Miata battery this morning. Tonight I fixed garbage disposal, it grinds up stuff just fine

But in the process I created two leaks under the sink. There is now a plastic bin under there to catch the water. I knew I was in trouble when I disconnected the disposal drain outlet, the rubber gasket was all gunked up, along with the seating surface of the unit. I was not going to be able to make a watertight connection no matter how hard I tried cleaning up, but I tried anyway. As a bonus the thin wall tubing’s flange was eroded away in a small area. The other leak is over near the trap section of the Rube Goldberg maze of piping required for a double sink with a disposal.

Tomorrow it is off to the Big Box Home Improvement Store to buy a new unit, some piping and a gasket or two.

The FRS are playing the MFY tonight on ESPN and the game that was supposed to start at 7:00 PM just started (2-1/2 hours late) because of a rain delay. Every time these two teams get together it is a marathon heavyweight fight lasting around 4 hours, so I will be reading about how this one comes out tomorrow morning.

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 181
Tagged: FRS, Rants

How Was Your Day?

Saturday, May 2, 2009

I need to swap the bedroom set to the summer bedroom. I need to clean the pine pollen off the back deck. The garbage disposal in the kitchen has stopped working, so I need to take it apart and see what has jammed it up. I still have 12 days of vacation photos sort through.

So what did I do today? We went geocaching, on a Time Speed Distance Rally with the MMC, watched two episodes of West Wing and I’m listening to the FRS on the internet.

Oh, and I have to order a new battery for the Miata.

We finished a disappointing tied for fifth (out of 6 cars) in the rally this morning. We made one error due to a misleading statement from the rally masters misinterpretation and another because of a missed a clue. We felt that we had kept track of the time and mileage overruns, but even subtracting them from our totals we were still way over and lost big points. The capper was I worked a pounds to kilogram conversion the wrong way and blew the bonus question.

After lunch at the BBQ place one of the Club members had left his lights on and the car wouldn’t start. That is a picture of three of us trying to push start him. After about 4 or 5 attempts we gave up on that and went inside to see about borrowing some jumper cables. The jump start work its magic and off he went.

On the way home Donna and I stopped at a quick stop store in south Augusta to get a bottled water and a Sprite. When we got back in the car I turned the key and was met with silence. Hmm, did I have the clutch all the way in? Tried again and still nothing, but radio display flashed as I went by. The dome light was on, so I figured it wasn”t a dead battery. Funny thing was that with the ignition switch in the ACC position the radio display would flash and there was a clicking sound (like 2 relays) coming from the instrument cluster.

Pulled out the cell phone and called Rudy (AKA Clunk) (or is it Thunk) and his first thought was battery, even after I described the symptoms. He said hold on, I’ll get the truck and come take a look. Thirty minutes later Rudy and Patti pull up. He brought some wrenches so we could remove the battery and (for what I figured was for testing purposes) the battery out of his Mazdaspeed Miata. We swapped batteries and the car started right up. According to Rudy the newer batteries don’t give you any warning, like they used to in the olden days. now they just up and die. We called a couple places to see if they had any batteries for the car and one said we don’t carry ’em, called the dealer and the other had one, but for $90 and he was all the way on the other side of town. Rudy has his truck and Patti just got a new Lexus, so he let me babysit his battery for a while.

It is still going to cost a hundred bucks or so for the battery, but it won’t be a generic replacement from Autozone, it’ll be a quality Westco replacement that is designed for the Miata.

Thanks Rudy.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 180
Tagged: Cars, FRS, Geocaching, Miata Photos, Miatatude, Rants

Maybe I’m Not Ready…

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

…for baseball season. At least the FRS may not be. Last night I posted that they were tied with the MFY 1 to 1 in the 8th inning, well in the bottom of the inning the Yankees scored 6 runs, unearned runs mind you, to win the game 7-1.

I am ready for tonight’s episode of TDTVS.

I am also ready to get the brakes fixed, but that ain’t happening until at least Friday night now. The parts got to the dealer on Tuesday, but I decided I didn’t want to deal with driving 60 miles with the last 8-10 in hectic capital city traffic, so I had them ship the stuff to me. Parts arrived today and wouldn’t you know it, they were the wrong ones. I called the part’s guy back and he said, “Oh yeah, there are two kinds of brakes for your year car, you must have the hard suspension. I’ll get the right parts and ship them right to you and they should get there Friday.”

Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 152
Tagged: FRS, Miata Service, TDTVS

Less Than 2 Weeks To Go…

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

..and I’m ready.

Although technically I’m not eliminated from the office March Madness contest (to win it #1 seed Louisville has to lose to #12 seed Arizona and my other remaining 14 picks have to be correct), I am ready for the tourney to be over and get to the start of the baseball season. Right now I’m listening to a pre-season baseball game between the Sox and the Yanks (it’s tied 1-1 in the 8th) and it is going to be great to have something to listen to each evening.

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 151
Tagged: FRS

The Greater Good

Monday, October 20, 2008

Season 1 Episode 21 revolves around Sayid off island and we find out just how he ends up on that fateful Flight 815. On island we attend a funeral, witness a near murder and Sawyer calms the new baby, “Turnip Head”, by reading a car magazine. The SciFi Channel has been running repeats of TDTVS since September by running 4 episodes every Monday starting at 7 PM and coincidentally the show running tonight at seven is The Greater Good.

I stayed up to see the whole game last night. It was close the whole way and the FRS had a couple of chances in the late innings, but couldn’t pull another rabbit out of their hats. The Tampa Bay Rays are on the way to the World Series to play the Philadelphia Phillies and the Red Sox are going home. Because it doesn’t matter to me who beats who in the Series, I might watch some portion of the games if Donna can’t find anything she wants to watch on TV those nights, so baseball is pretty much over for me for this year.

Pitchers and catchers report in 115 days.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/08: 386
Tagged: FRS, TDTVS
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sturgeon’s law

"Ninety Percent Of Everything Is Crap"
Derived from a quote by science fiction author Theodore Sturgeon, who once said, "Sure, 90% of science fiction is crud. That's because 90% of everything is crud." Oddly, when Sturgeon's Law is cited, the final word is almost invariably changed to 'crap'.

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