I have created a new gallery For the South Carolina Post Offices, the old one is still there for now, but I have changed the link on the sidebar to point to the new one. I was built using the Simple Viewer skin for Jalbum. I like it a lot, but there are a few things that I don’t like, so it may or may not be permanent.
I’ve got the pictures segregated three ways,
I gave up too soon on them again.
Tim Wakefield who has practically owned the Tampa Bay Devil Rays in the past, he is 20-2 against them lifetime, was pulled in the top of the 4th inning after giving up 10 hits and 7 runs. By he time the top of the fourth was over the FRS were trailing 8 to 1. To add insult to injury the MFY were beating Toronto Blue Jays 8 to 2. Figuring we would probably get swept by the Yankees this weekend, I had pretty much seceded the division and the rest of the season, but…
The Sox batters didn’t feel he same way. In the bottom of the 4th they go 4 runs back. In he bottom of the 5th they scored three more. In the bottom of he 6h they scored 6 to take the lead 14 to 9. Suddenly the sun is shining and things are looking up.
From Chapter 43 of the Spenser novel Widow’s Walk:
“Do you have a conclusion?”
“No, I can’t figure her out.”
“Maybe you need to,” Susan said. “Maybe you need to find out more about Mr. Smith’s life as a gay man. Maybe you need to find out why Mrs. Smith married him.”
“A tip?” I said. “A crime-stopper tip?”
“Two tips,” Susan said. “I have a Ph.D. from Harvard.”
“A hotbed of crime-stopping,” I said.
“A hotbed,” Susan said.
We had a reservation at a Holiday Inn Express (guess I should make this an acronym – HIE) for Sunday night because our original plan called for us to drive up on Sunday morning to watch the Professional Road Race Championships that are being held in Greenville. Decided to drive up today and catch a few Post Offices. Ten fell before the shutter. Most interesting: Tigerville.
Last night, six FRS pitchers gave up nine runs and 13 hits to the Baltimore Orioles. Tonight, 1 pitcher gave up no runs on NO hits. In 23 year-old Clay Buchholz’s second big league start he faced only three more batters than the minimum possible.
I’ve now finished 17 out of the 35 Spenser books. I’ve got two more books still on the way from my Amazon spending spree of a week ago and I’ve still got one left to read of the four I’ve already received. Today we went to 3 used book stores, one in Aiken and two in Augusta and bought 6 more books including a good find of a paperback reissue of #3 in the series, Mortal Stakes. his now leaves just 9 books in the series I don’t have.
Mortal Stakes is about Spenser and the 1975 Red Sox (with fictitious players) so it is like getting two pleasures for he price of one, even though I’m really not enamored with the FRS right now after their showing in the Bronx and tonight’s game, so far, against Baltimore.
Tuesday, August 28, 2007: MFY 5, FRS 3
Wednesday, August 29, 2007: MFY 4, FRS 3
Thursday, August 30, 2007: MFY 5, FRS 0
The lead in the east is still 5 games, but lets hope the highly paid professional athletes that wear the uniform of the Boston Red Sox aren’t as easily depressed by these developements as I am…
Didn’t post last night, not because the wireless connection was crap in my room like last week, it was fine because we were home, but because it was such a full day and we got home too late to blog about it.
In the morning Donna and I went on a drive to photograph a half dozen Post Offices. In one I had to use the Emperor’s Mini Me because it was inside a building with no outside indication it was a PO and another that will have to be re shot on another trip that way because there were too many people in lawn chairs in front waiting for a parade.
True to the Postmaster’s letter the Post Office in Hilda was inside a car garage store. There was little section just inside the front door on the left that was set aside for that official function. If you look towards the bottom of the photo right next to a fuel filter is the Matchbox Garnet Red Miata. The other side was the cashier for the garage. Coincidently when we pulled up there was a white 1st Gen Miata just outside one of the garage doors with it’s hood up being worked on.
When we entered the town limits of Ehrhardt, SC the town sign said “Home of the Schuetzenfest.” I wondered to my self what that might be and when they held it. The answer to the second question was answered when we got to the intersection of US601 & SC64. There were people everywhere. The road was not blocked yet, but you could tell that people were staking out spots to watch a parade. The Schuetzenfest was today. How lucky could we be? Well, not so lucky, the Post Office was nowhere near the south end of town where the Google map thought it should be. We parked the car on a parallel street to the parade route and did a walk through. Found the PO and it was 100 feet from the center of all the action. This photo would have to wait for another day. The answer to the second question had to wait until we got home and checked Wikipedia. Leave it to South Carolina to misspell it and homogenize it to look like another “festival” with blow-up kids entertainment thingies, crafts for sale and deep fried dough.
When we got home we had some lunch and I went outside to wash the car for a couple of Miata events for that afternoon & evening. First up was the annual Sno-Cap Drive-In Anniversary hang out in the parking lot. Donna stayed home from this one as it was hot as the dickens and there is little place to hide from it over there, plus it is just a bunch of cars with a bunch of car guys standing around talking about cars. On the way over I found out how it looks to have a waterfall cascade over the windshield header. It looked a little hazy ahead and I didn’t didn’t see any oncoming cars with wipers on, so it couldn’t be rain. Wrong oh. It was a pop up thundershower and it happened so fast I had no time to prepare. Most times if you hit a shower and it is not too heavy the best defense is to roll up the windows and keep moving. This was no one of those times. Traveling at 60 MPH in a deluge just results in there being enough water and force behind it to make it come rolling over the windshield. After about a minute or so it was safe to pull over so I could get the top up, of course I had the boot on which just caused more of a delay in getting every thing closed up. The interior and myself were soaked. Almost turned around and went home, but seeing as I was halfway to the Cap I went anyway. About 2 miles later the storm was gone and the skies were blue so I dropped the top again hoping the sun would help dry everything out. Five miles later when I got to the Drive-In the only way to tell I had gotten drenched was the puddle of water surrounding the shift boot and the damp side of my clothing that I was sitting on. The whole hour and a half I was at the Sno-Cap it didn’t rain a drop, but wouldn’t you know it, a couple miles into the drive home it started to rain again and it kept it up for the rest of the trip. This time I was ready, I put the top up before I even left the Cap’s parking lot.
I had just enough time when I got home to dry off the recently washed car and listen to 4 innings of the FRS whoop up on the Chicago White Sox before heading back out the door for the MMC‘s Bug Splat Rally which I run. We had a good turn out (for our little club) with 9 cars at the restaurant. Eight of which went on the run. The bugs were not so cooperative though, there were a lot of clean Miata noses at the Dairy Queen finish. There were a few large splats, but the biggest bug trophy went to a car that came back with a large mosquito plastered near their turn signal. The highlight for us was the medium M&M Blizzard we split.
This morning we went out and did a 13 mile ride on the tandem, the first 50 feet my butt protested the return of the bicycles seat so soon after Friday’s ride, but I showed it who was the boss by continuing on. In truth that was partly the reason we did go for a ride today, because all we have been doing is short and very infrequent rides the limiting factor in our enjoyment is uncomfortable sitting. Most people who start bike riding as an adult think that the reason their hiney hurts is they need a wider, cushier tractor seat, but what they really need is miles. I don’t know what really happens, but it is like forming callouses on your hands from doing manual labor. If you are sitting correctly on a modern lightly padded skinny seat after a while of riding your sit bones won’t bother you even on very long rides.
After riding we did our weekly grocery shopping and were home and in the house for good by 10:30 AM.
I was pleasantly surprised by Stranger Than Fiction that we watched this afternoon, it would have been perfect if not for the happy ending, I would have given it a 10 out of ten, had it stopped right after the bus accident part.
Because the FRS have the evening off I had nothing better to do than watch a little tube. We started to watch Fever Pitch and made it a whole 34 minutes before shutting it off. Part of the problem was the whole language problem you see, it was not the Drew Barymore / Jimmy Fallon American version, but the original British movie. Maybe if they had American English sub-titles…
From there I started to watch a Law & Order episode that was about 5 minutes in. I had seen it before, but as usual didn’t remember the ending, so I watched it through. Beautiful thing of it is, that in another year or so if I stumble on that episode again, I’ll have forgotten it again, so the ending will be a surprise. Again.
Right after that, TNT segued right into another L & O episode. This one I hadn’t seen, so I watched it for the first time. It started out with a thinly disguised re-hashing of that poor Cubs fan in 2004 who tried to catch a foul ball and was then subsequently blamed for them not making the playoffs. It later turned into a whole corrupt police officer and DNA clearing a wrongly accused murder, yada, yada, yada. Beautiful thing of it is that in another year or so if I stumble on that episode again, I’ll have forgotten it, so the ending will be a surprise. Again.
Two hours of TV was enough, even when it is “good” TV, so I handed the remote to Donna and picked up a book. She started channel checking while I read with one eye and watched the flashing images with my other. She paused on something I didn’t recognize, (The TV listings say it was Supernatural, but I can’t confirm or deny that because I am not familiar with the show.) and I looked up for a second and said that I thought that a couple of the people in it looked familiar. She tired of whatever it was and clicked to the next channel. Two people were salsa dancing? It was Fox’s So You Think You Can Dance? I made a smart aleck crack like, “There’s something I *don’t* want to be familiar with.” She laughed and changed the channel. Wouldn’t you know it but the next channel was PBS and they were showing Live From Lincoln Center : “Mozart Dances” The Mark Morris Dance Group performs… We both looked at each other and thought the same sarcastic thought, only I voiced it, “Now there is something I *want* to be familiar with.”
Next up, was the Weather Channel. There was a meteorologist in a parking lot in San Antonio standing in a dry parking lot waving his hands vaguely stage left telling us how much water used to be there. Riveting. That’s when I left the room.
With apologies to Men Without Hats: We Can’t Dance If We Want To