Miatatude

For the second day in a row I put the top up with less than an hour of the work day left. Unlike yesterday, this time it was a very good thing. It poured. It was a mini gale. At quitting time it was still coming down very hard, but because we were leaving town to go on our long weekend we left promptly, instead of the sensible wait it out we would normally take. We got soaked walking to the car, even with an umbrella.

Maybe later I will enjoy the irony of this evening’s drive to Statesville, NC, but right now I am cursing the North & South Carolina Departments of Transportation. As we traveled north on I-77 towards Charlotte, we couldn’t help but complain about the sorry state the pavement was in. The concrete was full of potholes and big cracks caused by the passage of huge number of 18-wheelers and heavy SUVs not considered in the initial design studies. Plus, where they had made an attempt to fix these defects, they did a lousy and/or cheap job, making it no better and sometimes worse than before. Where we could get away with it, we drove in the smoother, because of less traffic use, left lane. Later in the drive while in NC we encountered 2 places where the Interstate was narrowed down to one lane which caused a 20 minute 1st gear creep to cover 2 miles. The reason that they had one lane closed was of course to repair the very damaged road surface we had been complaining of earlier.

Purchased Today: $12.50 in gas
Money spent since 03/03/03: $886.63
Started down, went up, went down, back up, still up.
Top Transitions since 02/02/03: 154

Going away for a few days starting right after work tomorrow. Burgular Notice! My mother-in-law is staying home. She is pretty good about aiming for an extremity with the shotgun – that is when she remembers to put her glasses on first.

So tonight I worked on the car topping off the fluids (oil, gas, coolant & windshield washer) and filling the tires up to 35 PSI. Our bags are packed and all we are doing is coming home, changing and heading out – destination Thursday evening is Statesville, NC. Friday morning we finish the trip to Lexington, VA. We are staying there until Sunday morning when we will drive the 8 straight hours to get home. Don’t worry I’ll analog blog the highlights so I can fill you in later.

Purchased Today: $0
Money spent since 03/03/03: $874.13
Started down, went up, went down, still down.
Top Transitions since 02/02/03: 151

Just another spectacular day in my home town. We (Donna, I, Fellow ABCers Chuck and Cindy) went for a 25 mile bicycle ride this morning. Got at it early to avoid the traffic and the heat. The sky was beautiful, in that religious cliched sort of way, sporadic big clouds covering the morning sun, but allowing streaks of sunshine through to illuminate the green fields. Just awesome.

The rest of the middle of the day was spent indoors in front of the computer. I finished up the mix for my upcoming CD swap. It is supposed to be “music that makes you hot. Music that makes you sweat. Music that turns you on.” I don’t know any of the music titles from those cheesy porn movies of my youth, so I made up a mix of songs that have the word summer in the title.

Tonight around 8 o’clock Donna wanted a top down drive in the Miata and being the accommodating guy I am, I agreed. After the first turn out of the neighborhood we knew we couldn’t go north, dark ugly storm clouds were brewing. I headed east and then south. After a 20 mile loop or so we headed back into town to stop at the store to get some odds and ends. As soon as we turned north we realized that all the while we were driving east and south those clouds we saw earlier had continued their relentless march south. We needed gas anyway so we ducked into the first station available to top up the tank and put the top up. We made it into the store before the rains came, but had to use the little emergency umbrella to get back to the car without getting entirely soaked. The drive home from the store was very similar to the drive home from work on Friday.

Purchased Today: 14.50 in gas
Money spent since 03/03/03: $874.13
Started down, went up, still up.
Top Transitions since 02/02/03: 144

Found another blogger that is running a CD swap. Ever since the demise of Crabwalk’s CD Mix of the Month earlier this year I have been jonesin’ for a free music swap, but am to lazy to actually run one (besides the list of regular readers here is too small.) I *have* swapped a couple discs with one semi-regular, Sinclair of Hello Mr. Mackenzie fame since then.

This one is not monthly, best I can tell this is the second in a sporadic series, but I have signed up to play Burn-It. If you want in, better hurry, sign-ups end Tuesday.

Purchased Today: Zero
Money spent since 03/03/03: $859.63
Started down, still down.
Top Transitions since 02/02/03: 143

Well not the stickiness part of the tape, but the foam in the middle. A few weeks back I installed a 3rd brake light flasher that a fellow I work with is making. I used double stick tape to hold it in place in a spot in the top of the trunk. Today on the way home from work when I closed the trunk there was a loud rattle that I didn’t recognize. I opened it back up and there was my ABIA hanging by the wires. Sticky stuff still on the car and sticky stuff on the unit, just the foam had torn.

Going to remount it tonight using Velcro and epoxy. Epoxy one side of the Velcro to the ABIA and epoxy the other side to the cubby hole in the trunk. We’ll see if this will last longer than 2-1/2 months.

Purchased Today: Nuttin’
Money spent since 03/03/03: $859.63
Started down, still down.
Top Transitions since 02/02/03: 139

Went out this evening to snap some photos of the car after being inspired by this web page. Found a deserted parking lot on the north side of town and parked my car in it at an angle. I was hoping to catch the sun going down in the background and then get some other pictures after sunset in the magic twilight. Right after I snapped photo number one, who should pull in, but an Aiken Public Safety Officer. Of course I was nervous even though I was doing nothing really wrong. He was just checking to see if I was all right and wished me good luck with the pictures once I explained what I was doing.

I did the K& N air filter cleaning and re-oiling this afternoon. I bought a bottle of cleaner and a small vial of oil instead of the cleaning kit as I didn’t think I’d need that much oil for my approximately 5″ x 10″ sized filter. Wrong, I got about a third of the filter soaked in oil. Off we went to the auto parts store to buy some more oil. They didn’t sell the stuff separately, so I ended up buying a cleaning kit anyway. I now have an awful lot of the cleaner solution, so come on over and get your K & N filter unsullied, free of charge. (Also snagged a new bottle of Meguiar’s Quik-Detailer while we were there.)

On the same trip we also stopped into Target to buy a set of smaller folding chairs. They had ones that are half the size of our current ones on sale for $4. We wanted some that would fit in the trunk and still leave room for some luggage. The ones we have now have arms and a high back so that a pair of them practically fill the trunk. Although needed for one reason they were not needed for another, our little 3 person household has 8 folding chairs stored in the back of the garage.

Purchased Today: $15.88
Money spent since 03/03/03: $859.63
Started down, still down.
Top Transitions since 02/02/03: 137