Misc Photos

Chocolate House

Chocolate House

One of the open shelves in the new kitchen, the one above the stove, will have a couple of neat old metal cars in it. One of which reminded us of an VW bus we had back on Guam when we were first married. We got out the old photo albums looking for a suitable picture of us to add to the shelf. We found one of us standing near said bus, but for a couple of reasons, one of which would be that I’d have to explain what is happening, we didn’t want to use it. So we found this one of us taken on our wedding day by one of our witnesses just outside the courthouse where we tied the knot and thought it might do nicely.

No, that is not the courthouse we are standing in front of, it is the Chocolate House in the Plaza de Espana, which consists of a couple of buildings still standing of the Spanish Governor’s house from the 1600’s.

Paisano Pete

Paisano Pete

The final cabinet (the 24″ Drawer Base replacement) arrived Wednesday afternoon. Donna pulled the duty of coming home and waiting for this piece seeing as I had done it on Tuesday for the 3 wandering cabinets. Those showed up in a Lowe’s branded truck handled by Lowe’s employees in Lowe’s red vests.

This single piece, like the major portion of the order before it, arrived in the back of a Budget Rental truck manned by folks in jeans and tees. At least the first bunch found the house fine. For this guy I had to talk him in like a stewardess landing a jumbo jet after the pilot has had a heart attack. Even with me guiding him he still made a wrong turn and 5 minutes later after not seeing my next landmark had to make a u-turn.

We were supposed to be stop 5 according to the dispatcher, but this guy must have skipped #4 because Donna said that he had to climb over a bunch of boxes to get to our one item. He then nearly dropped it while moving it around in the truck. But eventually the cabinet made it in to our garage and in spite of all my imagined scenarios of what could have been wrong with it, it was fine.

Donna then had to call his next delivery appointment (possibly #4) and find out where she was, so Donna could direct the truck driver. He claimed his GPS was broken, but judging by appearances we think that maybe he just didn’t know how to operate one.

Barn Cats

Nearly a decade ago, here in Our Fair City, the town had 31 life-size fiberglass horses done up by artisans and displayed at various businesses. At the end of a time period they were auctioned off to raise money for some cause. There are about a third of them still visible around.

Now, this year it is 28 cats, about 3 times scale, that are getting the same treatment. We went downtown today to photograph as many as we could. I think we managed to snag about half of them. And unfortunately most are behind storefront windows and are hard to photograph without distracting reflections detracting from the image.

When we talked with one cat sitting business we discovered that not only would the cats be auctioned off at the end to raise money, the business had to bid on the privilege of hosting the painted cat. We also discovered why the cats were universally inside the business instead of outside like the horses were. Because they are a lot smaller, and consequentially lighter, they would be easy for a nefarious individual to take a cat home and the business would have to pay $5k for the loss.

The camera store had 2 in their window, so we went in to try and get a shot sans reflection when we noticed Santa sitting there just waiting for some little kids to have their photo taken with him. We chatted with him for a bit and he asked, so we agreed.

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1183

Skaneateles

We went to watch polo this afternoon and took along the new guy at work. The weather was perfect, sunny and low 70’s and the game was awesome. It was the finals in an 8 Goal* Tournament and after 5 of the 6 chukkers the score was tied 7-7. The final ended up being Skaneateles 12, Hutchinson Farms 9. Vaughn grew up around horses, but had never seen polo, so he had a great time. We couldn’t have asked for a better game either, usually when we go to a polo match we are lucky to see 10 goals scored total.

*The goal total is not an indication of how many goals the team should score but a player handicapping/ranking system.

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1177

Auto Matters

Last Sunday when we returned from our northeast trip, I parked the Purple Whale. Monday night I washed all the gunk off of it, that had accumulated in the 2,772.7 miles we drove it. Today was the first time we got back in it since then. The weather has been positively autumnal here, so we drove the Miata to work and home with the top down all week.

With nearly all of those trip miles on the highway, our average mileage for the trip was 32.6 MPG. We bought gas before we left and then again when we got back. On the trip we filled up 5 times and averaged $3.81 per gallon. Of those seven fill ups the cheapest was $3.21 here in Aiken and the most expensive was $4.10 in New York.

Heads Up

The western side of Monhegan is where the “town” is, as that is where the natural harbor is. It is also relatively flat. The center of the island rises up sharply from sea level to around 100′ and the houses thin out. The western portion of the island is all nature preserve, pine forest and rocky cliffs to the sea. From south to north:


Burnt Head (125′)


White Head (135′)


Little White Head (105′)

I missed taking a photo of the tallest cliff called Black Head because I was too busy scrambling up the rocky trails…