Misc Photos

Winter’s Last Gasp

Are You Looking At Me?We went to a local book fair yesterday and picked up some used books. I snagged a couple of Spenser hardcovers for $4 a piece and a couple of early paperbacks with some retro cool cover artwork. The quote below is from one of the hardcovers, School Days, and sometimes I feel just like Spenser does.

“Why would the parents want to discourage an attempt to find their son innocent of multiple murder charges?”

Don’t know,” I said.

“You don’t know shit,” Rita said, “do you?”

“No,” I said. “But it’s okay, I’m used to it.”

When I get into the paperbacks I’ll scan the cover of one. I’ve compared the Spenser books to potato chips here before, but with this week’s eating pleasure, maybe I should compare them to a box of Girl Scout Cookies: They are extremely tasty with no redeeming nutritional value and once you start eating a box you just can’t stop until they are gone. Which is exactly what happened to a box of Samoas today.

I’ve uploaded yesterday’ post Office pictures to the gallery. Look for Barnwell, Fairfax, Olar, Sycamore, Ulmer and Williston.

This morning we hit our favorite downtown breakfast spot for a veggie quesadilla, a breakfast parfait (granola on the bottom, vanilla yogurt in the middle and hot blueberries in syrup on top) with a low fat raspberry bran muffin for a kicker washed down with a bottled water.

Meal Cost: $8.75
Tip: 1.25
Spent Today: $10.00
Year to Date: $503.74

Today’s high didn’t make it into the 60’s and tonight’s low will be around 30, but I’ thinking this is the last of the “cold” weather around here for this winter. Next week we will be in the low 70’s almost every day. Some of the Bradford Pears are starting to bloom and the dogwood next to our house has buds. Even though we tried hard to talk ourselves out of it because of the chilly temps, we still ended up spending an hour or so walking in Hitchcock Woods. The weather didn’t scare a lot of people off either, we probably spotted more folks enjoying the woods this afternoon than we have in the past 6 or 7 times total.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/07: 64

Two For Tuesday

Enchanted Ceiling - Oh MyTaste of America with Mark DeCarlo on the Travel Channel in is my old home town, New Britain, CT talking Kielbasa. He said that the city is affectionately called Little Poland because of the large Polish population, we just called it New Britski when growing up, but I guess that would have not been very politically correct for 2007 & TV. I like to refer to New Britain as the “Ex Hardware Capital of the World.” What attracted all those Polish folks to the town in the first place was the plethora of jobs at all the factories that made locks, bearings, hinges, tools, etc. It is the “Ex” because all the factories are closed down as the manufacturing jobs moved south. The only company that still has any presence in town is Stanley Tools, but they only have white collar jobs left at their World HQ. You can get a brief glimpse of Broad St, NB, CT by watching the repeat of this episode at 11:00PM tonight or at 2:00PM on Saturday afternoon.

 

Wispy The skies have been very interesting around here lately, which means spring can’t be too far away. Also for the first time in a couple weeks we were near the average (low sixties) for us this time a year instead of 10 degrees below it. I’ve got my fingers crossed that this heralds the end of winter for us. For the next 10 days we will be 5-10 degrees above normal temps. Sunday calls for rain, but Saturday looks very promising for a Post Office photo expedition.

I meant to put this link in my post the other day about draftsmen: MUSEUM of OBSOLETE DRAFTING TECHNOLOGY.

Started up, went down, still down.
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6,000 Words

Here are 6 pictures from our January 27th visit to HHI that weren’t taken inside of a condo at the Hilton Head Beach & Tennis Resort:

Hilton Head Island Hilton Head Island Hilton Head Island
Hilton Head Island Hilton Head Island Hilton Head Island

Once You’ve opened the first image if you hover your mouse over one half or the other of the picture you will get some navigation tabs.

Started up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/07: 43

Lose Something?

What?Regular readers know that while at work, Donna and I walk a couple laps around the parking lot at morning break, lunch and then again at afternoon break. Today on lap one in the morning I noticed a couple of what I thought were run over Tupperware containers. On lap two I had another glance and realized they weren’t Tupperware, but I wasn’t sure what they were, so we went over to check the things out. Whoa, now that is interesting, they look like jellyfish without tentacles that have washed up on the beach. I kicked one over with my foot and that is when I recognized exactly what they were.

Following A Path To Enlightenment

The PathYesterday morning when I fired up the car in the garage I could see that one of the fog lights, AKA DRLs, was out. On the way home from work we stopped at the local auto parts store and bought a new bulb. At first I thought, to be safe, I should change out both bulbs under the theory that if one goes the other can’t be far behind. Then I referred to the wealth of knowledge that only the internet could house, the blog known as “Life of Brian.” In July of 2005 I changed just the left fog light bulb and now a year and a half later the right one bit the dust. A decision was made to go ahead and replace just the bulb that burnt out.

Changing the bulb is the not so simple matter of jacking up the front of the car, removing the front wheel, removing a 10mm bolt, taking out 5 weird plastic screw/snap fasteners and bending back the fender liner. Then you unsnap a spring clip, twist to unfasten the bulb base from the housing, unclick the wiring harness connector so you can get the base & bulb out where you can see it and pull the bulb out of the base. reverse everything you just did the put it all back together. It takes about an hour. So if you had the dealer do it, it would set you back about $75. That’s just the labor, they would add about another $20 for the six dollar bulb…

Yesterday I wrote about my leave covered yard, today I posted a picture depicting just that. Yesterday I changed a fog light bulb in the car, today I posted about that. I guess I figured if that whole non-linear story telling thing worked for Tarantino in Pulp Fiction, why not for me here?

Started up, went down, still down.
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Old Choo-Choo

Old LocomotiveHere is a photo from the trip that with a little help almost isn’t dreck. It was underexposed and not very interesting, so I cranked up the contrast which washed out the colors. I then ran it through a sepia tone filter and viola, an old locomotive.

Most of the photos from the railroad roundhouse would look improved once run through a sepia filter. You know, I think if I work at it I can get 20 decent photos for an online vacation gallery, just don’t hold your breath waiting for it, OK?

It took me a couple hours of starring at the paperwork on my desk before I could decipher where I left off 10 days ago, but once I got my bearings it was off to the races and I had a fairly productive day. I hope the company doesn’t expect that everyday now…

Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 484

Florida Trip Photos

I took about 114 photos on our trip to Florida and back, but most of them are dreck. The ones I took inside the aquarium came out blurry or dark. Because a flash would just reflect back off the glass I turned it off, so in the hand held shots (I steadied the camera against something) the fish appear as blurs because the little buggers won’t sit still. I took a few at the railroad roundhouse museum, but the light was wrong or the caution tape keeping you out of certain places was prominent in the frame… I think if I have ten worth posting in a gallery I’d be lucky, so I probably won’t bother.

Donna had a list of state parks that we were going to use as breaks by visiting on the trip down, but the weather was so cloudy, cold and windy that when we did venture out of the car, it was not for very long. On the way back the weather was a little nicer, so we did take a walk around a park in northern Florida. The most interesting photo from that was this tree that had a whole flock of woodpeckers on it: