Rants

Pretty Full Day

  1. Breakfast in Aiken
    • We went to the New Moon and came to the conclusion that we are still eating there because of past performance. My muffin, while good, was not heated nearly enough. Donna’s hot chocolate had to be requested a second time before being served. If our last 3 visits here, were our first three visits here, they would be our only 3 visits here.
  2. Walk in Hitchcock Woods
    • Instead of our usual ingress point we started at the South Boundary entrance because we were already downtown for breakfast. A beautiful fall day and we shared the 2,000 acres with a horsewoman and her dog plus another woman walking a couple of small dogs. As is usually the case with our walks in the woods, we were certain of our path for approximately 75% of the time, never actually lost, just sometimes not sure where we were in relationship to the map.
  3. Pack the car and head north
    • I am constantly amazed with how much stuff we can stuff in the small trunk of the Miata. I am also constantly amazed with how much stuff we have to take with us for being away from home for a mere 48 hours.
  4. Lunch in Newberry, SC
    • The Grill On Main serves a mean Patty Melt. Donna had a cup of vegetable soup and a half of a chicken salad sandwich. The chicken salad had some mustard and maybe thyme in there to give it a different twist.
  5. Photographed 5 Post Offices
    • Whitmire, Union, Buffalo, Jonesville, Pacolet & Pacolet Mills. We stopped at White Stone, but it was busy and it had enough character that we decided to come back on the way home Sunday when it might not have cars in front of it.
  6. Dinner in Asheville Fletcher, NC
    • We had pizza from the second place we tried. We drove the 4 miles to a place just inside the Asheville limits that had some good reviews I found on the web. We left after we never got any attention from a server after being seated. That and the dozen small ants that crawled out of the menus and had to be squished under our fingers. The next place we tried was take out only so we ended up dining in our room at the Fairfield Inn in Fletcher, NC. The pie was not bad and probably would have been better if we could have eaten it moments out of the oven instead of the 15 minutes or so later that it took us to get back to the hotel and get settled.
  7. TDPM on USA
    • Commodore Norrington: No additional shot nor powder, a compass that doesn’t point north, [looks at Jack’s sword] and I half expected it to be made of wood. You are without doubt the worst pirate I’ve ever heard of.
      Captain Jack Sparrow: But you have heard of me.
Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/07: 463

Millinery Maneuvers

My search for a FRS WSC hat continues.

2007 WSC Ugly Blue HatThis one offered at MLB.com was too pricey at $30 for me to buy. I don’t really like the look, but if it was cheaper I might have bought it.

 

 

 

2004 WSC Blue HatA little searching around the web led me to discover that the 2004 hat, that I had owned and liked, was still available and maybe I would just buy another. It is available for $20 at the Yawkey Way Store.

 

 

2007 WSC Blue HatOn the front page of the Yawkey Way Store page is a link that says World Series Champions Merchandise Click Here. It takes you to a sister site that has the same Yawkey Way Store title and look, but the URL is www.thesouvenirstore.com. There I found a hat that looks like the 2004, but with 2007 and the word Champions in script. It is $30, but I’d pay that much for this one, because I like the looks.

You have to register with the site to buy anything, so I put the hat in the shopping cart and start the checkout process. When I get to the shipping page I find out that the cheapest way they offer is UPS ground and that costs $10. So now I rethink this purchase because the hat is now a $40 hat. I like it, but maybe not that much.

Ten bucks doesn’t sound like too much to ship 2 hats, so I try to order both the 2004 and 2007 hats. Can’t be done. Even though they are technically coming from the same place the two web sites don’t talk to each other.

2007 WSC Khaki HatDo I get one $30 2004 hat or one $40 2007 hat or two hats for $70? Maybe I’ll call the 1-800 number tomorrow and see if they will ship me the 2 hats for a total cost of $60. If I do get 2, the 2007 hat will be in khaki to differentiate it between the 2004 hat.

Next year when the FRS win the 2008 series, I will get the hat, similarly styled, in red.

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/07: 462

New Hat?

OK, I lied to you. I did not go to bed at 11:00PM, I stayed up until 12:15AM and watched multi-millionaire kids dance for joy on a field of green on a late October evening in Denver. I did not stay long enough to see if Syndrome would do another River Dance in his underwear again though.

Three years ago when the FRS won the Fall Classic for the first time in 86 years, I bought a hat to commemorate the event. This year I will probably do the same, but I’m not sure yet. One, I don’t really like the looks of the hats available and Two, they are kind of pricey at $29.99. The 2004 World Champions hat I bought was $19.99!

2007 Wild Card LoserTo rub it in I was going to buy my MFY fan manager a 2007 Wild Card Winner hat as a gag when I purchased my Red Sox World Series Champs hat, but even it at $24.99 is a little too much to spend on a quick gag.

Maybe I’ll just buy the Wild Card hat for myself and on the back where there is a ’07 Division Series patch I’ll have the word Loser embroidered there. 🙂

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/07: 461

Its Finished

Got done reading book #11, Valediction, this evening, thereby completing my quest to read every one of Robert Parker’s Spenser novels. I’ve got all 34 books on a shelf and maybe in a couple years I’ll read them through in order, instead of randomly like this time. It was never required, but it might make some of the references fit together better.

This book didn’t have any crime buster secrets, but it did have one of Spenser’s Laws of Dining:

In high restaurants the food never lives up to the view.

The second to last book I read, A Savage Place, did have a Dick Tracy Crime-Stopper reference:

I had a full file of Dick Tracy crime-stoppers at home, but none of them that I could remember covered this. What would Allan Pinkerton do? What would I tell the Bel-Air Patrol if they put the arm on me here in the bushes? My palms felt a little sweaty. I squinted a little to blur things and took a quick peek. They were still at it. Private eye was one thing, Peeping Tom was another. I headed for the car.

Seeing as no specific rule is mentioned it didn’t make the cut.

In case you missed it the FRS didn’t lose to the Indians in game seven of the ALCS, like I expected, so they are on to the World Series (or more appropriately the MLB Championship Series.) They now get the privilege of playing the Colorado Rockies of the National League who have won 20 of their last 21 games and swept through both of their playoffs series. I hope Mark is right in that if the Rockies ever lose one, they’ll collapse and not win another until next year some time and that the FRS can win the first game on Wednesday to start that slide.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/07: 454

Hoodwinked

Which according to dictionary.com means – To take in by deceptive means; deceive.

The movie was listed over in my Netflix rental queue in the sidebar for about a week before it came my way. While it sat there, why didn’t one of you warn me that “Hoodwinked” was a stupid movie? Nobody has seen it yet? Or were you fooled into watching it and because you suffered through it felt I should too? We only made it 7 minutes in before we hit the eject button.

The animation looked liked a Nickelodeon show, so maybe the kiddies liked it, but we felt it off putting. Mostly though the cops talked too fast so we never got a hold on what was happening. Back in the envelope it went. My only regret is, because of the baseball playoffs, it sat on the coffee table a long time just wasting movie rental opportunities.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/07: 450

Isn’t That Special?

At work there are 4 of us in the “Car Guys” group. We each subscribe to a car magazine and then pass it around among us. Thank goodness the magazine people don’t have a RIAA like group looking out after them, we’d be in trouble.

Today the latest Motor Trend was sitting on my desk. You couldn’t see the cover because of the card stock overwrap announcing your chance to get two subscriptions for the price of one, your renewal and a gift subscription for someone, just in time for the holidays.

The tear out card has the current subscribers name already on it, it served as the mailing label, so all you have to do is fill out the blanks for your friend and send it back, just check the box marked bill me later. To the left of the address area is the text reading, “Yes, I accept! Extend my subscription for 1 year (12 issues) at the preferred subscriber rate of only $20 and enter my 1-year gift subscription to the person listed above – that’s two subscriptions for the price of one!”

Sounds great, until you realized that you can subscribe to Motor Trend for $10 a year from a bunch of places, including the Motor Trend site itself…

I wonder what their non-preferred rate is?

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/07: 440

The Speed Of Light Is Much Faster Than The Speed Of Sound

LightI know the post season starts tomorrow, but tonight it just seems so over, there is no baseball game on the radio. Practically every night for the last six months I’ve sat in front of my PC and wasted several hours mucking about and listening to the FRS on WEEI and I miss it already.

Now the playoffs begin, with all the games on TV and I’ll feel compelled to watch, even though I will more than likely cringe at listening to the monkeys in the booth fill every second of air with truly inane stats and statements. I would much rather listen to the radio announcers call the game and watch the TV pictures, but that is impossible to take because of the time difference. There is a 5 or so second delay between the TV pictures and the radio sound (I have no clue as to what the reason for this delay is) and it made me crazy the one time I tried it.

Oooooh, I wonder if you had TIVO and hit pause until the radio sound caught up to the TV, then restarted the video?

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/07: 430