Whatever

It’s Going To Be A Beautiful Day!

Is it possible to have a pleasant flashback to an acid trip that was never taken?

We watched Sunday’s episode of Mad Men last night, and in it, Roger Sterling and his young, former secretary of a wife Jane, take LSD with some other Manhattanites under the “supervision” of her psychiatrist. We get to watch Roger’s slightly humorous and hallucinogenic evening that ends with he and Jane lying on the floor of their apartment discussing their mutual feelings that their short marriage is over.

Whether it is was the idea of this upcoming smooth and amicable separation or a residual acid high that causes Roger to proclaim brightly to Don at the office the next morning, “I have an announcement to make: It’s going to be a beautiful day!“, I’m not sure, but it had a strange effect on my day.

For no apparent reason, everything seemed brighter and shiner today. All things went smoother and easier too. On the way to work I either made it through all the traffic signals with only brief slowdowns or passed through unhindered. And even though this week I’m working 9-hour days for that free Friday afternoon off, today at the Valve Store(R) just flew right by.

So, is it possible for me to have a happy flashback to an acid trip that I never took or was it just the high dose of sugar from the DD Coffee Cake Muffin I had for breakfast?

House of Ill Repute

Donna had a tough day at work and was in a kind of surly mood when we got home (thank goodness we rode the tandem to work where she got to work out some frustrations on the hills on the ride back.) She was sitting at the PC reading emails when the phone rang.

The phone ringing at 4:30 PM can only mean one thing, someone is going to try and sell us something. We have had overabundance of calls about home security systems recently and just last night I got one from my old friends at XM Radio.

She said,”Hand me the phone, I’ll answer it.” She hit the talk button and said, “Bogardus Whorehouse! How can we help?” All she got by way of response was a quiet, “I must have the wrong number” and a quick disconnect. We both got a good laugh.

That got me thinking that we should use that greeting all the time. Maybe add a catchy slogan instead of the “Can we help you?” part. How about, “A ten spot can get you a G Spot” or maybe, “A twenty gets you plenty.” Ooh, “A C-Note gets you a Man in Boat.” Feel free to leave your suggestions in the comments…

Poor Steve

We have an assembly engineer who has decided to take a job elsewhere, some place a lot closer to home. His last day is this Friday. It is also the last day of our payroll clerk and for her there is any number of little tributes and sharing of food stuffs, unfortunately for him, nothing. So Donna asked me to make up a little farewell card for him.

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Tran?si?tions since 10/24/08: 1115

Spel Cheker

We had breakfast at DD this morning and after walking out on Saturday morning because no one wanted to wait on us in a timely manner we were glad to see the little older woman behind the counter. She, unlike most of the younger kids that man the register, can enter our highly complex order* without hunting for several seconds looking for the right button to push. Not only that, she seemed to be the only person in the store and we got our food and drinks in a more timely fashion than usual.

On her badge, there was a label, right under her name with her title, SHEFT LEADER.

*Small Coffee, cream & sugar
Small hot Chocolate, no whipped cream
Coffee Cake Muffin
Plain Bagel, toasted with butter

Happy Fat Tuesday

Today is the last day of Mardi Gras. The day before Ash Wednesday and the start of the 40 days of Lent for those of a western Christian beliefs. Donna grew up in New Orleans and remembers while in high school actually participating in some of the parades.

When Donna and I lived in New Orleans in the middle 80’s my idea of a Mardi Gras parade was more of the ones put on by small artsy organizations that marched through the French Quarter. I really wasn’t too excited about the whole St. Charles Avenue or Metairie big parade thing. If I was still living in the Big Easy today I probably would have wanted to attend the Krewe Delusion parade on the 4th, but I definitely would have attended the Intergalactic Krewe of Chewbacchus parade last Saturday.

One year my mom and her sister took the train down from New England to New Orleans to enjoy the festivities. We had a good time showing them the sites, dining on spicy seafood and taking them to a couple of parades. But I think both women felt that the party atmosphere on the train trip down generated the best stories and oddball memories from the trip.

From left to right in the photo above: a small glimpse of our 1983 Honda Prelude, me in my quasi-Miami Vice attire, my Mom, and Virginia, Mom’s sister, my Aunt and mother to Martha and Louise.

Winter’s Coming

After barely having any winter during the first 1/2 of its allotted time slot, it looks like we are going to have some this weekend. Our normal overnight lows for this time of the year are 35°:

Started down, went went up, still up.
Miata Top Tran?si?tions since 10/24/08: 1113

Fledgling Snowbird

Dad was an only child and Mom had one sister, so the sum total of my first cousins is quite small. The woman on the right in the photo above represents exactly one half of them, meet Cousin Louise, fledgling snowbird.

When we received her annual Christmas letter this year she mentioned that she was tired of the winters in Maine, so she was going to rent a house in Florida from a friend for the months of January, February and March. She had gotten her nurse’s license for FLA and planned on finding some work to keep her kind of busy and recoup some of her rent money. Turns out the town she was renting in was a mere 15 miles from where Donna’s sister Sandy lives, so we told her we were going down in February to visit Sandy and some of Donna and her cousins when they returned from a cruise* and we would stop in and visit. We also offered up a free night of room and board at Casa de Bogardus if her drive down brought her our way.

*Maybe we should check on those plans, as they may have decided on something different after the Costa Concordia thing.

And at the beginning Louise was going to pass right by here as she traveled from Virginia Beach to Atlanta visiting friends, but when we checked in with her the day before her scheduled arrival, she mentioned that she was getting anxious to get to her destination and was going to keep the car pointed south instead of jogging west our way. Seeing as she was going to have to pass right through South Carolina on the way. We plotted a likely point for her overnight stay on Friday and because we had that afternoon off we’d drive over and meet her for dinner.

Serendipitously, it turned out to be a town that we are intimately familiar with meeting cousins in. It is the same city where we usually meet Donna’s cousin Laurie at a Cracker Barrel in Florence, SC. So we made some reservations at a hotel that fit our one important criteria, be within walking distance of a restaurant that served wine. We each agreed to ask at the front desk to see if the other had checked in yet so we could get together.

Donna and I took our time on the way east on I-20 doing a few a few park & grab geocaches. When we got to the hotel I told Donna we would first circle the lot looking for a car with Maine plates before checking in. We didn’t get very far, there was a red Toyota Prius under the entrance awning. We did some catching up, then a lot more family stories over dinner. There was a bit more chatting at breakfast on Saturday in the hotel before Louise continued flying south for the winter and we geocached home vowing to meet again in February.