Month: September 2004

How Cheap Can You Be?

As a favor for a friend I sell his Brake Lite Blinker to out of the country buyers. He doesn’t want to make a trip to the Post Office and fill out the customs forms, etc.

Tonight he forwarded me a request from some one in Canada. He had a few questions about size and power, etc. His last question was would I list the value of the item as $10 so he wouldn’t have to pay as much customs duty on them. Come on, the things are $15 to begin with. How much can he be saving on duty? I wrote him back:

I’m sure there is a very miniscule chance of anything bad happening to me if I did that, but for all I know you actually work for the U.S. Customs and are trolling the internet looking for violators of federal law, so, no I won’t do that. They are valued at $15 US each. Sorry.

We’ll see if he still wants them after that…

Marathon Monday

Totally did nothing today. In honor of Labor Day I celebrated by enjoying the fruits of the fine folks in the union called the Screen Actors Guild. There were three different TV show marathons on cable today, two of which I recently told Will were my favorites and I had to choose between them. There was a Monk Marathon on USA, a West Wing marathon on Bravo and a Law & Order marathon on TNT. I caught the tail end of a very good L&O, then watched a WW. After that I watched Mr. Monk and the Game Show, then for the next 5 hours I watched all WWs.

Must Be Hard

After lunch we all (Donna, myself, her mom and her aunt) made a trip to the big Target over in Augusta to do some shopping. While driving back, Donna mentioned that it was really nice that it was Sunday and that we didn’t have to go back to work tomorrow, Monday, because it was Labor Day. Her aunt said that was the hard thing about being retired, you never got a day off…

Ball Abuse?

Been watching a bit of the U.S. Tennis Open on USA. Not that I’m a big tennis fan, but TV holds so little interest for me that anything new seems exciting. Sweaty, athletic women don’t hurt either. During a match this afternoon between two men, after one particularly hard fought point, the loser of that point picked up the ball and smacked it as hard as he could along the sideline. Apparently this is a no-no and he was given a ball abuse warning. A search of the internet unearthed little info about this kind of thing. What is next after the warning? Is there a penalty for continued spanking of the tennis ball? The only thing I can figure out is that some organization called SPOBA or PETOT* is behind this anti-cruelty effort. I wonder at what point in the ever increasing service speed of the men will they cry foul? 135? 140?

* Society for the Prevention Of Ball Abuse or People for the Ethical Treatment Of Tennisballs

Movin’ On Up

Big headline on yesterday’s Augusta paper was “Georgia SAT Scores Move Up.” “This is a great day,” Superintendent Charles Larke said at a 3 p.m. press conference. One local county was very excited because their school system averaged 1,025 which was about 150 points above the state average. Trouble is that 1,025 is still one point below the national average. The state’s average moved all the way up to 987 allowing Georgia to climb out of 50th, i.e. last place, where it has been the last two years into, yippee, 49th. They traded places with my home state, South Carolina, whose average fell just 3 points and that was enough to give us the dubious honor of 50th place.

Can You See Them Now?

Donna and I drove to the Master’s Miata Club meeting tonight, but she didn’t stay. She was on the edge about going and at the last minute decided to come. When we got to the room we would be in at the Aiken Brewery there were two people at the bar smoking. That was all it took to change her mind, she turned around and headed home leaving me to catch a ride with someone after the meeting. At first I was going to ride with Ray who lives on the southside of Aiken too, but Leroy showed up and he lives a stone’s throw (literally) from me, so I rode back with him. Leroy has a Laguna Blue 95 like I used to have. Even though they came from the factory identically built, it is amazing how differently we went when it came to customizing our cars. One thing Leroy did, that I considered early, but dismissed for cost reasons, was add some of the popular Low-Pro headlights from Brainstorm. Not only are they what I consider expensive at $349, but their has been quite a bit written about their lack of light output. Tonight on the way home I got to see their weakness’s first hand. Driving down some darker roads was an adventure, the high beams helped, but man am I ever grateful for not going that way. Sometimes substance is more important that style.

Comet Gestation Counter: 37 days

Do You Smell Smoke?

‘Cause my butt feels like it is on fire. No it’s not the hemorrhoids flaring up agaiin, but my appearance in Will Burnham’s bi-weekly feature, “In The Hot Seat” is live.