Month: November 2004

Dry Run #2

After supper we piled in to the MSV and checked out the North Augusta houses that were listed in previous Augusta Chronicle light tours. It was good and bad news. We had some new gems, some old gems, some new disappointments and some old shadows of their former selves. Seeing as I have the tour time as only 45 minutes in the newsletter we may be able to just get by with the stuff in North Augusta. The NA places might be enough and they are right on the way to the party house. I hate to eliminate some of the Augusta houses because there were a few winners over in Georgia, but it seems so far away. It is not really that far, but maybe it is just the psychological barrier of crossing the river or maybe it is just that North Augusta is suburbia and Augusta kind of inner city like.

We are going to make a timed run on Friday from the start, by all the North Augusta homes and end up at the house where the party is. If it is close to 45 minutes, that will be it. Not sure what happens if it comes up 10 minutes short. We may have to venture into the big city.

Started Early

Started on my New Year’s resolution early. Tonight I watched a show called Overhaulin’. It had two things going for it that made me want to watch it, because I’m a cyclist (barely) it had Uber bike racer Lance Armstrong and as a car guy it had the muscle car icon called GTO (bonus points because it is a convertible.)

I’m not sure exactly what I was expecting, but what I got was an hour long commercial for Foose Wheels, Clarion, Kicker, Something Parts Group, So & So’s Suspension, etc. Take a season’s worth of This Old House, cut out all the really interesting segments on how to do things, apply it to cars, add pretty boy & girl “hosts”, toss in the arbitrary deadline and ta-da, entertainment for people who want something great while not having to do anything hard (or at all) to get it.

New Year’s Resolution

I’ve started work on what my New Year’s Resolution for 2005 is going to be. My first instinct is to pick something doable, but that got me in about 15 pounds of trouble a couple years back when I vowed to eat more and exercise less. So I think maybe I’ll shoot for something hard to do, like watch more television. How can that be hard you ask? Easy, I will not watch any reality shows (as much as I am intrigued by the Gilligan’s Island one.) I’m not interested in and CSI show. Ditto it’s imitators. No Law & Orders. The only sport I’m remotely interested in is baseball, so there won’t be any of that until April. I’d watch MTV if there was any M in it. VH1 is as bad, as it has become the network of “The 100 Most Insipid Music Related Countdown Shows.” About the only thing left is MXC on Spike and it isn’t on but a few times a week. But considering I only watch West Wing on Wednesday nights now…

Dry Run #1

This Saturday is the Master’s Miata Club’s annual Holiday Party. Before said party, I always lead a Christmas Light Tour for the group. It is a cobbled together combination of light tours that have appeared in the local paper. Tonight we ran through a section of it to see how it would go. There were plenty of lights up already considering it is the first Sunday after Thanksgiving, but it was definitely a good thing we did a dry run. With me following Donna’s reading of the newspaper’s directions, on darkened and unfamiliar streets we must have made a half dozen U-turns because of passing the right street or worse yet, because we didn’t go far enough.

Why is the letter u in U-turn capitalized?

Thanksgiving 2004

Thanksgiving 2004

Back row from left: Me, Donna’s oldest brother Jim, her younger sister Sandy and her youngest brother Scott. Middle row from left: Linda (Jim’s wife), Donna and her next older brother Steve. Front row from left: niece Jennifer (Jim & Linda’s daughter), Paul (Sandy’s husband) and Beth (Scott’s wife).

Turkey Day

Before the whole family descended on the house demanding baked poultry and all the fixin’s, Donna and I had time to go out and get a gourmet breakfast at Hardee’s. Mmmm…Biscuits & Gravy. It was a bit chilly, but seeing as top speed was around 35 MPH we could handle it.

Later I took my 17 year-old niece for a top down drive through some of the twistier sections in a couple Aiken’s sub-divisions. Amazingly enough about a 1/2 mile into the ride she emulated a classic Donna pose while I drove, throwing both hands straight up like a lot of roller coaster riders do. I may have to resurrect the old warning sticker I had in the 95.

Forced Night Off

Did you miss me? I missed you?

About 3:30 yesterday afternoon mr-miata.net disappeared off the face internet. Not only me, but everyone connected with me on whatever server that failed. The web site of my hosting service was long gone. When that happens I flash back to the ThatHostingCompany fiasco of April 2002. I can just feel it in my bones that they have gone under and taken my internet life with them. After several hours of absolutely nothing, by 7:00:00 pm I knew they were working on coming up from the depths. The hosting web site was back up, I still had no web sites, but I could see the files when I FTP’d in. This morning when I got up everything was back to normal. Whew.