Year: 2004

MMM…Time

This afternoon was a MMM…Time with the Master’s Miata Club. MMM stands for Miatas, mingle and munch. We meet at a local restaurant and maybe eat there or decide to go somewhere else or whatever someone in the group comes up. Tonight we opted for a drive around the lake and back into town. From there most of the group went to Tony Roma’s for ribs for dinner.

We had a new to the Club couple show up and join us for the drive portion, they declined the dinner invite. Hope they decide to come out again, they were quite a bit younger than the average age of our most active members, hope all the gray hair didn’t frighten them off.

Caricature Tease

The Miata Caricature is somewhere in the postal system, the Scottish or American I don’t know, but who knows it might be held up in some postal inspector’s back room. It comes in a mailing tube 2 inches in diameter and 18 inches long that might be misconstrued as a weapon of mass destruction and what with Glasgow being a hot bed of El Quida terrorists and all….

I know it is in the mails, as yesterday I got a key chain and a mouse mat with the image on it from CarArtz. Dave said he mailed both packages, envelope and tube, at the same time. The envelope made it here first.

[shameless plug]
Everyone reading this blog, go buy a bit of art from Dave from CarArtz.com, he is the best.
[/shameless plug]

Can You Hear Me Now?

Today it was positively spring-like, so after work we decided to take an hour or so walk in Hitchcock Woods right after work. As we started the cross country team from the local high school had run the 2 miles over from the school to do a couple laps of the first little loop by the entrance that we use. After we got a little deeper in, as usual, we had the quiet of the woods mainly to ourselves. We did see one fellow walking with a couple of his dogs , but our loops didn’t really intersect. About a 200 yards from exiting the woods we saw a woman walking her dog and talking on her cell phone. Jeez. No place is sacred. Just what is it that some folks? If you are going to be having a phone conversation why don’t you just left your dog run around in your backyard? Then you can watch Dr. Phil and talk.

Besides, depending on how you interpret the rules, maybe you shouldn?t even have a cell phone in there:
7) Leave radios and all audio equipment at home so the solitude of the forest may be enjoyed by all.

At The Car Wash

I don’t really want to blog this out loud for fear of jinxing it, but I think spring is on the horizon. Got into the low 60s today so we got to ride home with the top down. Daylight is lasting a little longer too, even had time to wash the car after supper.

Didn’t hear the antenna whistling on the top down drive, so I guess that it good. Of course it is now on my side of the car, so it is behind my seat. Last generation Miatas had it on the other side so it could be heard out of the driver’s right ear. Now it would be heard out of the passengers left ear, but she didn’t complain…

Speaking of the passenger, she was a driver today. Donna had a dental appointment at noon and her mom needed the Civic, so she had no choice. After 2,600 miles and 85 days, Donna drove the Miata today. She didn’t want to because I hadn’t put a scratch or dent on it yet and she was terrified she would be the one do it. Not that I would get upset with her, because it is bound to happen sooner or later, but she would be upset with herself. If those numbers repeat the next time Donna will drive the Miata will be the middle of June. 🙂

Boy Is This Monitor Bright

This evening after work Donna and I had our yearly eye exams. Part of the comprehensive exam is to have some drops put in your eyes to dilate your pupils. After they get them cranked wide open the doctor comes in and shines a 10,000,000 candle power light in both eyes several times from several different angles. Not the funest thing in the world and while not physically painful it is mentally.

New this time is a camera that takes a snapshot of the inside of your eye. It is a Cannon 10D on the back of some machine that of course flashes another very bright light into your wide open eyeball. You can then check out what the doctor sees when he looks in there. Cool. They will take a picture every year and then the computer can compare the images and spot stuff so small that the doctor might miss.

It has been 3 hours since I got the drops and my pupils still look like saucers. And boy does that make the PC monitor bright.

I Crack Me Up

This last week’s challenge for PhotoFriday was Abstract. After much brainstorming I went out and took a closeup shot of one of the windshield washer nozzles of the Miata.

At the end I asked people to guess what they thought it was. Sure enough, the first person got it right. So I told him so.

The next commenter used humor, “No, he’s the little robot guy that makes your blinkers work. 🙂 ” So I replied in kind, “You are absolutely right. There are two on every car sold and when one falls off or fails prematurely, the remaining one mistakenly thinks he has to work twice as hard, which is why you sometimes see cars with their blinkers flashing twice as fast as normal. Poor thing, he really doesn’t have to double his effort, as everyone knows, your blinkers are wired in parallel, not series. He soon dies of overwork and fails completely, which is why you see a lot of cars not using blinkers at all. It is not inconsideration, merely both their little robot guys are broken.”Hee, hee, hee.

One Outa Two Ain’t Bad

We got 8 minutes into Identity and turned it off. The secret to making a good serial killer movie is to either make the audience care for a) the killer or b) the victims, and in this short time we could tell we didn’t care for, nor would we ever care for, either.

Next up was Le Cercle Rouge and it was definitely anti-Hollywood. The pacing is deliberate and the dialog sparse, but maybe a just bit too much, at around the 2 hour mark I missed an important plot twist (possibly during one of the several 2 seconds naps I took) and when the bang, bang shoot-’em up ending happened I’m not sure exactly what took place. All in all a good movie, but don’t run right out to Blockbuster and get it.

I have such high hopes when I read the critical reviews about these films and then when I get them home and start watching them I wonder WTF was I thinking. After rereading the sleeve blurb on the last movie I have at home, Better Luck Tomorrow I’m not so sure I want to watch it anymore either.