Month: December 2006

300 Miles

The post office doesn’t open until 9:00AM on Saturday. It’s 8:30 on weekdays.

Postmarks for this year’s Christmas boxes to family will read North, South Carolina.

There is no such place as South, North Carolina.

Lunch in Darlington. The meatloaf sandwich at Cracker Barrel is pretty damn good.

Dinner in Columbia. The 1/2 lb. burger at Fudruckers is pretty damn good.

The orange light on dash shaped like a gas pump is bad.

Christmas light decorations are good.

Started up, still up.
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Good Hair Day

I’ve been telling Donna she looks great with the hair she has for a couple weeks now. The last time we went in for haircuts, when the stylist was evening her hair out, she told her that she looked great and should go for it. But her hair was still shorter than it was when we cut it all off back in May and she wasn’t feeling comfortable with it yet. I thought for sure she was going to keep it covered up until it was as long as before, which would be still another couple months, but today, out of the blue, Donna decided to go sans bandanna/scarf/headdress.

She got one or two double takes, a lot of compliments and even a couple hugs. But mostly she got a lot of people wanting to feel her hair. It is different than before that’s for sure, it is softer, a little darker, a lot more gray and way more curly. People say the tight curls are temporary and eventually your hair returns to its pre-chemo shape, I’ll let you know…

Started up, still up.
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I ♥ The Internet

No L Decorated the cubical for the holidays today and even Captain Jack Sparrow got into the spirit. Remind me tomorrow to tell you about Dead Man’s Chest and overstock dot com.

I own about 48 DVDs of movies I love, movies that I could watch over and over again. Trouble is I hardly ever watch them again after the first time when the shrink wrap came off. If I have a spare couple hours and think, “Hey let’s watch a movie!” I’ll open the cabinet and start looking at titles to pick a flick, then as I look at the box I watch the whole movie in my head in about 15 seconds, well, I guess I don’t have to watch that one. Pick up the next box, fast forward the movie, put it back. I never get to put one in the player. I think what would work though is one of those 200 disc changers where I could have it play a movie at random, once it got going I know I would enjoy the movie.

I have about 48 movies in my Netflix rental queue. Whenever I add a movie it goes to the bottom of the queue. I could move it to the top, but that would displace movies that are already there and most likely they got to the top by slowly percolating up as I watched the ones ahead of them. I really want to see most of the movies that are in the queue about equally, so its kind of hard for me to pick which ones to see first. Somewhere a while back I took the time to mix the genres up so I wouldn’t have a bunch of the same kind of movie back to back. One comedy, one drama, one sci-fi, one independent, repeat. But over time my careful mix has become scrambled again. What I need is a Netflix Queue Randomizer. I wrote to customer service to ask if they though maybe they could add that to the queue page. The response was typical customer service, “Thanks for your interest. We will hand your idea over to the development team for further study. Don’t call us, we’ll call you.”

Searched for Netflix Queue Randomizer with Google and got a bunch of hits. I found four different ways to accomplish my goal; 1) a script for Greasemonkey, 2) a script that you just copy into the address bar while on the queue page, 3) a small executable file that you could download and 4) a bookmarklet. I used the address bar script a couple of times to really shake things up for now, but I got the bookmarklet one all ready to try next. I ♥ the Internet.

Oh, yeah, I finally washed the Florida bugs off the front of the car. To make it even I washed the whole rest of the car too.

Started down, went up, back down, back up, still up.
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Following A Path To Enlightenment

The PathYesterday morning when I fired up the car in the garage I could see that one of the fog lights, AKA DRLs, was out. On the way home from work we stopped at the local auto parts store and bought a new bulb. At first I thought, to be safe, I should change out both bulbs under the theory that if one goes the other can’t be far behind. Then I referred to the wealth of knowledge that only the internet could house, the blog known as “Life of Brian.” In July of 2005 I changed just the left fog light bulb and now a year and a half later the right one bit the dust. A decision was made to go ahead and replace just the bulb that burnt out.

Changing the bulb is the not so simple matter of jacking up the front of the car, removing the front wheel, removing a 10mm bolt, taking out 5 weird plastic screw/snap fasteners and bending back the fender liner. Then you unsnap a spring clip, twist to unfasten the bulb base from the housing, unclick the wiring harness connector so you can get the base & bulb out where you can see it and pull the bulb out of the base. reverse everything you just did the put it all back together. It takes about an hour. So if you had the dealer do it, it would set you back about $75. That’s just the labor, they would add about another $20 for the six dollar bulb…

Yesterday I wrote about my leave covered yard, today I posted a picture depicting just that. Yesterday I changed a fog light bulb in the car, today I posted about that. I guess I figured if that whole non-linear story telling thing worked for Tarantino in Pulp Fiction, why not for me here?

Started up, went down, still down.
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Pseudarboris Plasticus

Neither of us felt too chipper this past weekend, so things that were supposed to get done, didn’t. The biggest failing was not raking any of the leaves off the front (or back or side for that matter) lawn. You know how quiet and beautiful it looks outside your house at daybreak after 3 inches of snow overnight? You can’t see where the grass ends and the driveway begins. Where you had plants or flowers there are just raised levels of snow. Good, now replace that snow with a blanket of dead brown oak and hickory leaves…the only way I found our newspaper this morning was because as it skidded across the driveway after being thrown from the passing car of the carrier, it left a little clearing behind it like a comet’s trail.

It wasn’t a total loss though as we did finalize the Christmas present buying for family members, with a couple of small purchases, so their boxes can be mailed out soon. I did pull down the half dozen plastic storage boxes from the attic so we could decorate the inside of the house too. Donna scattered about the seasonal knick-knacks while I unfolded the plastic tree. I guess it is time to dig out the Christmas MP3s.

Started down, went up, back down, up again, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 495

A Joyful Noise

A fart. I still have a long way to go before I am better, but a few cc’s of gas is a step in the right direction.

Stayed home from work today. My main activity was napping while mainlining RP. Laid out on the couch from 7AM until 4:30 covered in a blanket with earbuds in that were hooked to the laptop on the floor beside me. Seems like I would close my eyes and the next thing I knew 35 minutes had passed. Twenty six minutes. 42 minutes. An hour and five. I was usually conscious just long enough to marvel at how long I was out, before dropping back into never-never land. Bill played some great music for me, what I can remember, thanks.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
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