Year: 2007

A Miata Darkly

A Miata DarklyI wasn’t so sure I was going to like this movie, but “A Scanner Darkly” pleasantly surprised me on two accounts.

First, I remember seeing a clip of the bicycle scene when the actors were making the talk show circuit to promote this movie when it first came out in theaters. Taken out of context it seemed kind of stupid, but now in the total of the movie it seemed humorous and perfectly captured that feel of the conversation of a group of stoned people. The rotoscope process seemed gimmicky in the clip and again for the full hour and a half of the movie it enhanced the ambiance.

Oh, and secondly, Winona Ryder’s character drove a Miata.

Started up, still up.
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Happy 18th Anniversary

I just knew I had blogged about it before, but a couple of searches here came up empty. I tired looking at all the posts from around this date, again with no luck. In one last try I hit pay dirt.

Birth Announcement

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If Its Tuesday…

…The Russians Are Coming The Russians Are Coming.

Walt Whittaker: Look, can I give you some advice? You’ll never make it down to the harbor. Why don’t you all give yourselves up? Either you’ll kill somebody, or you’ll get killed. Either way – you could start a war!
Lieutenant Rozanov: What is your name?
Walt Whittaker: Whittaker. Walt …
Lieutenant Rozanov: Remark to this, Whittaker Walt. We must have boat. Even now may be too late. This is your island, I make your responsibility you help us get boat quickly, otherwise there is World War III, and everybody is blaming YOU!

Cute little Cold War parable from 1966. Very funny in spots and kind of lame (in 60’s sort of way), but we watched the whole darn thing on TCM tonight which is more than I can say or a lot of the newer movies I’ve been getting from Netflix lately.

Started down, still down.
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Forget About the Hat

I’ve decided not to buy a Red Sox World Series hat, instead I’m going to get some of those fashionable Official MLB World Series Celebration Goggles.

Champagne Shower

Now if I can just find out where to get them…

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69,000 Pieces of Aztec Gold

Last night we turned the clocks back and took advantage of that extra hour to sleep it away. But somehow, even though we got moving this morning at the “normal” time, it seemed like we were an hour behind all day.

Might have been the time we spent walking around at the Cowpens National Battlefield or it could have been time spent walking a block of downtown Gaffney looking for a Post Office or it could have been the time spent circling Newberry looking for a lunch place before ending up at Taco Bell or maybe it was…

Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate’s life for me.
We pillage, we plunder, we rifle, and loot,
Drink up, me ‘earties, yo ho.
We kidnap and ravage and don’t give a hoot,
Drink up me ‘earties, yo ho.

I told her not to do it, but she did it anyway, Donna switched the channel over to USA at 8:00PM tonight and another 20 minutes were lost — watching the beginning of TDPM.

Somewhere between Carlisle and Union the Emperor kicked over 69,000 miles. With 3 weeks to go until HRH’s 4th birthday he may even reach the 70k mark before then.

Started up, went down, back up, back down, still down.
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Full Day Too

We started our day with a trip to Chimney Rock Park. After threading our way through the Eye of the Needle, we climbed the rest of many stairs to the top of the rock. The view up there is great and while the leaves are at peak higher up, in the surrounding mountains at 2 to 3k there is still a ways to go. Donna and I then walked the 1-1/2 miles of the Skyline-Cliff Trail Loop. A lot of the out is on boardwalk, but the way back is mostly dirt and rocky. On all of the loop there is thankfully fences and rails, because the average elevation of the trail is around 2300 feet and you can look straight down at all of it for quite a bit of the walk.

After cruising slowly back and forth through the touristy towns of Chimney Rock and Lake Lure we ended up deciding on Mexican for lunch. In spite of the upper 60’s temps and cloudless skies we were the only two people dining on the porch.

The afternoon was spent at the Foothills Highland Games and Festival in Hendersonville. Pipe bands & Celtic rock, musket fire, bonnie lasses & brawny laddies, sheafs & cabers being tossed and probably hagis for sale, but we didn’t look for any.

I took a couple of Post Office pictures, but they were of towns in North Carolina just in case this is the next state we pick on.

And TDPM is on again tonight, but I’m not watching it, so there.

Pictures from today can be found HERE.

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Pretty Full Day

  1. Breakfast in Aiken
    • We went to the New Moon and came to the conclusion that we are still eating there because of past performance. My muffin, while good, was not heated nearly enough. Donna’s hot chocolate had to be requested a second time before being served. If our last 3 visits here, were our first three visits here, they would be our only 3 visits here.
  2. Walk in Hitchcock Woods
    • Instead of our usual ingress point we started at the South Boundary entrance because we were already downtown for breakfast. A beautiful fall day and we shared the 2,000 acres with a horsewoman and her dog plus another woman walking a couple of small dogs. As is usually the case with our walks in the woods, we were certain of our path for approximately 75% of the time, never actually lost, just sometimes not sure where we were in relationship to the map.
  3. Pack the car and head north
    • I am constantly amazed with how much stuff we can stuff in the small trunk of the Miata. I am also constantly amazed with how much stuff we have to take with us for being away from home for a mere 48 hours.
  4. Lunch in Newberry, SC
    • The Grill On Main serves a mean Patty Melt. Donna had a cup of vegetable soup and a half of a chicken salad sandwich. The chicken salad had some mustard and maybe thyme in there to give it a different twist.
  5. Photographed 5 Post Offices
    • Whitmire, Union, Buffalo, Jonesville, Pacolet & Pacolet Mills. We stopped at White Stone, but it was busy and it had enough character that we decided to come back on the way home Sunday when it might not have cars in front of it.
  6. Dinner in Asheville Fletcher, NC
    • We had pizza from the second place we tried. We drove the 4 miles to a place just inside the Asheville limits that had some good reviews I found on the web. We left after we never got any attention from a server after being seated. That and the dozen small ants that crawled out of the menus and had to be squished under our fingers. The next place we tried was take out only so we ended up dining in our room at the Fairfield Inn in Fletcher, NC. The pie was not bad and probably would have been better if we could have eaten it moments out of the oven instead of the 15 minutes or so later that it took us to get back to the hotel and get settled.
  7. TDPM on USA
    • Commodore Norrington: No additional shot nor powder, a compass that doesn’t point north, [looks at Jack’s sword] and I half expected it to be made of wood. You are without doubt the worst pirate I’ve ever heard of.
      Captain Jack Sparrow: But you have heard of me.
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