Month: January 2008

Weekend Odds And Ends

SimpsonizedI’ve been Simpsonized!

My Lost discs that I bid victoriously for on eBay will be mailed on Monday. They are coming from West By God Virginia so they should be here by Thursday.

This morning we finally raked up the last of the dead leaves out of the backyard. We had ignored the backyard all fall, always keeping the front neat, until earlier this week when we got half of it cleaned up and piled in front of the house for the city to pick on Thursday. Now the rest will get picked up this coming Tuesday. Thats right, more big news from around here, our trash pickup day has been moved from Thursday to Tuesday.

When we went to Subway for lunch the temperature was 49°, but because it was a short ride we kept the top down. When we stepped outside after eating and sitting a bit it felt cold so we put the top up for the ride home. At home I checked the temperature and it read 51°, go figure.

A little link action. Last night while blog surfing I stumbled on another blogger with a Miata, er MX-5 and added a link to his site. Welcome Mike who is apparently notoriously nice and from what I’ve read so far he has been nice. I also, with great sadness, removed long time read, Will Burnham Down The House. After 5 years he is closing down his blog. Too bad, will had an interesting life and an interesting take on it. Today a fellow Club member wrote asking if I had any clip art depicting a woman or girl in a Miata. She was thinking of making her own stationary. And while I could have sworn I’d seen something almost exactly like that in the past, an internet search didn’t turn it up. It did turn up a couple more bloggers with Miatas that have been added to the blog roll in the sidebar. Welcome Jon (jcm’s blog) and Ralph (Van City Blue Miata.)

It also turned up a couple oddities — a female impersonator named Miata, a whole website dedicated to sexily dressed women getting their cars stuck in the mud (video 029 has a Miata) and a Miata Art Car.

I’m thinking of buying this T-shirt, but wished it came in something other than crap brown

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/08: 13

Captain Gaylord’s Fences

Captain Gaylord's FencesWent for a nice couple hour hike in the woods this morning. We’ve been threatening to go for a hike for a couple weeks, but just haven’t made it. It was sunny and mild, but you can tell it is winter because you can see further with all the leaves off the trees.

After lunch we ‘wasted” the rest of the day away watching The Good Shepherd and then Season 1 Disc 1 of Bones

To say that Matt Damon’s performance as Edward Wilson in the Good Shepherd was understated is an understatement. In the Bones pilot, everything was moving too fast and seemed over the top just to catch your interest. It had the exact opposite effect on us, after the first episode we almost stopped watching. After the second episode we figured we’d finish the disc and not get anymore. At the end of 4 episodes and the disc we thought, what the heck, let’s add some more Discs.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/08: 12

72,000 Grains Of Rice

The “Gang of Six” meet tonight at Miyabi Japanese restaurant in Augusta for dinner. We had a 5:30 reservation and it is a good thing, as Donna and I arrived first, a couple minutes after five, and there was already a wait for walk-ins of 45 minutes.

Every one is seated at tables of 8, so we six are joined by a woman and her 5-year old son. They sat on the same end of the table as Donna and I and the little boy was very well behaved. Turns out they have eaten here before and it his favorite restaurant, even more so than McDonalds. He even ate with chop sticks (although they did have training wheels.)

If you have eaten at one of these places, you know the drill, a chef comes out and cooks in front of you. There are slashing knives and flipping spatulas. There is copious amounts of food cooked in a lot of butter and soy sauce. He sautees up some vegetables and then brings out this giant bowl of white rice and inverts it on the grill. It is the size of a basketball, I bet there are 72,000 grains of rice there. After it is separated into 8 parts, each serving is 3 x 6 x 2″ thick. Finally the meat is cooked and added to your plate, the pile of food in front of you is now enough to feed a small African nation. All 3 couples left with enough stuff in a to go box for lunch for two for another day.

For dessert we had homemade raspberry yogurt at one couple’s home and discussed everything from Presidential campaigns to Japanese after market parts for Miatas to whether Gene Simmons either aced the previous evening’s Celebrity Apprentice challenge or maybe marked himself for firing next week.

On the way back to Aiken the Emperor clicked over the 72,000 mile mark.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/08: 1o

Totally Lost

LostHe said he was going to put Season 1 Disc 1 in his Netflix queue to see what I was so hooked on that I would spend two whole days anchored to the couch watching.

Disc 1 arrived Tuesday night, Mark and his wife are now totally Lost. Wednesday morning at work he cussed me out for getting him hooked on the show. The first 4 episodes were just enough to get them addicted and now he couldn’t concentrate on work, all he could think about was watching more. A junkie jonesin’ for a fix. I was slightly jealous as I remember that feeling.

Wednesday he stopped at a video rental place on the way home and gets the 5 discs left of Season 1 causing him to stay up way past his bedtime watching episodes 5 through 16. Right now Mark and his wife are probably finishing up Season 1. On his way home from work today he was going to stop and get Season 2 for Saturday. Right after saying that he said, “Nope, probably won’t wait that long, Friday night.” I’m betting they may start Season 2 tonight…

Mark didn’t think the video place has Season 2 for rent, but he did see them in the used DVD bin for sale. He figures even if he buys them for $5 bucks each ($30 total) he can recoup his losses by selling the set on eBay after watching them.

This led to a quick check of eBay to see how much a season of Lost was going for — $25-30. Hey, here’s an auction Season 1 that ends in forty minutes with a high bid of $16.49. I said I’d pay that much for it. Mark goaded me on, so I bid $17. Wouldn’t you know it, I won, so now I have Season 1 of Lost on the way for rewatching.

Maybe I’ll pay Mark $20 for Season 2 if he ends up buying it…

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/08: 8

Lost Capability

When I went to watch The Incredibles the other day there was a section of the disk that held some set up routines for optimum THX viewing. What the heck, I’ll give it a try. The video portion was a piece of cake, but the audio section was a disappointment. My decade old Onkyo receiver has 5:1 Dolby processing, that I have had working in the past, but for some reason now there is no sound at all from the rear surround speakers. No big deal, they aren’t in their ideal placements for that total immersion feeling anyway.

We have a JVC DVD player and we have a JVC TV that are about 5-1/2 years old. JVC used to have a system called Compu-Link that hooked up their electronic components, so that when one did something that effected another setting automatically changed. Whenever we used pop a DVD in, the TV would turn on and change to the video input the DVD was hooked into. Notice I said used? Stopped working the other day. It is no big deal to push a couple buttons, but when you are used to having it easy…

When I hit the Powerball tonight I’ll probably go out and buy one of those all in one box systems. Of course if I actually did win the $71 million I could hire somebody to come in set up a killer media system.

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/08: Six

Lost Data

I’m sitting here watching a Win XP Setup progress bar on the desktop. Not mine, but a co-workers. She has a 1-1/2 year old Dell she is thinking of donating to her grandson, why I’m sure, he’s the one who has the PC in the first place, but hey, she’s the grandma. I don’t know how this is going to go though, she didn’t have a restore disc or a copy of XP anywhere (grandkid probably snagged it and sold it on ebay) so I have booted it to my XP CD and when it asks for a product key I’ll enter the one from the side of her tower.

We had a nice warm day with no call for rain, but at the noon walk it looked cloudy so at my doctor’s appointment this afternoon I raised the top. Good thing too as there was a smattering of fresh rain drops on the car when I returned. Today’s top transitions doubled yesterday’s total which had doubled the day before’s. That exponential increase will probably end tomorrow as I can bet that the top won’t transition 8 times…

Started down, went up, back down, up again, down again, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/08: 6

Lost the Will to Write?

It is 10:00PM and it is time to prepare for beddy-bye, but I haven’t written anything here yet, so the day isn’t complete. I’ve done some legitimate things this evening, not just Blogging Avoidance stuff, rollerbladed 3 miles, “helped” cook dinner, worked on getting the MMC‘s 2008 calendar online, read some of “The Passage” by my favorite Navy author, David Poyer, watched a couple of Law & Orders (OK, maybe that was BA), but still I have nothing to say (and so far this rambling post proves that beyond a shadow of doubt.)

The only remotely exciting part of my day was riding home from work with the top down, there you have it, the top transitions doubled for the year so far.

Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/08: 2