Month: March 2010

With This Ring I Thee Wed

Back when Donna was in the hospital and they were aggressively working at healing her ailing colon she was being given 40mg of Prednisone a day and she was very hyper with signs of ADD. Her favorite pastime was to cut up paper and magazines to make bows and ribbons. She loved to tape things to other things with the hospital supplied clear dressing tape. Thirdly she hated clutter and was forever rearranging and cleaning up. She used a food tray to keep all her supplies on and it moved with her from bed to chair and sometimes the floor as she worked on her “projects.” As a consequence of the medicine and the zero humidity air of the hospital her hands were always dry and chapped. This led to a lot of applying of hand cream.

Early in her stay she removed her wedding ring and the birthstone “engagement” ring we bought for her after the glass chip feel out of the real one early on in our marriage. I kept them on my keyring to return to her when she got out. As the the hospital stay lengthened she asked for them back. You know where this is leading right?

Somewhere around Day 8 the rings went missing. We weren’t even sure when they actually disappeared because time was very fluid for someone taking that much steroid. Best guess is one of the times she took them off that day to put on hand cream, they were laid on the craft tray and somehow got thrown away during a cleaning up of scrap paper. The staff was very upset and helped tear apart the room looking for the rings, even looking in the cleaning persons trash collection, but they were nowhere to be found.

We were not that upset, things happen and even though there is that line in the vows, neither one of us felt that losing the ring had any significance in the overall scheme of our marriage. We have been meaning to look into buying a nicer set of rings, maybe even do a major upgrade in quality from the set we could afford when we first started out, but as time passed we came to the conclusion that there was not much sense in that. Donna has started to feel funny without any rings on, so we have been keeping our eyes out for something that would quasi-match my ring whenever we went in a store. Last night as we were poking around in Dillard’s looking for a pink sweater for Donna we came across a table with some jewelry on it, including some rings. Hey look, here’s something that’ll fit the bill, its gold and has a bunch of shiny little bits around the circumference. The size 6 was too small, but the 7 fit just right. And at twenty bucks the price was right. Wait a minute, here is a size 9, I wonder if that will fit my skinny finger. Yep, sure did, we have matching rings again. As a bonus the rings came a sets of two, so we have a backup in case one of us misplaces one. Behold, the Tivoli CZ Eternity Band Set.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 576

Fajitas Para Dos

Tonight Donna and I treated Mark and his wife to dinner at Sala’s for him helping me panel the laundry room. Donna and usually split a single order of Fajitas, but because the steroids she is taking make her hungry all the time she said we should go ahead and get Fajitas for Two and that way the leftovers (if there were any) would be good for her lunch the next day. Mark wanted a Speedy (a taco and an enchilada that is on every Mexican restaurant’s menu), but here it is only offered at lunch, so he had to order a “Pick 2 Combo” which doubled the price (at least it came with rice and beans instead of just one of those with the Speedy.) Mark’s wife Susan ordered the same thing she always gets, even though she read the menu front to back and vocalized a couple of different choices, in the end, it was the usual Chicken Fajitas for her.

When the food came to the table Mark’s plate came out with our tortillas and rice and beans. No sign of meat for the Fajita Folks. In what I’m sure was a shorter time than it felt, out came the Fajita platters, but without the telltale steaming sizzle that normally makes everyone in the dining room look and nod knowing that someone is getting Fajitas. Minus one point for presentation.

When they placed our Fajita plates on the table I noticed that Susan’s pile of chicken was the same size (if not a teeny bit bigger) than our steak and chicken for two. Donna pounces on the waiter and lets him know that we are not paying any more than for the single fajitas because we certainly didn’t get twice as much meat. He mumbles something about that it wasn’t his fault it was the cooks and hurries off.

When the bill comes Donna says to me, “Check to make sure that he charged us right.” The waiter hears this and knowing what I’ll find says, “If you want to have the bill changes you have to talk to the manager.” Ooooh, what. Is he going to come out with crossed ammo bandoleers and 45 revolvers strapped on? We said, “We’ll wait.” The manager comes out a few minutes later, listens to our story, and says, “I’ll take care of it.” Which he did.

We probably would not have said anything about it with the meat portion being the same if the cost was a couple bucks more and not fully double a single fajita dish. Afterall we did get twice the tortillas, rice, beans, pico de gallo, lettuce, tomatoes, cheese, sour cream and guacamole.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 574

105,000 Lines of Bar Code

I have been using a Just One Club Card for years and it has kept my wallet slimmer. There were 5 stores on it, but recently we added a Staples Reward card to our repertoire, so I went and made up a new justoneclubcard.

Tonight shopping at Krogers I went to use my new card and the scanner wouldn’t read it (at the pharmacy nor at the checkout.) Now what? Like a bonehead I tossed out the old card before testing the new one. On top of that I have no idea where the original cards may be.

I did notice that when I print the card from the JOCC site it is a lot smaller than it was on my old card so I enlarged it by 120% to fill the card better. I was careful to use the pixel resize mode so that I wouldn’t get a blurry enlargement and I printed them out on the laser printer. Maybe I need to blow it up in nice round numbers? I wonder if 200 times will still fit on a wallet card?

On the way to work this morning the Emperor reached the 105,000 mile mark.

Started up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 572

Somerville, VA 22739

Last Saturday we took a little drive to visit Donna’s Cousin Susie for breakfast. We were in DC and Susie lives in Richmond, VA a couple hundred miles away, so we picked a town about halfway between and Fredricksburg was the winner. The is a local chain called Aunt Sarah’s that had a restaurant just off I-95 in Fredricksburg. We agreed to meet there around 8:30.

Donna and I took the “back road” down, US301, and even had time to pick up a couple of caches on the way. When we got to Aunt Sarah’s the parking lot was deserted. Looking inside the window verified that it was no longer in business. After several passes from “wrong Way Susie” we ended up eating at a Bob Evan’s on the other side of the Interstate. The actuall restaurant was irrelevant it was just a place to meet and have the cousins catch up.

After we went our separate ways Donna and I decided to break out the Virginia map and find a back way north instead of joining the lemmings on I-95. By five miles out of Fredricksburg we were on rural two-lane blacktop with little to zero traffic. This was the only time on the trip that we missed having the Miata.

About halfway back to the Airport Marriott where we were spending the night, we made a quick stop at a small general store for some ice cream. What do you know, it is also a post office, old habits die hard so I broke out the digicam and snapped a sot of our Hyundai Elanta rental car in front of the Somerville, VA Post Office.

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 571

MMMM…Pancakes

Early morning run for Pancakes with the MMC followed geocaching on foot around North Augusta and finished off by finishing off the paneling of the laundry room (thanks Mark.)

Speaking of finishing off, West Virginia just finished off any chance I had in the company basketball pool by beating Kentucky.

Started down, went up, down again, up again, down again, up, down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 570

I Really Want To Post About Our Trip…

…but I’m having difficulty overcoming the inertia.

Me, Donna, Adele & Sally waiting to see Galapagos in 3D at the Samuel C. Johnson IMAX Theater, National Museum of Natural History on the mall in DC.

Started up, went down, up, down again, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 564

A Fitting End To The Trip

Donna and I jetted to the Nation’s Capital this weekend to see Sally, Donna’s longtime friend and globetrotting State Department minion. As a bonus, Sally’s mom was visiting her there too and they were both staying with sister/daughter Susie at her home in Chevy Chase, MD, so we got two visits for the price of one.

The trip started out inauspiciously with us showing up at the Augusta airport at what we thought was an hour early, but turned out to be a minute to late. We had misread our eTicket and thought that the Atlanta arrival time was our Augusta departure time. Fortunately it was early on a week day, so there was an actual flight leaving at the time we thought, and there was enough room on it for us. Unfortunately that chopped most of our Atlanta layover time away. Naturally the flight we did get on was delayed on takeoff, thereby leaving us just enough time to race from one gate to the next to make the flight to Dulles. Little did we know this was an omen of how the whole trip would seem to go.

Here are a couple of low lights: 1) On Saturday we had arranged to meet a cousin of Donna’s who lives in Richmond at a half way point between there and DC. She picked out a regional breakfast chain called Aunt Sarah’s that was an easy off exit on I-95 in Fredricksburg, VA. We got there first and when we pulled into the lot we knew we were in trouble, it was empty, so too was the building. This particular Aunt Sarah’s had shutdown. We ended up at a Bob Evans on the other side of the Interstate. 2) I failed to print out the directions to our hotel near the airport on Saturday night. This resulted in a lot of driving and looking with no luck. Finally I admitted defeat and pulled into a sister hotel in the chain that I did see and asked for directions. The helpful clerk wrote the directions and off we went. We ran into trouble after the second line because we never did find the road she said to take a left on. Several miles later I called the number for the hotel we were to stay at and got directions. Turns out it was almost back where the other hotel was, but by now it was closer just to finish up my 25 mile loop around Dulles International Airport than backtrack.

On the way home today when we left DC the flight was full. so they asked if people might go ahead and check some of their carry ons for free to make sure there was enough overhead bin room for every one. I talked Donna into swapping a few things around and we did just that. Wouldn’t you know it, but that bag didn’t show when we landed in Augusta. When the gate agent filled out the form she got the flight number correct, but instead of writing Augusta’s airport code of AGS, she wrote down AUS, meaning the bag made a trip to Austin, TX. As of now it’s current arrival time in Augusta is 10:42PM tonight, we should get it sometime tomorrow.

Maybe tomorrow, I’ll write about some of the highlights.

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 561