Month: November 2010

Four Restaurants in Greensboro, GA

After leaving Indian Springs State Park on Saturday we angled our way back northeast to I-20 for the blast back home. When we got to Exit 130 it was time for dinner and there were several chain places to choose from. We picked Zaxby’s as the lesser of 6 evils, but when we got inside and perused the menu board we both knew it was an uninspired choice. There was nothing that either of us really wanted, so we surprised the girl behind the counter by turning on our heels and heading for the door.

While walking back to the car we noticed a large billboard that advertised two downtown restaurants just 3 miles north. This sounded more like it. A downtown eatery that would have something besides a variation on fried chicken parts. The Yesterday Cafe was definitely the place to be on Saturday night in Greensboro as it was hopping. We were greeted promptly by the hostess and offered a booth. We scanned the menu and there were enough options that we each picked something. Several minutes passed and we changed our minds to a different entree. Several more minutes passed and we had yet to get so much as a nod from a wait-person. No water offered. No I’ll be with you in a minute. No nothing. Too make matters worse, from where I was sitting I could see the hostess station and there were two young ladies, dressed in waitress type attire standing there, chatting away with the hostess, where they had been since we entered. Finally the conversation broke up and the waitresses peeled off one by one like B-17’s over their German targets and flew right by us. Needless to say we stood up and left.

Well, I guess we’ll head back 3 miles south to the Interstate. Donna suggested Waffle House next. She said, “I can have their soup” and I said, “I may just get a pecan waffle.” We picked a booth and a waitress came right over and took our drink order. She returned promptly with a coke for me and water for Donna. When Donna asked what the day’s soup was and our waitress had to go ask. She returned and said, “We are out of soup.” We both said, “We’re sorry,” as we stood up and headed for the door.

Right across the street was a Wendy’s. I said out loud, “Spicy Chicken sandwich.” Donna replied with, “Baked potato.” If you already have figured it out with the way the story is going so far, they were out of potatoes.

We still had a couple snacks and half a ham & cheese sandwich in the cooler in the trunk to tide us over for a while. Worse case scenario was the Cracker Barrel in Augusta 64 miles away. It would be closer to 7:00 PM before we ate, but we were pretty sure they would still have both potatoes and soup when we got there.

We didn’t hold out that long though, 40 miles later we were sucked into a Taco Bell in Thompson. Three tacos for me and a chicken flat bread sandwich for her, water to drink, in and out for under 5 bucks.

Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 894

Sunday Afternoon In The Driveway

Changed the oil and rotated the tires on the Emperor this afternoon. I used the California Duster to remove the road fur from yesterday’s trip and washed all the windows. Sprayed a little Quick Detailer in places to get off some random gunk and treated the tires so they shine. Even vacuumed the interior.

As long as we are doing the Georgia State Park Challenge we might as well do the the GA County and GA Delorme Challenges as well. There are 42 State Park caches, 159 counties and 59 map pages, but you really need 63 caches because this challenge requires you to find a cache on the page inserts too. That would be 264 unique finds, so unlike in South Carolina we are going to take the easy route, any cache found, can and will be, used towards multiple Challenges. So right now we have 4 State Parks, 19 counties and 17 pages.

On yesterday’s trip there were several caches along our route we didn’t even try for because of time and motivational issues and there was one in particular that I’m glad we didn’t get, Cache Across America – Georgia. That’s right, a challenge with the requirement to find a cache in all 50 states and not just any cache, but the 50 picked out just for it.

Started up, went down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 893

Saturday By The Numbers


High Falls State Fall State Park

397 miles driven.
13 hours away from home.
6.2 miles walked on 4 different trails.
5 caches found.
4 restaurants in Greensboro, GA that we didn’t get served dinner in.
3 meals out (AKA, The Trifecta.)
3 GA State Parks completed.
2 DNF caches.
1 cache found, but too impatient to sign the log.

Started up, went down, went up, back down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 891

Amazing Twinkie Diet

For 10 weeks, Mark Haub, a professor of human nutrition at Kansas State University, ate one Twinkie every three hours, instead of meals. His premise: That in weight loss, pure calorie counting is what matters most — not the nutritional value of the food. The premise held up: On his “convenience store diet,” he shed 27 pounds in two months.

Now that’s a diet I can get behind. Read the rest of the article on the CNN web site.

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 887

It’s Not Hip To Be Square

As you can see the Life of Brian has new clothes.

This looks best in any browser but IE. In Firefox, Chrome, and numerous others there are nice rounded corners. In IE everything has sharp square corners, ugh.

The old clothes, while still in fine shape, were starting to go out of style. The new theme, believe it or not, is the same theme, Atahualpa3.5.3 by BytesForAll, as the old site, which when you think about it is a testament to its customizability.

There are a few of things still on the punch list. First, the random image looks crummy, I’m guessing because it is so big, I’ll probably go back to 4 small ones. Number 2 is I need to make a page to put the blog roll, AKA links to sites I read, because there number was getting out of hand and I still refer to some of them. They are here: Linkage. Also I’d like to find a plug in that organizes the Categories in number of posts order. There may be more.

Started down, went up, went down, back up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 886

Poor Puppies

We bought the local paper this morning and Donna pointed out this little bit in the paper’s Talkback section:

Dog Park
The dog park is great, although some safety concerns should be addressed. The metal posts should be wrapped to protect puppies from colliding into them. The sides of the pool are extremely rough and can harm dogs that try to exit the pool from the sides.

At first I thought it might be some sort of joke, but then I remembered just how deeply involved people can get with their pets. But I just couldn’t resist making light of the matter. I hit the reply link which popped up an email window and I wrote:

RE: Dog Park Safety Concerns
Perhaps dogs using the park should be required to wear helmets and protective padding like the folks who use the Skate Park behind the Odell Weeks Center.

About 30 minutes later I got an undeliverable email back. Figuring maybe the paper has something against gmail addresses when I got home I tried again. A short time later:

Failed to deliver to ‘talkback@aikenstandard.com’
SMTP module(domain @10.10.10.57|aikenstandard.com) reports:
host mail.global.frontbridge.com says:
550 5.4.1 talkback@aikenstandard.com: Recipient address rejected: Access Denied

Nice, you can’t talk back to Talkback…

Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 882

RAM Tough?

Last Monday on our way home from work were got stuck behind a shiny silver RAM Heavy Duty Dually. It was 3-1/2 tons of 4×4 manliness. There was testosterone condensate dripping from the 5″ diameter tailpipe that was connected to a 6.7 litter diesel with 650 ft/lbs of torque giving it towing capacity to move small Caribbean islands. The 8′ bed would hold a Miata and it had the load capacity large enough that it could carry two in there with no sweat.

As we traveled down Powderhouse Rd behind this behemoth, it seemed to be having trouble staying in the lane (to be fair, the truck was so wide it didn’t have far to go) and we figured it was because of the usual reason, talking on a cell phone. After watching several of these quick zig-zags there came a particularly harsh swerve that took the outside right tire off the road into the dirt we realized what was going on. The driver of this super truck was dodging the 1/4 to 3/4 inch drops associated with manholes covers on resurfaced roads.

Started up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 881