Year: 2010

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.

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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

The Silence Is Deafening

Radios and CD players have always been strictly forbidden at work and when the Internet on our network became available, they added streaming music to the ban too. And over the years there have been periodic reminders that this is a no-no. In spite of this I have always listened to music by storing mp3s on the hard drive and playing them using Winamp (which makes it doubly wrong because loading unauthorized software and using the work PC for anything besides work is forbidden by a different set of rules.) I do play the music at such a level that unless you are in my cube, practically sitting on my lap, you can’t really hear it, so I don’t think any of my neighbors complained.

Last Friday another reminder on the music ban made the rounds via email from Human Resources, for some reason I took this one seriously and deleted several gigs of music and uninstalled Winamp. The last two days have been really quiet in my cubical.

Started down, went up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 560

Ides Of March

The Ides of March is the name of March 15 in the Roman calendar. The term ides was used for the 15th day of the months of March, May, July, and October, and the 13th day of the other months. The Ides of March was a festive day dedicated to the god Mars and a military parade was usually held.

In modern times, the term Ides of March is best known as the date that Julius Caesar was killed in 709 AUC or 44 B.C. Julius Caesar was stabbed to death in the Roman Senate led by Marcus Junius Brutus, Gaius Cassius Longinus and 60 other co-conspirators. According to Plutarch, Caesar was warned by a seer to be on his guard against a great peril on the Ides of March. On his way to the Theatre of Pompey (where he would be assassinated), Caesar saw the seer and joked “Well, the Ides of March have come,” to which the seer replied “Ay, they have come, but they are not gone.”

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Carriage Ride

We were 5 of 7 in geocaching this morning. This afternoon I finally did change the oil and rotate the tires on the Emperor. While I was at it I gave him a bath too. He got quite dirty yesterday when Donna had me drive up and down the local dirt roads trying to catch a glimpse of horse drawn carriages.

Before yesterday’s running of the first “jewel” of Aiken’s Triple Crown (the flat races) there was supposed to be a carriage parade. Seeing as we were not interested in the races and too cheap to spend the $10 a piece to get in and watch the actual parade, we guessed at the start point and cruised the dirt roads looking for it. Alas, there was no external parade, the carriages came to the horse track in there own good time. We stopped near the entrance where Donna jumped out to take a couple photos of the two carriages already inside the grounds and then we drove down a rutty, muddy road looking for more. we did find two more making their way to the track, including these two ladies all dressed in purple.

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 557