Month: February 2011

Darth Monday

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Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 958

Dam

Donna and I piled into Joan’s car this morning and drove back to up to the Modoc Trail in McCormick County to find the one that got away last weekend. We had received an unsolicited hint from the CO after he read our DNF log. We might have just chalked this cache up to a loss and moved on, but this is the first stage of a multi with about 16 stages that takes you on a tour all around the state of South Carolina. We figure we have lived here long enough that just maybe it is time for us to explore the place a bit and see what this state has to offer.*

*Imagine this sentence rendered in the sarcasm font.

The hint turned out to be no help because it told us to look somewhere we had already looked, but we had to give it try anyway. Seeing as we drove all that way and came up empty handed we tried a couple more caches over by Thurmond Dam. The first one we looked for was listed as kid friendly, so we figured we shouldn’t have any trouble with it. Wrong, apparently it was adult un-friendly as we came up empty handed.

There was one other cache, a short three stage multi, that was also on the South Carolina side of the base of the dam. Stage 1 was easy, but at stage two you needed to get a date that was to be found on top of a stone column for the coords for Stage 3. Unfortunately there was no plaque on top, just a metal lid with a padlock covering the column. We got the north coordinates by counting the flood gates, but still needed the two digits of a day in July 1980 to add to the last three digits in the Stage 1 west coordinates to get the final stage’s west coords. Being patriotic Americans we started by plugging in the number generated by using July 4, 1980. That took us to the middle of the parking area for a boat ramp. Hmmm, no good. So I created a waypoint for the first of July and then another for the 31st. Because we had the north coordinates the cache had to lie somewhere on a line between July 1st’s waypoint and the 31st’s waypoint. Knowing that, and reading the clue, it allowed us to make the find, with Joan making the actual grab. Time constraints sent us home after this so we could up our Find/DNF ratio.

This afternoon the Emperor got a transfusion and had his socks swapped with his gloves (oils change and tire rotation.)

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Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 956

Summer’s Here

Tomorrow it is going to be 81° and on Monday even warmer at 83°.

Surprise, surprise, we ate breakfast at Dunkin Donuts and then did some geocaching. The real surprise was that we didn’t roll out of bed until 8 o’clock. And that made DD quite busy, but we did luck out by just missing one onslaught of customers and ended up right ahead of another. While we dined, we read in the Aiken Standard about a local nominee for the World’s Stupidest Criminal – Robbing A Bank Is Thirsty Work and the weekend edition of the Wall Street Journal reviewed one of the 16 contenders for the Bogardus’s new car – Hyundai Elantra by comparing it to the new 2012 Ford Focus (which will now be added to the list replacing the previous generation’s coupe).

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Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 956

Spring Is On The Horizon


Sumo by PaperTom

When I was growing up in Connecticut when you saw a robin in your yard that meant spring was on its way. Here in Aiken that doesn’t work so well, I don’t think the robins ever go away here. Today I saw three signs that Punxsutawney Phil was correct in his prediction that spring is just around the corner.

The first thing I noticed that portends spring, even though we are still nearly a month from the vernal equinox, was a box of Girl Scout cookies on someones desk. Number two was the Bradford Pear tree outside the front door of the Valve Store(tm) was starting to bloom and lastly, and most troublesome, was that there was a light coating of yellow pine pollen covering the exterior of the Emperor when I parked it in the garage this evening.

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Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 952

Version 3.1

I’ve updated to WordPress 3.1 and I couldn’t be more excited.* Down below is my new desktop wallpaper and has nothing whatsoever to do with WordPress, it is just a pretty picture and it is helping me fill up space. Clicking on the picture should net you a full 1920×1080 version if you want to use it too.

*here would have been another place for the use of that sarcasm font…

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Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 951

Hey Four Eyes

Yesterday was our yearly eye exams and after skipping it last year, this year we are going to go ahead and get new glasses. We have both gotten quite used to the EasyClip frames with the magnetic sunglasses. They only had a small selection in the store to chose from for women and zero for men. Donna picked a couple of decent ones, but the one she really liked had a very short vertical dimension. While the helpful staff member said that they were fine for progressive lens, they have about the same measurement as my current glasses do and it took me a long while to adjust to that configuration. Just because something is possible it doesn’t necessarily mean it should be done. We asked if we could hunt up some frames on the web and bring the model numbers to them so they could order a copy for us to try on and touch. The answer was yes.

This evening I did some shopping on the web. My current glasses have full frames and the pair I had before were rimless, so this time I split the difference and got semi-rimless. These are the four I picked out four for me to try:

His

The first pair on the left is one of the ones Donna liked in the shop. Her current glasses are gold with pearl accents and she wants a little more color this time, so I went looking for reddish frames. The other three are what I chose from online for her to try:

Hers
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Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 950

Your Geocaching Name Is Tag-a-Long

In a scene eerily not at all reminiscent of Larry Kroger and Kent Dorfman getting their Delta Tau Chi fraternity names of Pinto and Flounder, Joan received her geocaching user name today, tag-a-long.*

What started as a simple couple hour trip, with a mile and a half walk, to grab 5 geocaches along a new, not completely finished, section of the North Augusta Greeneway, turned into six hours, 6.2 miles of traipsing hither and yon, nine finds, 2 DNFs, meeting seven geocachers, one of whom is the local “godfather”, and lunch.

On the first pass we couldn’t find one of the five, so we got in the car and drove down to a different parking area to look for a few new caches located on the original section of the Greeneway. We were signing the log when a couple of folks walked up and one had a GPS in his hand. As is tradition, when meeting a cacher who is a stranger, you introduce yourselves with name, geocaching handle and then fall into discussing common finds, hints for DNFs and an invitation to the next group gathering.

With a hint hot in hand, we walked back to the car, drove back to the original destination to look for the one we missed in our first pass. As we walked up the gravel pathway, we saw up ahead, four adults, a loose kid and one in a stroller milling about at a spot that held one of the caches we had found earlier. Again we introduced ourselves around. One of the women looked at Joan and asked what her geocaching name was. I said, “She doesn’t have one.” Joan answered, “I’m just tagging along.” The woman said, “See, you have your name, tag-a-long.”

*She’ll have to add a number on the end though to differentiate between the other user who already has that name.

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Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 948