Month: February 2011

A Bridge In The Woods

Just on the other side of this bridge is a new cache on a trail in McCormick County. We were the second folks to visit it in the 3 weeks that it has been active. The only thing is, that bridge is a little over 4 miles along the trail from the parking area. We are not totally insane, we didn’t walk all the way out here just for this one cache. There were 5 others along this trail and we found four of them (5 of 6 total for the day.)

We used to mountain bike on this trail way back in the early 90s and there were lots of places that were familiar. We didn’t ride this trail as much as the others in the area because it was a lot more technical, but there are lots of nice scenic riding in between the several rocky creek crossings we remember having to get off the bike and walk.

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 948

Lost That Lovin’ Feeling

My excuse last night is that we were out late at a movie, so I didn’t have time to blog. Tonight I have no excuse. Maybe tomorrow…

Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 948

Summer’s Here

No, not summer weather, spring weather is just now sneaking in, but bathing suit season has arrived in the form of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition.

What started as a few page diversion from the mid winter doldrums has morphed into an extravaganza! There is no sports involved anymore (and no, you can’t count comely female athletes in bikinis as sports content), for that you get a separate regular issue of the mag.

I glanced through the issue and it took all of five minutes, because if you have seen one swimsuit issue you’ve seen them all. Dazzling warm weather locales; check. Incredibly expensive suits on supermodels; check. Girls with nothing on but incredibly painted-on replicas of of incredibly expensive suits; check. Girls with nothing on but shells; check. Girls with nothing on, but hiding behind strategically placed palm fronds; check. Random erect nipple or two; check. And unlike playboy when can actually say with a straight face, “I read it for the articles,” the only words in the magazine are two page “stories” on how arduous it was to shoot photos of nearly naked supermodels in each dazzling warm weather climate.

And now there is no real reason to buy the magazine off the newsstand if you aren’t a regular subscriber, just click on that cover photo there and off you go to the web site where there are more more photos than on paper, with videos too.

And like all things that start small and become wildly successful, it has sold it’s soul to commercialism in an effort to make as much money as possible. There are more ad pages than swimsuit pictures…I tossed out two of those smelly fragrance ads, 4 pages for Lexus, 8 pages for Direct TV before giving it up as fruitless. And now it is not just ads in the magazine, Nissan made several TV commercials that feature it’s very ugly Juke and swimsuit models.

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 947

Post Hole


No, I’m not putting up a fence, just didn’t want to miss more than two days of top count…

Started up, went down, back up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 946

‘Bout Time

If my tagging of posts is 100% accurate, which is doubtful, the last time I washed the car was November 14th and that was really only dusting and Quick Detailing. Well, whenever the last washing the Emperor actually was, he got the real deal today and it is amazing how purrty he looks from 10 feet away without any of that nasty road dirt on him.

About a year ago Donna lost her wedding ring and we replaced it with a cheapo one we found in a local Dillards. We both got two copies of the same ring in our size and in the past three hundred and sixty odd days we have worked our way through both. Mine currently has one of the diamonds (AKA piece of glass) missing and the gold plating no longer exists on either of our rings. I thought what a nice thing to do for Valentines Day would be to buy some actual gold replacement rings. After hunting around on the web for a bit last night we came up with a ring we both liked. Unsure of our correct sizes we opted to wait until we visited an actual Zales store and had our sizes determined by a trained professional. Which we did today and they measured Donna’s finger as a 7-1/2, which shot a big hole in our plans, as our chosen ring was only available online and only in whole sizes. Back to the net and in short order we found our second choice and ordered them.

We watched The Town today and were tempted to turn on the English Subtitles the Boston accents were so thick. We had an easier time understanding the liverpudlian ones in Nowhere Boy.

Started up, went down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 943

Barnwell State Park

Today Donna and I, along with friend Joan, headed to Blackville to have lunch at Miller’s Bread Basket, a great little Mennonite restaurant there. Of course we did a little geocaching too. After we ate, we headed south to Barnwell State Park where there were two ammo cans crying out to be found. When we got to the park we were surprised to learn we had been here BC (Before Caching), when we had circled the lower lake on the Dogwood Interpretive Trail. We didn’t even know there was another trail in the park until we discovered that there were a couple of geocaches there.

Started up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 941

We Have Lift Off

After about a week of 10 minutes here, 10 minutes there, before or after breaks and lunch, the Tor.com Stubby Rocket is finished. It is 2 times scale of the downloaded PDF and is literally hung by a thread from the drop ceiling in my cube.

I wonder what the reaction will be, if any, on Monday from my supervisor and my manager, who were both are out of town on business this week. The big cheese Director of Operations, who sometimes makes a sweep of the area, wasn’t in today either. He is probably who told my manager to instruct his charges that the new offices should be more business-like and not be shrines to our individual personalities…

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 941