Month: April 2013

Two Thirds The Fun

Jewel Lot

After walking to breakfast at you know where, we walked back to the hotel along the beach, packed up the Miata and drove home.

Numerous things contributed to this decision, chief of which were the accommodations. If you would like a nice place to stay at Myrtle Beach do not book a room at the Sea Mist. You get what you pay for and there is a reason an ocean front room here can be had for 80 bucks a night. The Sea Mist is an aging dowager and they are trying sell shares in to be built condos so they can tear it down and build new.

The weather the first day and a half didn’t help matters much either.

Traffic was awful out on US 17 which is the only major road you had to get north or south. We ran into it on the way to the event on Thursday, on the way to and from the lunch spot on Friday and on the way out this morning.

MAMB is normally earlier, the last weekend in March, but the Easter holiday forced the move forward a week. It was the beginning of Spring Break.

We did have fun at the couple of planned events we attended. So we may attend another one of these, but we will make sure it is not near Spring Break time-wise and we will definitely stay at a different hotel.

Started up, went down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1211

Friday at the Beach/Brewery

New South Brewing

A word of advice, skip the cheap Sea Mist breakfast buffet. The only thing that was hot was the made to order omelet prepared by a almost surly woman. They didn’t have hot chocolate, so I skipped getting their coffee meaning that we could go to DD for dessert. We filled up the car and found an ATM.We couldn’t find any takers to join us on a trip to the flea market, so we went anyway and only shopped for a bit before giving up and going to lunch.

We went to the Dead Dog Saloon which was the place the Miata group was set to drive to, but just too late in the day for us. The traffic here is dense and stop and go for long sections of US17. This was another reason we were way early at the restaurant, if there is one thing more annoying than creeping along in bumper to bumper traffic, it is driving in a group in bumper to bumper traffic. We were actually in the middle of that bumper to bumper traffic going back to the hotel as the Miata group was going to the restaurant.

While they were eating, we were watching a movie in our room. Even that didn’t go as planned as about 3/4 hour in, the fire alarm in our building of the complex went off. The bright side of this, beside the place not burning down, was we learned that the sun had finally deemed to make an appearance. Unfortunately because of the long fire caused intermission we didn’t even finish the movie before it was time to line up for the afternoon drive to the New South Brewery.

We opted to go for this drive for a couple of reasons, one we were interested and two the route did not include any stretch of US17. The tour was very interesting and educational, not to mention tasty as we got to sample several of their craft beers.

MAMB VII

Myrtle Beach

We finally get our kitchen back after eight weeks and we opt to drive 200 miles away so we have to eat out for the next 4 days.

Today we drove over to the east coast of South Carolina with a fellow MMC member couple to participate in the seventh annual Miatas at Myrtle Beach. And we “lucked” into a weekend with some of the lousiest weather they’ve ever seen for April in quite some time.

I feel bad for the organizers as they have had to shuffle some things around because of the weather. This afternoon’s Poker Run was moved to Saturday afternoon and tomorrow’s big drive had the morning portion scratched because the plantation we were supposed to descend upon en mass called to say that it wouldn’t be a good idea to drive the 70 or so Miatas down it’s dirt road after all this rain because it will be sloppy muddy. Plus if it was raining, there would be no way to accommodate that many people inside the house.

We’re not sure what we’ll do to fill the empty morning other than take advantage of the Sea Mist’s inexpensive breakfast buffet. We may visit a local flea market.

DW

DW

Well, it’s almost over. The dishwasher is in and the contractor is finished. He is coming over tomorrow morning to settle up. We moved a bunch of stuff from our temp kitchen (the dining room) into the new kitchen tonight. It is slow going as we have to pick a spot to put the items in. A lot of the layout is similar to what we had, so we can put stuff back in the generally the same area, but we have new features that have to be worked into our routine.

All that is left to do is that I need to paint. We have picked out the colors, gloss white for the trim and yellow for what little wall shows. The old kitchen was yellow too, but very pale, this time we picked a few shades brighter.

I took several pictures tonight, but when the camera flash fires the colors in the resulting photo do not look anything like they do in real life. When hand holding the shot, the colors are more true to life, but everything is slightly blurry. This one was the best one of the bunch showing what the colors of everything are. After next week I’ll do another series of 5 photos of the new kitchen like I did of the original kitchen before we started this whole thing.

This Kitchen Remodel Is Killing Me

Faucet

Almost literally.

Last Friday night we were cleaning out some of the scrap/left over wood from the project that we had saved thinking we might be able to do something with. It was bits and end pieces and such that still had the cabinet color on a couple sides. After marinating on ideas for a while, it became clear that that wood was just what it was, scrap/leftovers, so we tossed it the dumpster. Well, one piece decided it was not going to go quietly and managed to stick splinters in two of the fingers on my right hand. I extracted the one on my ring finger, but the one impaled into my index finger was too deep for me to get out easily. I soaked it in hot water for a while and poked at it with my X-acto knife. I got a piece out that I thought was all of it.

Yesterday afternoon my index finger started to ache and it was slightly swollen compared to the left one. Ack! It’s infected! This morning I was going to get the company nurse to do some exploratory digging to get any remaining splinter out, but she was going to be out of the plant all week, so I broke down and called my primary care doctor. They said they could squeeze me in at 10:30.

Because I was a squeeze in, it took a while to see the PCP and after looking at my finger he said, “I’m sending you down the hall to the Surgery Associates. They’ve got all the cool toys.”

I’ve never been there before, so I had to fill out 5 pages of insurance information, family history, etc an get my picture taken. Because I was a walk-in there too I was stuck in a room to wait. And wait. I was visited by the nurse to take my vitals. And wait some more. Fortunately I had brought a book to read so it didn’t seem overly long. The doctor showed up and took a look at my finger and filled out a form on their PC with what she was going to do, Remove Superficial Foreign Body In Finger. I let her know it may be superficial to her, but not so much to me.

She left and the nurse came back in to set everything up for the procedure. I asked her what time it was, I thought 11:30 as my stomach was starting to growl. She told me, “It is 12:25.” No wonder I was hungry. When the doctor returned a few minutes later I asked if I had been there long enough to qualify for a snack tray or something, she replied, “They brought in Moe’s for the office staff and after the procedure if you want, I’ll fix you a plate.” I thought she was joking, but as I was checking out she came back with a ground beef soft taco and all the fixin’s on a plate, plus a cup of sweet tea. I wonder if that will be on my bill and if it is will Blue Cross Blue Shield of Alabama will cover it.

I left the plant at 10:00 AM and returned at 1:00 PM, for my troubles I got a free lunch, a script for Vicodin and didn’t get billed by the PCP.

Started up, went down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1209