Year: 2013

A Christmas Wonderland

Christmas Lights

My brother Paul is down in Hendersonville, NC visiting with my sister and her husband for a week. Since we didn’t have any vacation left the only time we could visit was this weekend, so we drove up last night and spent the day with them. Unfortunately it has been kind of a messy rainy day, but it didn’t prevent us from our usual downtown Hendersonville shopping stroll.

After dark we drove a few miles up the road from the SMH to the same place we went the last time we were here, the Western NC Agriculture Center near the Asheville Airport. In September it was NC Mountain State Fair, but this time it was a Christmas Wonderland. Twenty bucks a carload for 20 minutes of driving around a giant circuit filled with pulsating lights while “synchronized” is piped into your car’s radio.

Would have been awesome in the Miata, but the Emperor was back in his Throne Room in Aiken and it was steadily raining with intermittent bursts of heavy stuff.

Started down, went up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1282

The Turner Housesitting Service

When one of our engineers heads back up north to visit family this time of year he gets programmer Mark to look after his house. Mark checks the mail, waters the plants and feeds the household menagerie. Last year when Tom and family returned they found all the light bulbs in the dining room hanging fixture were pink. As a bonus he placed a pink princess nightlight in the master bedroom.

This year Mark decided to elevate the madness just a bit. The night before they returned he placed a 18″ x 24″ yard sign on the front lawn. On the inside he placed a life size poster of himself in the master bath. And if that wasn’t enough, he placed a couple of the ThinkGeek Annoy-a-trons set to cricket strategically in the kitchen and in the upstairs bonus room.

The yard sign got an mildly amusing chuckle, the poster elicited a scream from the wife and the crickets almost prompted a call to the local pest control guy.

I’m thinking between this year and next, Tom will make friends with a neighbor that he can convince to house sit for them in 2014.

Behind The Green Door

Green Door

We finally broke down and bought a new front door.

The old one (left) has been serving as the axillary entrance for us since we moved into the house 24 years ago. For all we know it was the primary entrance for the 34 years prior. It had a crack in the upper right wood panel that when the sun was going down it would cast a thin bright line on the back wall of the living room. When the summer humidity set in the door would swell up making opening and closing a job that required a lot of force. The top hinge on the storm door in front of it was broken so that closing it required lifting on the handle to get it to line up with the frame. Because we normally come in and out of the house using the garage door it didn’t bother us too much, but the effects of the newness of the kitchen has made us realize that some other things really, really needed updating too.

The new door (right) is made of foam filled fiberglass and weighs about half of what the wood door did. It will keep the winter chill at bay much better and only allow the setting sun to sneak in through the very small peep hole. The storm door is a neat full view door that has one bar across the middle, so that when the top half of glass is lowered and screen unrolls from the top. In spite of the kitchen remodel we bought and had the door installed through Lowes. This time it went off without a hitch.

What goes on behind this green door is nothing like what happens in its famous movie namesake from 1972. If you don’t know what I’m talking about you can read about it here. And if that peaks your curiosity, you can watch the first 53 or so minutes of the 71 minute film here.

Horsing Around

Horsing Around

Just trying new stuff with the blog. Bigger pictures for one. And I may just do a restyle for the new year…

Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1280

Resurection

While updating a blogging software plugin this evening it some how crashed and took the whole site down. I restored the database from a weekly backup that runs on Sunday nights. Everything previous came back, but things are just a little off.

The top transition text has changed and weirdest of all is when I try to edit a post, the text box where everything is entered, is blank. There is nothing to edit, yet the post still exists. And now I also have a yellow bar across the top of every backend page telling me that an automated WordPress update has failed to complete – please attempt the update again now. When I try, nothing happens, and the bar remains.

And if you would like a different take on the resurrection of the dead, I highly recommend a French (oh, no, subtitles) eight episode TV show called Les Revenants, or The Returned for us English speaking types. Very creepy story of the dead come back to life in a small mountain village, but not as shuffling zombies, but as exactly as they were just before they died with no recollection of the passage of time.

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1279

He Who Hesitates Is Lost

On last Thursday, the official opening of the holiday shopping season, I assembled my 2013 Christmas Wish List. After crossing out the hundreds of unreasonable expensive items, I was left with three things, only one of which was going to make it onto Santa’s sleigh.

Item #1 was something that would benefit the entire household for years to come with “blazing” networking speeds and extended range viewing of streaming video, a NETGEAR N600 Dual Band Wireless Router

Item #2 was something that would benefit myself for the next couple of years with “snuggly” warmth and proudly proclaim my allegiance to a certain baseball team, a Red Sox Shoutout Full Zip Hoodie

Item #3 was something with no real benefit and be used for probably about 2 weeks before getting sidelined to collect dust that has “gee-whiz” wonderment and a cool factor that would make me the envy of my small group of peers, a Micro Drone 2.0 With Aerial Camera

After spending the previous 6 days trying to decide which item I really wanted, last night I made my choice. Now, in hindsight, the decision was obvious, if Item #1 would have brought me that much joy I could have easily justified it sooner, Item #2 as a practical piece of clothing, could be purchased no questions anytime, but the only way I could possibly get Item #3 was under the guise of Christmas present.

With 3 days left on the discounted price time frame they had sold out of the Micro Drones! They mention they are getting some more by possibly December 12th. Should I wait? Or is this an omen telling me to go ahead and buy one of the other items?

On a related note, here is a 7-year old’s Christmas Wishlist dissected by her father: My Kid’s Insane Christmas Wish List