Year: 2014

Are You A Member Of Our Loyalty Club?

Even though we did the weekly grocery shopping on the way home from Florida yesterday, we didn’t get the a menu planning done for tonight. When we couldn’t agree on what we wanted to fix, we opted to do the easy thing and go get something to eat.

Donna has been on a soup kick recently, so she suggested a trip to Atlanta Bread Company just down the street where they do a pretty good French Onion. I agreed, but suggested getting it to go, so we could pretend we weren’t eating out. She ordered a cup of the French Onion soup and a half a cubano panini. I selected a whole NY Hot Pastrami sandwich.

When the cashier asked, “Are you a member of our Loyalty Club?” I said, “Sure.” and gave her our home phone number. She scrunched her nose up and said, “It’s not coming up.” We tried the number again with the same results. So I gave the 9 digits to her again. “That’s funny,you are not showing up.” I say, “That can’t be, we just used it last Thursday night in Statesboro, GA.” Donna chimes in with, “That was a Panera Bread.”

Nice job, that’s like trying to use a your CVS loyalty card at Walgreen’s or your My Lowes card at Home Depot.

45,000 Cars A Hour

About 15 miles south of Jesup, GA the Purple Whale hit the 45,000 mile mark.

We were traveling north on US 301/GA 23 and if I would have taken a picture through the windshield, with the rear view mirror in the frame, it would have shown almost a mile of two lane road total, with zero other cars on any of it. As we traveled the 45 mile stretch between Folkston and Jesup (a few miles outside the city limits of both towns) we probably saw 2 other cars. Using totally made up calculus, I figure that works out to forty-five thousand cars travel on that road that way a month.

I probably would have taken that photo if I had though to take one using the same framing while Donna was driving on I-75 just north of Ocala, FL. All 6 lanes of the Interstate (3 in each direction) were stuffed with cars with usually nothing more than a car length between them. If you could have stood in the median so you could watch both flows of traffic and could count really, really fast I bet it would come out to be about 45,000 cars an hour.

44,444

44444

We pulled off I-95 at Exit 278 in Florida just so I could drive one mile east, then turn around to go back towards I-95 South and on the way, take this picture.

Sometime in the last week while searching Mr. Miata Dot Net for something or other I came across the post about hitting this little landmark while in the Emperor. Because I’d taken a photo then and I knew we were approaching it in the Purple Whale, I had the camera at hand.

Stay tuned for a picture of the Emperor’s odometer soon, as I think it is getting close to the 144,000 mark which means that 144,444 can’t be too far behind.

Not Triskaidekaphobic

Triskaidekaphobia (from Greek tris meaning “3”, kai meaning “and”, deka meaning “10” and phobos meaning “fear” or “morbid fear”) is fear of the number 13 and avoidance to use it.

When we checked into the Hampton Inn & Suites in Brunswick, GA this evening we were given the room 313. After unloading the car and we were walking through the lobby I remarked to Donna,”It is a good thing we are not triskaidekaphobic.”

When we got off the elevator on the third floor we took one look at the outside of the room and went right back down to the front desk to change our room. We aren’t afraid of the number 13, but we are afraid of the room right next to the elevator and its pal the ice machine.

The associate at the desk said, “No problem, we’ll get you a different room.” She re-magnetized the keys and wrote our new number on the sleeve – 410. When we got off the elevator on the fourth floor instead of immediately turning left to door number thirteen we turned right and went 2 doors down. Wow, thanks.

Outlander

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkizwJUiVjA

This started almost as a quid pro quo with a co-worker that I got to watch Orphan Black, but now I’m kind of waiting impatiently to see this.

In our conversations of TV shows to watch she mentions that she is excited to see that one of her favorite book series is finally coming to the screen. Starz is producing a TV series of the Outlander books written by Diana Gabaldon. She tells me it is about an English Army nurse from WWII who gets transported back to the mid-1700’s Scotland.

I’m a sucker for time travel, books or movies, so I’m interested. I check out the trailer(s) and now I’m intrigued. I read a bit of the blog that the author writes and I like her style and sense of humor, so now I think, maybe I should read the book. Jamie has a copy of the book on her Kindle, but can’t seem to find her, you know, ink on paper with a glued binding, circa sometime last century version, so I will have to see if I can find a copy of a book that was published in 1991.

Turns out it was pretty easy. My local supermarket has a paperback copy on their book aisle because book No. 8 of the series is just out in hardback and the paperback was re-issued because of the upcoming TV series (even has the two main actors, in character, on the cover.

Now my favorite book series will always be Robert B. Parker’s Spenser novels, tough guy private-eye with his own moral code that always gets his man, usually in a one on one violent confrontation. The writing is direct with short sentences in short chapters, double spaced on pages with large margins. A couple hundred pages of the literary equivalent of a can of sour cream & onion flavored Pringles.

Outlander is the polar opposite. There are densely packed pages filled with minute, detailed descriptions of the surroundings and stuffed with personal observations, sort of the literary equivalent of a Martha Stewart Poppy Seed Grapefruit Torte. Think Stephen King length, this baby is 850 pages. I’m not a big fan of period pieces, but I’m still with this one at the 500 page mark. I think I recognize the seed in all the flowery, descriptive text as the writing I liked in her blog. Still, I’m not sure I’ll read any more of the books, but if the TV series turns out as good as it looks in the trailers, I’ll be watching.

Second Half

The Red Sox finished up he first half* of the season tied for last in their division 9-1/2 games behind the Baltimore Orioles with a record of 43-52. If the Orioles, who finished up at the All-Star break at 52-42, play at their current pace for the rest of the year they will finish at 90-72. So, for the FRS to get 91 wins and overtake the Birds they only have to go 48-19 the rest of the way. That is a .716 pace, sure we can do that.

Well, so far they have won the first two games of the second half, so only 46 more to go. In today’s game the Red Sox have got John Lester pitching and he has not lost to the Kansas City Royals at Fenway Park, he’s 6-0. That means maybe only 45 more wins to go or more likely, the fact that the announcers mentioned that fact, John will give up about 10 runs and be bounced from the game in a couple innings.

Update: The FRS won the game 6-0. 3 down, 45 to go.

*The baseball season is 162 games long, so game 81, the real halfway point, was actually a couple of weeks ago.

New Look & On Again, Off Again Rain

With what should be self evident, I am pleased to announce that there is a new look here at mr-miata.net. It is the same theme, Atahualpa, just with a new shirt. And because of what the topics have been during this past week’s posts you would have thought I would have gone with a Hawaiian theme, but to tell you the truth, I just thought of that right this minute, or I might have.

Last night I gave the Emperor a sponge bath in the garage and I put the top boot on in preparation for today’s MMC Breakfast run. Got up this morning and it was raining! On Friday when I checked the weather they were calling for 30% chance of afternoon showers. This morning the 30% had changed from afternoon to all day and we were apparently in the middle of that percentage. So, off came the boot and the top went up.

By the time we got to the meeting place the cloud cover was still there, but the light rain had stopped, so we put the top back down. The rest of the cars either arrived with their tops down or put them down once they arrived. We were at a gas station off Exit 1 of I-20 and we were going to a small cafe off Exit 22. Most folks would get on the Interstate, go 21 miles and get off, but we drive Miatas. I mapped out a convoluted 30 mile trip with 12 turns and crossed over or under I-20 five times.

The rain held out for the whole drive and the whole time we were in eating breakfast. It didn’t start raining again here in Aiken again until the late afternoon.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1396