Weekend Wackiness

Athleticism, power, grace, joyous victory and heartbreaking defeat. No, not the Olympics, but the Most Best of MXC 2 was on Spike TV from 1 to 2 PM today. It was a lot more entertaining than Men’s Field Hockey, Women’s Handball or the Mixed Double’s Badminton from Beijing.

I knew the political conventions were coming up and a quick check of Wikipedia reveals that the Democratic Convention is next weekend from August 25 to August 27 at Pepsi Center and on August 28 at INVESCO Field at Mile High in Denver, Colorado. The Republican Convention will take place at the Xcel Energy Center in Saint Paul, Minnesota from September 1 until September 4, 2008. Maybe if you just said Denver and Saint Paul, leaving off the corporate named venues, it would sound more presidential to me.

The best game the FRS have played so far in this weekend series with the Toronto Blue Jays was the game they didn’t take the field in. They were rained out on Friday. Yesterday they lost 4 to 1 and today after just 3 innings they are losing 8 to nothing. Should have banked some of those runs they scored last week against Texas.

This morning at about the halfway point of our 16 mile bike ride, we took a water break at a stop sign. While we waited for a car to go by we took a quick drink and snagged a quick kiss before taking off again. Cyclists are still a fairly odd sight on the back roads of South Carolina, so we are used to strange looks from motorists, but the one we got from this driver was really odd – his was giving us a kissy face, perhaps asking for a smooch of his own.

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Sweet, But Late, Lou

The MMC’s August monthly breakfast gathering was at Sweet Lou’s on Broad St. in downtown Augusta. The coffee shop normally opens around 9 AM, but our Rally Masters had convinced Lou to open up at 7 just for us. He arrived at quarter after to find a dozen or so Miata types jonesin’ for some coffee. After he opened the shop and starting making coffee, we made ourselves at home and dragged his four “outside tables” onto the sidewalk.

Pictures, with more words are in this Flickr Set.

The food was good, but on the way home Donna asked if we would ever eat there again, to which I replied, “Nope.” But I qualified my answer by saying that it was only because it would be a long drive to Augusta just for breakfast, if it was in Aiken we probably would add Sweet Lou’s to our rotation.

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Street View

It may be old news to those of you who live in the big city, but to us here in small town South Carolina it is a big deal. I don’t know when Street View went live for Aiken, but the local paper noticed last night and the story was the lead, above the fold in today’s edition. It looks like the Googlemobile drove by our house sometime last winter because all the leaves are off the trees. It was on a Thursday for sure, because the trash & recycle bins are in the street. It was probably in late January, early February because all the oak and hickory leave are of the lawn (are last raking of the season usually happens on New Years Day.)

Because, for some odd reason, the streets in our neighborhood are numbered in the opposite direction from every other part of town, you have to put in the wrong street address to find our house using Google. Home Sweet Home.

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On the Couch

Through the magic of a Paint Shop Pro I can paint in watercolor. This is from last Sunday’s visit to Hopeland Gardens home of the Thoroughbred Racing Hall of Fame & Museum.

Having spent the last two nights in separate rooms, me with baseball in one and her with the Olympics in another, tonight we decided to be in the same room at the same time. I’m listening to the FRS on the internet via laptop on one end of the couch and Donna is watching the Olympics on the other end. Right now there is two women beach volleyball on that I keep noticing in my peripheral. All I have to say is with all those players on the sand at one time, it is a good thing they have numbers on their suits, so we can keep track of who is who.

On another Olympics related note, I happened to catch the Nike commercial for the Redeem Team while watching sports center (should that be capitalized? one word?) on ESPN this morning. We have been subjected to many renditions of our national anthem over the years, some very good – Whitney Huston prior to the Super Bowl and some very bad – Rosanne Barr before a San Diego Padres baseball game, but I really like this non-traditional version of Marvin Gaye‘s that is the basis for this commercial.

For some entertaining reading, try the online version of “Seattle’s Only Newspaper”, The Stranger.

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Olympics in Pictures

I’m not watching much of the Olympics on TV. It is not that I’m anti-Olympics as much as I’m anti-TV. But I have been keeping track photographically and through that way, I have found out that the Chinese have hired cheerleaders to ensure that there are someone cheering for everyone, not just the home crowd. I have found a couple of interesting photographer’s blogs, Rod Mar of The Seattle Times, Vincent Laforet of Newsweek and three guys from the Toronto Star.

Right now a lot of coverage is centered on swimmer Michael Phelps, and correctly so, as he goes for a record 8 gold medals, but you would think he walks on water. He can’t, but it looks like Aaron Piersol can. I just love these images gathered by the German magazine Stern that capture those moments you won’t see in the mainstream press. When you are a swimmer awaiting to compete what do you do with your goggles and swim cap? Those bathing suits don’t have pockets, here is Amanda Beard’s answer. And Janet Jackson’s equipment malfunction has nothing on this poor water polo player’s problem.

Least you think that from those last two photos my interest in photos from the Olympics is primarily to ogle the female form, here is a great gallery of shots of the opening ceremony from the Boston Globe. OK, so not primarily, but it is right up there. Here (thanks again to Stern) are some photos of four German athletes from their edition of Playboy.

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Born Salesman

A young guy from Minnesota moves to Florida and goes to a big ‘everything under one roof’ department store looking for a job.

The manager says, “Do you have any sales experience?”

The kid says, “Yeah. I was a salesman back in Minnesota.”

Well, the boss liked the kid and gave him the job. “You start tomorrow. I’ll come down after we close and see how you did.”

His first day on the job was rough, but he got through it. After the store was locked up, the boss came to see him. “How many customers bought something from you today?”

The kid says, “One.”

The boss says “Just one? Our sales people average 20 to 30 customers a day. How much was the sale for?”

The kid says, “$101,237.65.”

The boss says, “$101,237.65? What the heck did you sell him?”

The kid says, “First, I sold him a small fish hook. Then I sold him a medium fishhook. Then I sold him a larger fishhook. Then I sold him a new fishing rod. Then I asked him where he was going fishing and he said down the coast, so I told him he was going to need a boat, so we went down to the boat department and I sold him a twin engine Chris Craft. Then he said he didn’t think his Honda Civic would pull it, so I took him down to the automotive department and sold him that 4×4 Expedition.”

The boss said, “A guy came in here to buy a fish hook and you sold him a BOAT and a TRUCK? Is that right?”

The kid answered, “No, the guy came in here to buy Tampons for his wife, and I said, ‘Dude, your weekend’s shot; you should go fishing.’ “

Loser

I’ve mentioned here before that our company plays a little something called Safety Bingo, everyday we go without a lost time accident, a number is “called” & added to the big Bingo board in the main hall.

Up until last Friday we were playing a game entitled Window which consists of having to fill the squares all around the card and then both the middle vertical and horizontal rows so that your card looks like, well, a window. With each square worth $20 the winner of this game will be four hundred and twenty dollars (minus Federal & State Taxes) richer. When B14 was called on Friday we got that winner.

The nurse posted an 8-1/2 x 11 piece of paper over the Bingo board saying “Congratulations. John Doe – Maintenance. Winner.” Somewhere in between the middle of yesterday and the middle of this morning someone hand wrote after the name “– Looser.”

I’m not sure which is worse, someone upset enough at not winning to write that or that they couldn’t even spell the word.

Started up, went down, went up, back down, still down.
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