We Wish You…

Please accept — with no obligation, implied or implicit — my best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low stress, non-addictive, gender neutral celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced within the most enjoyable tradition of the religious persuasion of your choice, or secular practices of your preference. In addition, please enjoy a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year 2005.

*Quoted from Brian Damage

British Invasion III & IV

Its Christmas Eve and seeing as I have a traditional holiday greeting reserved for tomorrow, I just go ahead and post a picture of Paul and George together:

British Invasion

The Beatles arrived today, one day ahead of schedule, so far, only Ringo is out of his box:

Finally, A Nice Day

It made it to the middle sixties today. wOOt! It had clouded up by quitting time, but it was still warm enough for a trip home with the top down – no coat required. On the way home I stopped in to Autozone and picked up 4 quarts of Penzoil 10-30. Rotated the tires and changed the oil at 18,813 miles. Grandpa Mazda recommends changing the oil every 7500 miles, but I like to do it halfway between as well. This way the Emperor gets some nice clean blood every three thousand seven hundred fifty miles. I lifted the car up and put it on 4 jack stands, this way after removing the front right tire I can get to the drain plug easy enough. While the oil drains I go ahead and get 3 of the 4 tires rotated. Before putting the right front back on I swap oil filters. Takes about an hour and a half from start to finish.

I think my friends at Rader, they changed the oil last, used the impact wrench on the drain plug, as it was a bear to get off. Because the car was full hot I expected a little resistance in removing the plug, but my usual ice cube trick didn’t seem to help much. Even after melting 2 cubes on the head of the drain plug it still wouldn’t come loose. I had to resort to gently tapping on the end of the wrench with a hammer to get it off. I wonder what the torque spec for the oil drain plug is?

The answer is 22-30 foot pounds

Twelve Days of Miata

We are all familiar with the Christmas song, The Twelve Days of Christmas, well, apparently Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon has discovered that there is hidden Catholic meaning in the song. i.e. The “five golden rings” represents the first five books of the Bible, the “six geese a-laying” is the six days of creation, etc.I thought the 12 days song was really about the Miata, but all I could come up with was 2 seats, 4 cylinders, 5 speeds and 7 thousand RPMs. So amateur symbologists, can you help me decode the hidden Miata messages in the song “Twelve Days of Christmas”?

When I posted the above on the Miata Forum I didn’t get exactly what I was hoping for, but I did get one cute one. Thanks Cinemaniac, it isn’t literally correct, but…
On the 12th day of Mazda, my Miata gave to me:
Twelve turns a-twisting
Eleven pipes exhausting
Ten Lanes a Leaping
Nine Ladies Oogling
Eight Mods a Modding
Seven Drifts a Skidding
Six speed transmisson
FIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIVE PISTON RINGS…
Fo-our alloy wheels
Three Drive Belts
Two air horns
And the finger from an S-U-V!

Mr. Fletcher’s Ride – December

Mr. Fletcher's Ride - DecemberVentured into the woods yesterday for a hike and the second monthly photograph looking southwest at the corner of Mr. Fletcher’s Ride and an unnamed path about 1/2 mile in from our usual entry point. A lot less leaves on the trees than just a month ago. It was also a cloudy day compared to last months sunny one, so the leaves on the ground look a different color than in November’s shot.