Life of Brian

Finally got around to calling the Tire Rack today to see what it would cost to get another lug nut adapter. When I bought 4 Kosei Racing Senekas shod with Bridgestone RE-71s back in December of 2000 from the Tire Rack they included an adapter that allows you to loosen/tight the “tuner” lug nuts with your standard lug wrench. This last Christmas Eve I needed a new tire. I ended up getting a whole new set of tires. When the chuckle-heads at the local Firestone dealer put the wheels back on they used an impact wrench to tighten down the lug nuts. While trying to loosen them in my driveway, to properly torque them down, I busted the adapter.

I hate the cold. It makes me keep the top up on the Miata. When the top is up I notice the annoying dash rattle I have. It is kinda like that light that (I think) VW Rabbits had to get you to up shift so you would save gas. It starts buzzing at 3000 RPM and increases in volume until I can’t stand it and shift, usually right around 4000 RPM.

Thinking of buying these gage faces to replace my current I.L. Motorsport white ones. They are also supposed to shift to blue as well. I’m hoping the blue will somewhat match the blue of the new Blaupunkt San Jose MP3 player I just put in. The San Jose doesn’t hook into the dash light dimmer so it is bright all the time.

Drove the Miata to Augusta today too. Cold and windy, so the top was up.

Seems as one of the scratch-off lottery tickets we bought for Donna’s mom was worth $20, went back and cashed it in. She is going to take the twenty and buy some South Carolina Lottery tickets. Tomorrow is the first day that the lottery is available here in SC. Scratch-offs for now, lotto games in March if we are *lucky.*

Bought $8 worth of gas while we were in Augusta. It is always a nickel or so cheaper in GA, must be less state tax or something.

Drove the Miata to Augusta today to deliver bicycle club newsletters to the 3 main bike stores. When we left at 9:30 it was still quite chilly from last night’s record low of 15 degrees. The top was up. There was still ice on the roads in some of the shady spots. After we had finished visiting the 3 stores it was noon and the sun was out, bright and shiny. It was probably only in the mid forties, but it felt like spring. We put the top down for the drive back into the city for lunch. 🙂

The Miata still sits.

We decided to just take a vacation day from work today. It was already scheduled so we could drive to see a friend of Donna’s for the weekend. She lives in Lexington, VA, but the snow and winter weather convinced us otherwise as to making the trip. Plus there is supposed to be more of this junk coming our way on Sunday. Just didn’t feel like driving 8 hours back on Sunday in it.

The Miata sits in the garage today, in it’s rapidly evaporating pool of mucky water.

Donna would feel much safer if we didn’t drive the Miata, so we take the MSV, her Mom’s Honda Civic 4-door, in to work. The sleet quit late last night, but they still delayed the start of work today until 10:00AM. Good plan, but it is colder this morning so everything is pretty frozen. Plus it started snowing again about 8:30. Really beautiful. We left around 9:00 for the what is normally 15 minute commute, not because I figured it would take that much longer, but I took along the digital camera so we could stop and take a bunch of “Winter Wonderland” photos around town.