Food

With the Tress and the Horses and the Rocks and the Sheep

Lunch at the Stoplight Deli. We split a California Pita and a bowl of chili with two waters to wash it down.

Meal Cost: $10.87
Tip Jar: 13¢
Spent on Lunch: 11.00
Year to Date: $385.17

 
Ate diner out with friends at the Patagonia Grill, a new South American restaurant in Evans, GA. I had an Americanized version of Anticuchos, marinated pork on a skewer. Donna had Anticuchos de Camaron, grilled shrimp on skewers and covered with a white wine sauce. Again, waters to drink. Good food that definitely warrants a return visit..

Meal Cost: $33.87
Forced Tip: $6.00
Spent on Dinner: $39.87
Year to Date: $425.04

 
The Emperor got a sponge bath (Meguiar’s Quik Detailer and a towel) this afternoon in preparation for tomorrow’s nine city Post Office Road Trip. Prosperity, Little Mountain, Chapin, White Rock, Ballentine, Lexington, Gilbert, Leesville & Wagener.

Started down, went up, back down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/07: 53

54,000 Pieces of Hardware

54,000 Pieces of HardwareForgot to mention this yesterday – Somewhere not too long after we left the Food Lion parking lot yesterday on the way to Newberry, the Emperor turned over 54,000 miles. This works out to an average of over 45 miles a day since we brought it home back in November of 2003, or about 1,380 miles a month.

Started up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/07: 45

Free Food, Fancy Cars and a Good Cause

I got my reminder email from BMW today. The Ultimate Drive? for Susan G. Komen for the Cure is coming to town again this year. The Drive will be in Augusta on Thursday, March 15th and I’m thinking we will be taking a 1/2 day off from work to go over to there to participate. They always have refreshments and most times local food places will have donated lunch of some kind. You can drive any or all (if you have the time) of the different cars in BMW’s lineup and BMW will donate a buck a mile traveled to help fight breast cancer. You need to do this. Go to the site and sign up. Don’t even finish reading this post, go NOW.

Unlike last year, for 2007, they have a route map on the site so you can see where they will be on any given day. This makes it easy to find other locations close by in case you want to do it more than once. Two weeks after Augusta, they will be in Columbia, SC which is not too much further away (60 miles), but it is another Thursday. But they will be around the area on a couple of Saturdays, Macon, GA (140 miles) on the 10th and in Greenville, SC (110 miles) on the 17th. Might be nice to go somewhere else and drive too.

Until then, to quell (or maybe increase) your excitement, you can read about last year’s fun here and look at the peektures here.

Started up, went down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/07: 45

49 Down and 318 To Go

According to the idiots who started me on this quest, there are 367 Post Offices in South Carolina. After today’s 160 mile, seven PO trip we are 13% of the way towards the goal of getting a picture of everyone.

We stopped in Greenwood after getting both Post Offices there for some lunch at a place called T.W. Boon?s. We split a Shrimp Po-boy, Onion Rings and a Sierra Mist.

Meal Cost: $8.56
Tip: $1.44
So Far Today: $10.00

The Postal Gallery Database site says 367, but I can not get a definitive list from the US Postal Service site. If I search from Columbia (which is pretty much in the center of the state) with a hundred mile radius I get 488 results. This probably isn’t accurate because it may include surrounding states, when I search from Aiken for a 100 miles it starts to list Augusta, Georgia POs.

Wikipedia lists 541 Zip Codes in the state. When I went through that list and removed the ones that said PO Box after the name I end up with 404. But I know that isn’t right because there are only 2 Post Offices in Aiken and I was left with 4 zips. Plus there were 5 or 6 names I removed that I recognized as having buildings (because I have pictures of them), so I’m thinking that the PO Box designation means there is no carrier service in those locations.

The USPS site may not even be 100% accurate as to how many it has either. When we first started this quest it listed a Post Office in the micro-town of Snelling, SC and no amount of driving the few streets in that town using the USPS site’s map resulted in a find. Same thing happened in Hilton Head where we could only find two of the four the site had listed for there. Searching today lists no P.O. for Snelling and 3 for Hilton Head.

Anyway, we may never know if we get all of them, but we sure are going to try.

Started up, went down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/07: 39

Tonight we had dinner out with friends at Olive Oils right here in Aiken. Grilled Chicken Breast topped with Proscuito and Cheese for him. Seafood Ravioli for her. Water to drink. All the salad and breadsticks you can eat included.

Meal Cost: $29.68
Tip: $5.32
Spent This Meal: $35.00
Spent Today: $45.00
Year to Date: $333.67

I Am Brian’s Duodenum

Normal DuodenumI’ve been dealing with acid reflux & heart burn for a couple of years now. Medicine has helped, but I kept moving up the food chain in strength and prescription. A couple weeks ago I had heartburn so bad I made an appointment with a gastro guy. He thought it might be a good idea to have a look-see inside to see if he could find a reason for the escalation of symptoms, so this morning I had an Esophagogastroduodenoscopy done.

Having the EGD done was very similar to the colonoscopy of a couple a years ago, except there is no nasty prep work to be done the day before. You get an IV started and they wheel you into a room. You get rolled on your side, someone sticks a needle in the IV and you wake up later in a different room. Feeling mighty fine, I might add. The wheelchair ride out to the parking lot is worth the price of admission, the floor tiles rush between your feet sparkling with a sort of a visual doppler effect. Weeee.

I sort of remember the doctor saying that he saw nothing abnormal, but you better ask my wife, everything was very liquid for a couple hours after the procedure. I have to call and make a follow up appointment with the doc for next week, maybe by then he won’t look like the T-1000 in Terminator 2: Judgment Day.

Started up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/07: 31

What’s In Your Wallet?

I know I’ve got way to many loyalty cards and I’ve only got four. I bet some of you have more than that. Well, I think I have found a solution – Just One Club Card.

1. Choose 8 or less of your favorite clubs cards.
2. Find the barcode on each club card (usually on the back)
3. Locate the numbers right under the barcode and type them into the barcode number box.(Make sure to include any numbers to the right or left of the bar code itself, even if they don’t line up with the main row of numbers.)
4. Choose a store from one of the choices in the “Store” dropdown.
5. When you have finished filling out the boxes, click the “Create your card” button.
6. Print out the generated card and follow the instructions to create a new card containing all of your favorite club cards.

I now have my Food Lion, Kroger, Bi-Lo and CVS cards all one one. All that remains is to try it out.

So, what’s in your wallet?

Started up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/07: 31

Crazy Crab

In spite of last night’s midnight bedtime my wife decided that 6:30AM was enough time in bed. I on the other hand wanted just a bit more sack time. She got up and showered and started cooking breakfast while I dozed. She was finished with the sausage and the English muffins, but somewhere part way through the eggs, the smoke detector started wailing. I jumped out of bed and reached for the detector on the ceiling. When this happens at home I pull down on one side of the cover causing it to open, giving me access to the battery which I then slide off the contacts. Here in the condo when you pull down on the side of the smoke detector it comes unplugged from the ceiling mount and bounces off your nose. It didn’t break the skin, but did leave a nice diagonal red mark on the bridge…

We dined out tonight, but the money spent will not appear in the yearly tally because Jerry the Condo King and his wife Donna treated me and my wife Donna to dinner out at the Crazy Crab. I was wearing little of my wife’s make-up foundation on my nose so as to not freak out the other restaurant patrons. We were going to eat at Catch 22 where we all had such a great meal about a year ago, but changed our minds.

After we finished our lunch at the Japanese restaurant Donna and I walked down to Catch 22, they are in the same strip shopping center, to see if they had menu out front. They did have menus, but the also had a pink flier attached to the door handle from the local electric company. I could read the words “Important Information About Your Electric Service.” Curiosity made me open it up. After all we might need to change our dinner plans if they were going to be without power because of some maintenance issue. What I found inside was that they were $2,000 behind on their power bill. Maybe we should eat there, they could sure use the money. On the other hand, if they were behind in the power bill, where else were they cutting corners? Staff? Food quality? The four of us did change our dinner plans and opted to try one of the hundreds of other dining choices on Hilton Head Island.

Started up, went down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/07: 29