FRS

Love Me Do

Paul's in the NationLeft over story from our northeast visit: After the service for Donna’s aunt the family gathered at a nice Italian restaurant in Summit, NJ, where we were served a five course meal. Donna and I sat at kind of the “kids” table with the youngest cousin, her husband and their young daughter, a couple of family friends and the daughters of the middle two cousins, Susan’s two girls Meghan 14, Jessica 12 and Mary’s 14 year-old Kristen. When they came around taking drink orders those three girls to my right ordered Shirley Temples, I had a glass of red wine and for fun Donna ordered a Shirley Temple too. I’m not to sure who started it, might have been Jessica, but the girls decided to see if they could take their cherry stems and tie them into a knot in their mouths using just their tongues.

Meghan was the only one of the three to actually accomplish the feat, we of course applauded her success. If I was her father I’m not so sure that I’d have been that proud and I would have definitely instructed her not to demonstrate that talent on a date with a hormonally charged teenager.

Arri’s Grill for supper. Two 1/3 lb hand formed patties of ground chuck served with lettuce, tomato, onions, pickles, mayo and mustard. We split an order of fries.

Meal Cost: $10.37
Tip: None
Spent Today: $10.37
Year to Date: $891.27

I’ve got a 485 CD collection that is rarely used anymore. Matter of fact, if it wasn’t for the rental car the other week and the one we’ll be driving out west in another month they wouldn’t ever leave the shelves they sit on. So I have decided to rip them all into MP3s and store ’em on my hard drive. I’ve done about 30 so far, but I haven’t really been applying myself to the project. I mean if I do get them done, what do I do with all that plastic? Maybe I can find somebody to wholesale ’em to about 50¢ a piece…

Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/07: 126

Feeling Nearly Human

Took the day off from work and laid out to help get over the yuck I got somewhere. Snagged a couple of major naps and now I starting to feel better. The body aches are now mostly gone and the fever appears to be history, but I now have a icky little cough. I took some Vicks 44 this morning and it helped, but this afternoon I took a tablespoon of some of Donna’s leftover prescription stuff that is laced with codeine. Big mistake, that stuff made me stupid.I set out to finish up tweaking and posting our vacation photos from the other week. I had 48 selected and only managed to 34 done. I uploaded them and managed to get captions on 8 or 9 before I couldn’t maintain the intense concentration required post pictures on the internet…

Couple of random thoughts after watching the FRS on TV three straight days;
a) the new style hats the big leaguers are wearing this year look like a truckers hat, you know the kind with a foam front and a mesh back.
b) The green shirts they wore on Saturday looked very elfish with the red long sleeve undershirts.
   1) but I do like the green hats and may get one…
c) when you put a batting helmet on Willie Moe Pena it looks like he has to squeeze his head to get it in there.

While we are talking baseball and blogs: Curt Schilling‘s got one.

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/07: 125

Well, At Least The FRS Recovered

When I blogged last night things looked grim for the Sox and they were trailing the Yankees 6-2 when they came to bat in the bottom of the eighth, but they scored 5 times to end up winning the game. In this afternoon’s contest they were back and forth until the FRS scored three in the bottom of the fourth and kept the lead until the end.

While I, on the other hand, if anything, got worse. The sore throat peaked this morning and is going away, but I’m in full blown (pun intended) running nose, watery eyes and body aches. I’m hitting the showers as soon as I’m done typing this and going to bed.

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/07: 123

The Real Baseball Season Starts Today

The 2007 Major League Baseball season has been in process for a couple of weeks now, but tonight is really opening day. The dreaded Yankees are in town for a three game set. I am apparently not the only one excited by this series of games this early in the season, tonight’s game is on ESPN, tomorrow’s is on Fox and Sunday night it’s ESPN again.

So far it looks like the Sox are playing like I feel, a little out of it. Woke up this morning with a sore throat and a runny nose. Of course the reason they are losing 5-3 in the seventh could be those ugly green uniforms they are wearing tonight (supposedly a Boston Celtic / Red Auerbach tribute.)

Or it could be some bad karma I caused with my little phone call prank on my boss the Yankee fan this morning. Thanks to XM Radio I sent him a voice mail from Big Papi, David Ortiz, telling him about MLB on XM and I customized it so David would call him a Red Sox fan.

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/07: 122

Princess Leia Gets Hers Too

Red Sox NationPrincess Leia’s Red Sox Nation membership card came in the mail a day after Chewbacca’s. She’s not sure where she will put her bumper sticker yet, but right now she is leaning towards placing it on C3PO’s back just out of his reach in hopes of sending him into an infinite feedback loop of fastidiousness.

It is supposed to be a glorious spring weekend here and we are not exactly sure what to do with it:

Option #1, and the most unlikely, is to drive 250 miles to Columbus, GA and do one last BMW Ultimate Drive before they are entirely out of reach. (+) it sure is fun to drive BMWs. (–) 3 times a charm, but 4 is slightly obsessive. (–) it would mean another hotel room and another mediocre breakfast buffet.

Option #2, and slightly more probable, would be a drive of 125 miles to go to Beaufort, SC to see the Blue Angels. (+) air shows are cool. (+) there would be the chance to get a picture of the Post Office on the Marine Corp Air Station where the show is. (–) big crowds of people and we just left that party in NJ. (–) we really don’t want to go anywhere having been traveling the last two weekends. (+) a meal of crab cakes at Barbara Jean’s might be just the enticement to tip the scales towards going down there.

Option #3, and most likely, is dinner out in Augusta with friends on Friday and staying around the house. I really need to to clean all the pine pollen off the tables and floors on the screen porch. The furniture cushions need vacuuming too. It is spring and this is the best time to enjoy our meals, etc out there, but the porch needs some sprucing up first. And if we get restless we could always drive to Columbia on Sunday morning and take some Post Office pictures.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/07: 120

I Know Why He Did It

Red Sox NationChewie is so excited he wants to blast something. His Red Sox Nation membership card came in the mail today. There is a small bumper sticker that goes along with it and he’s going to put it on the Millennium Falcon when Han isn’t looking.

While in DC the other week, after we walked to a lot of the war memorials in West Potomac Park we headed over to the Tidal Basin to see if we could find any cherry trees that still had blossoms on it. Unfortunately there were only a few. There are about three or four varieties of cherry trees planted around the basin so that some of them bloom at different times, but during our walk we only came across about three trees that looked like they were at their peak. Because of the great distances between bloomed trees, my dream of a sweeping panorama of blooming trees with the Jefferson Memorial in the background (very postcard-like) was squashed. I did take a couple of close ups of one blooming tree. As we strolled along I was looking down reviewing my last pictures when – SMACK -my head hit a low hanging branch. I know now why George Washington chopped down that cherry tree. It wasn’t bad enough to make me see stars, but I did decide from then forward that I would wait until I was stopped to look down at the camera’s LCD.

Our free Chargrilled sandwich from Chick-Fil-A cost us $8.09. We used the coupon from the Chick-Fil-A calendar, but to get the sandwich you had to buy a small fruit cup and a medium soda. We sometimes split a meal when we go out, but that amount wouldn’t be enought so we added a Chicken Strip Salad to the tray.

Meal Cost: $8.09
Tip: None
Spent Today: $8.09
Year to Date: $859.45

I’ve added a forwarded email joke to the Joke Page.

Also added 8 photos from the Sterling, VA BMW Ultimate Drive. No captions yet, probably tomorrow.

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/07: 118

13 Trillion Yen Man

Dice-KI was all set to listen to the Red Sox game on the Internet tonight when I found out they played an afternoon game. On the mound was their new acquisition, Daisuke Matsuzaka (AKA Dice-K) that they paid around 50 million bucks just for the rights to try and sign him to a contract. Then they spent 50 more to sign him. So far he looks like he may be worth the money, giving up just one run on six hits while striking out 10 in seven innings. Twenty more games like that this year and I may take up learning Japanese.

Tomorrow is a holiday for ASCO, so Donna and I will probably sleep late and take a hike in the woods. Saturday we will probably sleep late and try a bike ride. Sunday we will get get up at 4AM to drive to CAE and hop a plane to our nation’s capital. We are off to visit Donna’s friend Sally for a couple of days. She is back from Africa for a few months and learning Spanish now, because her next Embassy assignment is Tegucigalpa, Honduras. After DC we will head up the the ex-Hardware Capital of the World (New Britain, CT) for a brief visit with my family. After that, next Friday and Saturday we will be in NJ for a memorial service for Donna’s aunt Mary who passed away in January. Should be interesting, Mary had 4 daughters, three talk to each other, but two of them aren’t talking to one.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/07: 112