A day in the life of me and my Miata
Only watched 1 episode of The Sopranos yesterday. We watched two tonight, leaving just one more to go, the season 3 finale. Tonight we did see by far the funniest episode of the show, Pine Barrens, Christopher and Paulie become Don Knotts and Tim Conway in the "Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight." I was getting bored by the show but this was good stuff, might make me rent Season 4 when it comes out.
Finally got around to repairing my 3rd brake light. On the last Master's Miata Club run, the person following me told me it was dead. As it was twice before it was the wire breaking right near the trunk hinge. Next time it dies it might just stay dead.
Backed the Miata out of the garage to make it easier to clean some shelves in the garage. I put the top up to keep out the leaves and any other tree debris that might fall in the cockpit. Damn, now that I said that work it reminded me that I should have used the cockpit cover....
Did you know that Outback isn't open for lunch? I sure didn't. Oh, well, we resheduled our dining down-under until Sunday afternoon. I hope it rains hard the whole weekend, I've got a bunch of movies to watch. Mother-in-law gave me Die Hard & Lord of the Rings on DVD for my birthday. My wife gave me A Hard Days Night and the combo of Koyaanisqatsi & Powaqqatsi.
Well tomorrow we will reap the rewards of working an extra hour each day this week, 1/2 day off. We are going to go to Outback for lunch, because it is my birthday and that's where I wanted to go. I'm going to get a Blooming Onion, mmmm, and a big ol'd slab of kangaroo, grilled to perfection....
Rained on and off and the top count reflected that as we did some running around during and after work.
The mouth of the car has looked kind of naked since I pulled the Alley Gator teeth off, so last week I ordered a different style set of teeth to put back in there. My wife said she would pay for them if I let her pick the style. Our Wabbit Teeth arrived at work today. When the mail clerk brought the package to me it was so messed up that I thought for sure the teeth would be in pieces. They ship them in one of those triangle shaped expressmail tubes from the USPS and it must have gotten wet, letting the weight of other mail bags squish and mangle it, but the teeth are made of sturdy stuff and were just fine. Of course the first thing I did on arrival home is put them on. It is going to take some getting used to this style, right now I think they are a little funny looking. I know what your thinking, any kind of teeth on a car look funny! Even if they are supposed to look like alligator teeth.
The front office folks (with a few exceptions) are assigned to either Group A or Group B and every other week (excluding weeks in which there is a holiday) a group works an extra hour on Monday through Thursday and then gets the Friday afternoon off. The company started this program during the summer and we didn't do it. Maybe because we out of vacation time for the year is why we jumped on the bandwagon now. Today was day one of the extra hour and it didn't seem too long. We got up 15 minutes earlier with thoughts of speeding some morning routines to make up for the other 15. We were so well oiled athat we actually started the commute 15 minutes before we planned. So we took an extra long drive in. As a bonus we were so early that the school busses weren't out and about yet.
The little dark blue swirls are not as noticeable nor as plentiful as I first imagined, changing my course of action from hurry and clean/re-wax to "watchful waiting." I mean if this was harmful in a permanent way they still wouldn't be selling this stuff. While I was doing Miata stuff yesterday I also replaced the two (upper & lower) shift boots. Both of them were broken and cracked horribly. I guess there is less cockpit heat.... While I was in there I notice the oil in the turret was brown and very thin. I guess it is time to change that out. I think that maybe I will buy a couple of quarts and go ahead and change all of the transmission fluid while I'm at it. Maybe next Saturday's project.
Got up this morning and decided to wash the car. Washed it like Monday or something, but it has been doing some raining and we had another Master's Miata Club event this afternoon...
Top down, no cockpit cover and it didn't matter when at 2:30 this afternoon, the rain that no one predicted, came down. The Miata was home in the garage. The rain at 4:15 did matter, because we were 1 mile into our 6 mile bike ride home.
Put the top down for the trip to work, but almost didn't make it. After we came back out of the bagel place it was sprinkling. Got going in a hurry and for a second there it came down hard enough for us to consider finding a place to put it up. Passed out of the rain and by the time we got to work it had stopped, so we threw on the cockpit cover. Keep in mind the weather channel insisted that the only chance of rain was a 30% afternoon variety. We discovered on the 10:00 walk around the parking lot that sometime during the morning it rained enough to really wet the pavement. The cockpit cover worked wonders this time, the inside stayed totally dry. The top went up this afternoon because Donna went swimming by herself and the clouds still looked ugly. This evening the skys cleared up enough that we went back out for a drive under the nearly full moon.
Made it to work with it down, but put it up. It did rain for most of the day, thereby negating the wash job, but what did I expect. Got an email from Moss Motors, the short shifter kit is on backorder and they don't have an ETA on the next shipment, so they cancelled my order. I think that it is a good thing. I read some of the reviews on Miata.net and now am slightly confused as to which way to go. The Brainstorm one sounds like the right one except for the disclaimer on their site about letting in more transmission noise. Shift boots came today, guess I'll just put them on this weekend as the research conyinues....
Washed the car this afternoon even though it is supposed to rain tomorrow. It was just to filthy not to. It was covered in an even coat of gray, except where I had placed the little RoadsterChat & Master's Miata Club magnets, it was perfectly clean under them.
The car is way filthy from driving around in the rain all weekend. I couldn't wash it because Donna needed it to go swimming. Buzy after work week, so it may be all the way until Friday before it gets washed. Ordered the 2 rubber shift boots that go on the transmission under the leather boot you see. When I installed the leather a few weeks back I noticed that the top one had a big tear in it. Ididn't place too much emphasis on it until I was lurking over on the Miata.net Forum and disscovered that those torn boots would lead to extra heat in the cockpit. It was then that I put 2 and 2 together. The transmission has been radiating heat for a while now, I just thought it always did that. Now I think that after reading the proceedure for changing these boots I will have to move up the purchase of the short shifter kit so I don't have to do the job twice and potentionally pay for the bottom boot twice.
All of a sudden there is rain in the forecast for Saturday - where the heck did that come from. Better run the Gap on Friday afternoon/evening. Oh, well, guess it was a good thing that I didn't have time to wash the car.
Our little Miata Club is going to the Gap this weekend and according to the Tail of the Dragon we won't be alone, there are a couple of biker groups and about 60 Honda S2000s coming. Plus we know the Windy City Miata Club will be there as well.
Missed yesterday because there was no dial tone on the phone when we got home from work on Monday. The phone company only offers technical support from 8 AM until 6 PM and we missed it.
Finished up the Stone Guard install. Will take a daytime picture tomorrow to complete the picture series, then I'll caption the photos and upload them. I have to judge the Barndoor Fan Club photo contest and announce the winners. Busy, busy, busy.
Put it up for last Friday's rainy day and it has been up all week (and in the garage) until tonite. We put it down for a drive in the dark and a quick stop at the store for some breakfast essentials as the fridge is pretty bare before the weekly shopping excursion on Sunday. The Taurus was a nice car for the big trip but once again it is good to be back in a Miata. From last Friday at around 5:00 PM until today at around 5:00 PM we put 2231 miles on the rent-a-car and 120 more on the Civic. Today was another long one too, Lexington, VA back to Aiken, SC, approximately 400 miles. Now all I have to do is find the time to type in my trip notes for the past week, type in the last 8 days worth of RANTS, and get the photos of the Stone Guards up.
That night I went to my second high school football game ever. The last one was almost 29 years ago while in my senior year of New Britain High School. Some friends and I snuck into the Thanksgiving Day game with our big cross-town rivals, Pulaski High. Tonight I "snuck" into the game between cross-county rivals, Rockbridge County High School and Parry McCluer High School. Stuart is the RCHS Marching Band Drum Major and tonight was his first football game in that capacity. Mom Sally is the president of the Band Booster Club, so she asked us to come along and help out. We followed the tractor pulling the trailer of band equipment down the road into the field to keep stuff from falling off. We just waved at the guy guarding the gate as we walked on by. Later that night I thanked Sally for helping fulfill a life-long dream of being able to get backstage somewhere by just saying, "I'm with the band."
