I carved out the inside of the Miata-O-Lantern tonight. Drilled a big hole in the back and stuck a 40-wat light bulb in there. Looked good, but not real good, because where I had carved the car was not sharp. Black splotches appeared in a lot of places. The pumpkin had started to rot there because I carved it too soon. The word Miata looked real good, but I did that on Saturday as opposed to a little more than a week ago for the car. May try a picture of it lit tomorrow...

Speaking of pictures, I finally shot a pic of the front of the car with the Wabbit Teeth. Still in the camera though, didn't have time to get it down loaded, maybe tomorrow too.

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First time, in what seems like months but only has been days, we got to leave the top down all day free from worry of precipitation. Also, the first time since daylight savings time ended that I needed my sunglasses for the drive home. Plus the sun is now so low in the sky that I needed a hat to shade my eyes. Some one called it obsessive, I called it Miata-O-Lantern.

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Car is starting to handle like the shocks are worn out. Shouldn't need new shocks as these were installed 16 monhs ago, maybe 20k miles. This is the second set of Konis after the OEM shocks were replaced at 50k (now at 107k.) I just searched to the Miata.net forum and from the breif sampling of threads I could find it seems that it shouldn't be the shocks. I checked the tire pressure the other day and the all were right around 29 psi, so it ain't that. Wonder what else it could be?

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Got my CD Mix of the Month discs today. Cool stuff. listening to the second for the second time now. Josh's, as usual, was 90% unfamiliar territory, but excellant. Pepperspray from ifishery was 90% familiar, but nicely but together. Great month and once again I feel I'm not worthy of being in the little club.

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Only left the house to go to Zaxby's for lunch and Kroger for grocery shopping. Spent most of the day reading Q is for Quarry, now excuse me while I go finish it....

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Had our Miata Club's Halloween Party tonight. The club has roughly 66 members and 8 people came. The total attendance was 10 because of the hosting couple's presence. When the hosts first volunteered to hold the party they originally intended for it to be a costume party, but backed off because they were afraid it would hurt attendance. Ha, attendance, guess we should have required costumes. As it turned out 2 couples came dressed up anyway (Donna and I were not one of them.)

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We did just manage to make it to work with the top down. I'm sure most of the other commuters encased in their SUV cocoons were shaking their heads and clucking their tongues at the sight of our car with the top down in the misty morning. Today's half day off as a reward for working 9 hours a day Monday through Thursday was nice and relaxing. We mini-caravaned to Augusta, me in the Miata and Donna in the MSV, to drop the Miata at the Redmond's Upholstery Shop to get the top looked at while went out for a pizza lunch and to do some shopping for Halloween stuff. The top has been on the car for a year now and in that time the top has come slightly loose from the first bow. With the windows down and the top up, wind buffeting inside the car would make top "slap" the bow at odd intervals, annoying and it couldn't be good for the top. In my experience with OEM tops this is the area that the flap comes unglued from the top and makes the top balloon up when driving. This EZ-On aftermarket top wasn't separating, it looked like the flap was pulling out of the channel in the bow. Randall just took the flap out of the slot, folded it over to make it shorter, stuffed it back in the slot. suckers tight now.

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It was raining this morning when we got up so the top went up while the car was still in the garage. It had cleared up by quitting time so we did ride home with it down. Stopped at Arri's Grill to get some Lottoburgers for supper, mmmm. This place is a little hole in the wall that serves the best hamburgers. The walls are an ugly shade of brown that is a combination of years of grease stained with the nicotine of cigarette smoke, needless to say we get our burgers to go. :-)

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Changed the oil and rotated my tires this evening after work. Mazda recommends an oil change at every 7500 miles, which is probably OK for someone who is going to trade in that car after 3 years. I hope to keep the car for a lot longer than that, so in the begining I decided to double that frequency. I change the oil (and roteate the tires while I'm at it) every 3750 miles. That number is hard to figure in my addled mind, so I now use the valve train clatter as an indication of the need to change the oil. Miatas are know for HLA noise and mine seems to show up after 3,000 miles or so. After a few mornings in a row when it takes to the end of the block for the lifters to quiet, I go buy some oil.

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A chilly and foggy start, but the weather man said clearing and warmer for the day - WRONG! At least it didn't rain, but it never did clear up. Actually seemed cooler at 4:30PM than it did at 6:30AM. Just rolled up the windows and used the heater.

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Rat bastards - it rained just enough to put spots all over my pretty wax job. (although it still looks 1000% better than it did Sunday morning.

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Put the top up to wash the car and after it was dry, the top went right back down. While I was at it, I waxed the car too. And then I masked off the lower nose of the car and touched up the front lip spoiler with some semi-gloss black. For some reason twice this past week I pulled up a little too close to a curb and scratched it up.

This is the best time of the year for convertibles around here, mid 70's in the days and upper 50's overnight. Tonight was a beautiful evening for a drive. The skies were clear, the moon was full and it was just cool enough.... Came up behind another Miata at the start of the drive. Couldn't tell what color it really was, but my guess is that was Crystal Blue, although it looked gray. Couldn't have been the Titanium because the seats were tan, not brown/red. He was talking to someone in the passenger seat and only going about 5 MPH below the posted limit, so at the first opportunity I goosed it and went around. Gave a couple of polite toots on the air horns and left him way behind. We both had the same idea, evening cruise, just different approaches to it.

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With me recovering from the flu and Donna in mid run of it, we did go on the Miata Club's event today, we stayed pretty much close to home. Lunch out at Chik-Fil-A was pretty much it. Tomorrow I am going to wash the car it is filthy, maybe change the oil too, the lifters have been clickity-clackity for a few seconds on the past few startups.

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43 degrees this morning, so with the flu thing happening, we thought discresion would be the better part of valor, and put the top up for the drive in to work. After I got done at the opthomlagist's office this morning I put it down and there it has been ever since.

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Well I managed to make it to work today. I felt a heck of a lot better, but I sounded terrible. Wished I could have packed in at about 2:00PM. Blogging a little early tonight so I can get to bed a little early. I put the top up after lunch so Donna could make a trip to the dentist. She cracked a tooth on an oatmeal cookie. Fortunately as she was on one line with the dentist office there was somebody on the other line canceling a one o'clock, otherwise they would have made her wait until Tuesaday!

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Heck I should copy yesterday's entry. Still down with the flu and it's still raining and cold. Tomorrow I hope to be better, the weather is supposed to be....

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Still another rainy day. Not only that, but cold too, didn't even reach 50. I stayed home from work because I wasn't feeling well, spent the day napping and watching DVDs, hope I feel better in the morning.

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Another rainy day. We haven't had the spinkler on for the yard in over a week.

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Left Asheville this morning in the pouring rain. Rained the whole time while Donna drove the first half of the way home on I-26. It quit in time for me to finish up the drive on the two lane backroads. Towards the end we actually had to break out the sunglasses. It only took 4 hours to make the return trip and that included at least an hour spent at Cracker Barrel waiting, dining and shopping. The Cracker Barrel has always been a guilty pleasure for Donna, but this time the wait and amount of food sent her over the top. She has now made me promise to say, "No." anytime she suggests eating breakfast at one. We'll see.

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Saturday, October 12

Started the day with a stop at the North Carolina Arboretum. Donna wanted to go to see the gardens. Diane and Allen wanted to go back because the last time they visited in April nothing was in bloom. I wanted to go because it meant a top down drive on the Blue Ridge Parkway. The original plan was to all ride in D & A's Integra, but Donna wasn't feeling to well so she wanted to ride in the Miata. As a surprise bonus the Arboretum was hosting the 2002 Carolina Bonsai Expo. Very beautiful stuff. Amazing that in today's fast paced society that this slow moving art form survives. Of course there are tons of web sites devoted to it. After that it was too early to go right to lunch so I devised a little loop that included a stop at Looking Glass Falls and Sliding Rock before ending up at the Pisgah Inn for lunch. The food is really good and the view is super making it well worth the 30 minute wait. After eating, we stayed on the Parkway and went over to the Folk Art Center. From there we went our serparate ways, Diane & Allen went into downtown Asheville and we headed back to the hotel. Later, after supper, a trip for ice cream was agreed upon. Allen looked in his Underground Asheville book and picked a place called Sweet Heaven because of the ice cream but it also has live music. When we got there "Inna Gadda Da Vida" as coming from a kid on a really nice Roland piano whose father was a baby when that song came out. Turns out this 14 year old keyboard prodigy, Nick Stubblefield, also plays for the Sunday brunch at the hoity-toity Grove Park Inn. A while later his 12 year old sister accompanied him by singing a few old jazz standards. She was as amazingly as good as he was.

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Friday, October 11

After lunch in downtown Aiken we headed north to Asheville to meet my sister Diane and her husband Allen. Donna wanted to find a road we hadn't driven on for the trip, but try as she might, we have been this way so many times that there just isn't one (on the state map.) But that is OK, pick one and go, they are all good on a sunny fall afternoon. The top was down, except when donna was driving on I-26, but the boot was off because of the rain in the area. It only rained on us once and only for a mile or two, but there were plenty of times that we found very wet roads like we had just missed some.

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Kind of feel like I'm living in the northwest, raining off and on all the time. So the top is down for the ride to work and up up during, then down or up for the ride home depending on conditions. Well the 9 hours days are done, tomorrow is why we did it, off at 11:30. We are headed up to Asheville, NC for the weekend. My sister and her husband are going to meet us there and we are perhaps going leaf peeping or if it is raining there, a movie or something.

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Do you think it says anything about my feeling towards having Wabbit Teeth on the front of the car that I haven't taken a single picture of them in the 15 days they have been there? It is too sunny, it is too cloudy, I've been too busy, I can't find just the right background and on and on and on.

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Rainy day for a change. We made it to work with the top down, barely, so I put it up on arrival. Still spritzing when we went out to Wally World looking for a light coat for Donna. She lost her last one of the face of the cliff at the Devils' Courthouse when an unexprcted gust of wind sailed it of the ledge she had reasted on.

Well Blogging has finally come to the notice of the folks at the newspaper in Augusta. There was a little column in today's paper quoting one person and citing a couple of vauge statistics. I'd link you to it, but they haven't even added it to their web page yet.

I guess they wait until the next day so the paper's subscribers don't feel cheated out of their 50 cents. Here is the article: The blog-o-sphere filled with news, nonsense.

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To and from work! This week is our stint of 9 hour days with a half day off on Friday as a reward. So we were a half hour earlier on the roads and that makes passing by the usually crowded school entrances a breeze, all the moms haven't left home yet.

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Another exciting day. Made a trip to Blimpies for lunch.

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Spent most of the day in front of the computer. Did drive the Miata over to the local Honey Baked Ham store for lunch sandwiches...

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Went for a pleasant evening drive of about 20 miles. This is the nice time of year for it here, lower 70's and lowered humidity.

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Another night on the town! Master's Miata Club meeting at Bobby's BBQ out on Highway 1. Usually we get a back room, but they were all booked, so the 15 of us were at a big ol' table by the wall. Kinda hard to hold a meeting over the really old guy in the corner playing music on a Hammond organ, but then again we usually don't have much of a meeting. (For all I know that could be Bobby himself.)

Glad I like BBQ as we are having a catered lunch at work tomorrow and that's what we are having, BBQ.

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Used the California Duster on the car this afternoon and discovered several more reminders on why I shouldn't wax the car in the garage. Wiped that dried wax off a few places, but later this evening, in the fading sunshine, I noticed there are still a few more spots. Sigh...

Rode the bikes to work today, so if it wasn't for the monthly meeting of the Aiken Bicycle Club, the Miata would not have gotten driven today. Is there something wrong with that picture? Bicycle to work and drive to a bicycling function?

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The Sopranos are done and it'll be at least a year and a half before Season 4 comes out on DVD.... Better get over to Netflix and beef up the queue, only got two items in there and there are four DVDs on the way back.

The only exciting thing car-wize that happened today was I bought a 1999 red Ford SVT Mustang Cobra. I'm not selling the Miata, there isn't enought room for me in there. Zip Zaps.

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