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Take a walk on the mild side.
August 2009 - Posts
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Well, I could probably live for two or three weeks on all the food I ate for my birthday this year. It was so nice that so many people thought to honor my birthday by joining me in a meal. My birthday fell on a Wednesday this year and so I took the day off from work to spend leisurely with my family at home. It was very relaxing and, of course, we ate at a restaurant to commemorate the day. I didn’t really do much except to relax (and eat) the whole day. It was a nice respite from my normal days. The next day (Thursday) my parents visited to celebrate my birthday. Of course, we went out to eat. Our plan was to go to the restaurant where my husband had been working steadily. We thought we would combine a nice meal with listening to him play music. Our plan was disrupted however, when we arrived to find out that the restaurant had not done any business for the week and they said that they didn’t want music that evening. The problem was that they didn’t think to call my husband earlier in the day to cancel; that would have been the courteous thing to do so that we would not have had to bring all the music equipment with us. We decided to go to another restaurant that was close by. When we entered we saw that the place was packed with people playing Bingo. There was no way that I wanted my birthday dinner with my parents to be combined with Bingo. We left to finally arrive at another restaurant that is only three or four blocks from our house. We have eaten there a few times before and we knew that it was a nice place with good food and good service. On Friday I had a wonderful time with my co-workers at a birthday lunch. It is really great to have such a wonderful place to work; and I very much appreciate all the people who work at Rocket Daddy. Thank you! On Saturday there was yet another birthday dinner, this time with my husband and friends from Georgia. They get together with us each year to celebrate both my birthday and our friend’s; his birthday is only two days after mine. It will take quite a few days to recover from all the festivities and all the great food that I consumed, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. 
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When I purchased my new car a few weeks ago I knew that I
was going to get better miles to the gallon than I did with my previous car,
but my expectations have been surpassed. The sticker on the new car indicated
that I could expect about thirty-three miles to the gallon and you know that
the car manufacturers will always make claims that are usually inflated so that
the unwary customer will be encouraged to buy. I am really excited that the sticker
information was very conservative.
When I think back to my previous car (a Dodge Caravan) I
remember that it got almost twenty miles to the gallon. I thought that that was
pretty cool, but now it seems like a gas-guzzler compared to my new Honda Fit.
Just imagine; I am getting twice the miles per gallon just by changing
to a new car. With the gas prices being so high, I am really starting to save
some money. Or, said another way, I can go twice the distance on a tank of gas.
There are other great features on my new car. For example,
there is an indicator light on the dash that tells me if my tire pressure is
too low. This light went on the other day and I got out to check the tires to
see which tire was affected. I could not tell by looking; all the tires seemed
to be okay. To be safe, I stopped at a gas station to inflate all the tires and
to check the pressure; I was curious to see if the onboard indicator light was
working the way it should. While checking the tires with the pressure gauge I
did see that one of the tires was indeed showing a lower pressure than it
should. I brought that one tire up to the recommended amount of pressure and
again checked the dashboard light. It was off, indicating that all the tire
pressures were at the recommended levels. How fantastic to have a car that
almost takes care of itself. I have found out that the tire pressure is one of
the factors that contribute to good gas mileage, and I have a feature built
into the car that will hopefully keep that “good miles to the gallon”.
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The other evening we saw a documentary on the
development of the telescope. The program started by pointing out the history
of the telescope. The instrument was devised about four hundred years ago. As
fascinating as the past can be, I was more interested in the modern versions of
the astronomer’s favorite tool.
The first telescopes were refractors. That is, they had a
long tube with a lens at each end and the lenses bent (or, refracted) the light
coming from a celestial body so that we could see it clearly when we put our
eye to the optic. The instruments got bigger and more powerful (meaning that
they could show us more distant objects) over time until it was impractical to
build them any larger. The limits of materials and construction techniques
required technicians to invent other ways to view the heavens.
The next series of telescopes are reflectors. These
instruments use a series of polished mirrors to bounce the incoming light (or,
to fold the light beams) into an eyepiece for viewing. Now the telescope can be
much larger. Until recently, the largest reflector was the two hundred inch
diameter mirror at the Palomar Observatory. Recent reflector telescopes utilize
multiple mirrors and they dwarf the Palomar instrument.
Once astronomers realized that they would get better views
without our atmosphere interfering, they worked to put telescopes in space well
above the atmosphere. The Hubble telescope is such an instrument. It has shown us
faraway stars and galaxies that we had not known heretofore. Even more exciting
is the knowledge that the Universe is much more vast than we suspected and that
it is accelerating and expanding faster than we thought. The program showed
many pictures of galaxies that were taken by the modern telescopes; the
galaxies are thousands, even millions of light years away. (I doubt that we
could ever get there!) The photos
are so beautiful that they could easily be used as works of art.
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- You get to pick which dog you take home with you.
- You can feed dogs the same thing every day and they are happy to have it.
- You don't need to save up for a dog's car, college education, or wedding.
- Dogs never complain, "Are we there yet?" when going for a car ride.
- Your male dog will not bring home his pregnant girl-friend for you to take care of.
- It is legal to chain up your dog in the back yard.
- Social Services will not come knocking on your door if your 8-year-old dog still sleeps with you and your spouse.
- Dogs don't talk back.
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For anyone interested in seeing a meteor shower, there is one happening tonight (Tuesday evening into Wednesday morning) shortly before midnight and ending shortly thereafter. According to many different accounts the spectacle is best viewed with the naked eye. The meteors move so quickly and appear so suddenly that a telescope would be almost useless.
The best place to view any celestial event is on the water or near the shoreline. Get as far away from city lights as you can. Make sure that there are no lights of any kind near to where you intend to view the sky. Once you have selected a place for the viewing, get comfortable about an hour or so before the event so that your eyes will adjust to the dark sky. I would suggest that you either lie down or get a comfortable lounge chair because you will want to view the sky for a few hours. A comfortable position will enhance the experience more than you can imagine. Once you are settled, try to view the sky from the same position, that is, look at the same section of sky instead trying to turn back and forth to catch every meteor. You will find that trying to view every shooting star will only result in your missing most of the action.
Meteor showers occur fairly often and astronomers can predict almost to the hour when they will be visible. My husband and I viewed a meteor shower from the roof of our home a few years ago. We followed all the instructions about keeping all the lights off and getting comfortable while we lay on our backs. We did see many meteors and we enjoyed the phenomenon. We were very lucky that conditions were favorable. You need to be comfortable and, the most important thing is, you need a clear sky!
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I rented a car for a trip. I came back from that trip needing emergency dental surgery. After spending the morning at the dentist, I go to the Budget Rent A Car place to return the car. Half of my face is numb and sagging, I'm in pain, and I have gauze sticking out of my mouth. I'm trying to explain to the clerk what had happened that morning and that I had forgotten to top off the gas tank. He told me that if they fill up the tank, he would charge me THREE TIMES the price for each gallon of gas they put in. I couldn't believe it. Can't the Budget employees use their good judgment when it comes to penalizing the customers? Why couldn't he make an allowance for a special circumstance? I went to Budget.com to write a letter of complaint against Budget. Ironically, there was a tab labeled "Customer Care". Budget Rent A Car doesn't really care about the customers. Do they purposely seek to hire unfeeling staff and do they train them that way?
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First stop, Toyota. We drove the Scion and noticed that the
ride was very rough. I am sure that the Scion is a good car, but it was very
small, it had limited cargo space, and I didn't feel overly safe in driving
such a small car. I sure would hate to be in a car crash with anything bigger;
it was like being in a small juice can. Second stop, Honda. As we drove up to
the dealership we saw about a dozen car salesmen standing outside seemingly
ready to leap onto the next poor soul who was looking to buy a car. Sure
enough, we were barely standing outside the van when we were approached by one
of the salesmen. The conversation started when my husband called the saleman a liar and a thief. The salesman responded, that in his experience, customers
were more dishonest than salesmen. Thus an understanding between husband and
salesman was established. (I wished that I could have become invisible.)
We test-drove
the Fit. It was noticeably better than the Scion in many ways. We decided that
we need not go back to the Toyota dealer and we proceeded with the arduous task
of explanations and paperwork (mostly, thank goodness, provided by the
salesman) that accompanies any car purchase. Happily, the Honda was only about
five hundred dollars more than the Toyota. My husband haggled the price and
threatened to not purchase the car if the dealer would not drop the price. At
this point in the negotiations we told the salesman that we were going to lunch
and that we would return in about an hour. The salesman turned white with fear;
he handed the Honda's keys to me so that we could take the car with us. His
reasoning was that if we took the car with us, we would be forced to return. My
husband told him that if we said we would come back, that we would; he pointed
out that he was from New York and when a New Yorker says he will do something,
you can depend upon it. (I bet the poor salesman held his breath until we
returned.) We went to lunch and then we returned as we said we would. Then the
negotiations started again; my husband was determined to get as much money off
the car as possible.
The salesman
started to bring in reinforcements. He brought over three different managers
and another salesman to help convince us that the price offered by them was the
lowest. My husband laughed at them and said he knew more "salesman @#$%" than
they did. He told the salesman to sharpen his pencil and to get down to getting
that price reduced. I was getting upset at the long length of time all this was
taking and I really didn't think that the amount of money that they were arguing
over was significant. Finally, the difference was one hundred sixty-three
dollars more than I wanted to spend; I interjected my feeling that I was willing to concede the difference
and we moved on to the next phase.
As the paperwork proceeded (it seemed to take forever) I
became aware that our dogs would need to go outside soon or that we would be
shoveling doggy poo by the ton. It was three o'clock in the afternoon by this
time and I was so irritated that I informed the salesman that we were going to
leave at three-thirty either in our old van or in the new Fit; it was their choice.
What a surprise to see them accelerate their "molasses in June" pace to finish
with time to spare! The drive home was very satisfying.
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As some of you know by now, I have a new ride. I
took advantage of the Cash for Clunkers deal and I traded in my very dependable
van for a brand new Honda Fit Sport. I have heard that the reputation of Honda as a
carmaker is very good so I am excited about having a very good car that I can
depend upon for many years to come. One of the advantages of this great car is
the gas mileage. It gets about thirty miles to the gallon of gas. This is
certainly better than the eighteen or nineteen miles per gallon that I got with
the van.
The car is very pretty; it is an orange color that my
husband calls "Burnt Orange"; I think that the color is more of a pumpkin
color. A friend of ours said it was the color of caramel. But it stands out in traffic no matter what we call the paint job. I
wanted something that would not be lost in the "sea of autos" that we see every
day. I have been noticing that the most common color is white. How boring!
Every service vehicle is white; most other cars are black or those in between
colors that have those dumb names, like "Autumn Sunrise", "Mauve Madness", or
"Gracious Mint Green With A Dash of Lime". They sound like something that you
would order at a bar.
Buying the car was not without its trials and tribulations,
however. On Saturday we left the house early and drove to Thomasville, Georgia
to visit the Toyota dealer because our friend has a Scion and she is very
pleased with it. Also, we know that Toyota has a very good reputation for all
its cars. We thought we would start there, test drive a few cars, then we would
go to the Honda dealer, which was just around the corner, and compare vehicles
and prices. We knew we really could not go wrong with either car because both
brands have great reputations for building cars that last. I was also pleased
to hear that these cars seem to hold their value so when it is time to sell or
trade, you are likely to get most (about fifty-eight percent for the Honda) of
your money back if it is in great shape. Right now, I am just thrilled to have
a nice new car that gets great gas mileage. It smells like a new car too!
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