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I've been trolling Suruga-Ya's website for about a month now, and contemplating stupf I want to buy from them.  The estimated damage so far is about $300 and I'm just getting started--and everything I'm "firm" on so far is at least thirty to forty years old.
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In my travels today: an action-figure scale pickup truck and an action-figure scale police cruiser in the toy aisles of two different shops.

I'm stepping back from the brink.  The money I have in pocket might need to last for a while.

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A party supplies place had its going-out-of-business sale yesterday so I cleaned them out of these.

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Saw in my newsbox that the Hobby Lobby in Sevierville had their Grand Opening today so I went there and got this diecast Corsair, which I'd been hoping to find for quite a while. (They'd sold out at other area locations and I was seriously thinking about going to the one in the Tri-Cities.)

FP
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Sagittarius Horoscope for week of July 30, 2015

Much of the action in the world's novels takes place inside buildings, according to author Robert Bringhurst. But characters in older Russian literature are an exception, he says. They are always out in the forests, traveling and rambling. In accordance with astrological omens, I suggest that you draw inspiration from the Russians' example in the coming days. As often and as long as you can, put yourself in locations where the sky is overhead. Nature is the preferred setting, but even urban spots are good. Your luck, wisdom, and courage are likely to increase in direct proportion to how much time you spend outdoors.

If it weren't this place's rainy season...

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Sagittarius Horoscope for week of February 5, 2015

The crookedest street in the world is a one-way, block-long span of San Francisco's Lombard Street. It consists of eight hairpin turns down a very steep hill. The recommended top speed for a car is five miles per hour. So on the one hand, you've got to proceed with caution. On the other hand, the quaint, brick-paved road is lined with flower beds, and creeping along its wacky route is a whimsical amusement. I suspect you will soon encounter experiences that have metaphorical resemblances to Lombard Street, Sagittarius. In fact, I urge you to seek them out.

I think I've already done that this week, in a weird fashion.

FP

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Took a daytrip to Kentucky yesterday.  It perpetually mystifies me the way that Moonshine's Sony sound system will play some cuts from the keydrives I have, but not all of them.  Really I wish I knew how to remedy this issue.

COAT.

Nov. 13th, 2014 07:25 pm
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Bought this evening at the Old Navy Outlet, Five Oaks Plaza, Sevierville.
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I spent another fruitless while yesterday in the Bargain Basement of Books Warehouse in Pigeon Forge yesterday.  The place is a shambles with tens of thousands of books in bins or on shelves with very little in the way of organization.  It's impossibly difficult to find anything specific.

My thinking there went in this direction: if I had one of those quadcopter drones that could carry a camera, or perhaps carry my smartphone and have it act as a camera, I could photorecon the whole space and then have a computer program determine all the books it saw.  Then I could virtually search that data and see if there was anything I wanted or needed.

I feel it's probably a good likelihood that somebody's already thought of something like this.

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The prospect of vacation travel meant a change in footwear--"athletic" shoes to replace the sneakers that fell apart around Christmas last year.



Breaking them in now. Expect to be someplace other than Rather Manor sometime this week.
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A couple weeks ago, on my way to the scale model club meeting in Knoxville, I stopped at a BP station for a fill-up and noticed that there was a crew at work painting the pump barriers and the streetlight posts.  They were cutting down the plastic temporary signs these places always have ("Play The Lottery Here" or "Special On Pepsi") and throwing them in the dumpster in the back corner of the property.

I'd seriously thought to go retrieve the signage, as the plastic material is good for scratchbuilding scale models.  But I had a meeting to go to, and the night was cold, and even on my way back to the house I mulled it over more and came to the same conclusions.  It would probably be easier for me just to look up a signmaker and either ask for surplus pieces or buy the raw material through that channel.

I went past the place today.  It's no longer a BP.  I couldn't take their plastic then; now they can't take MY plastic.

Plastic isn't the future anymore.  It's the now.

FP

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This weekend is Tax-Free Weekend in Tennessee (sales taxes are dropped on clothes and other items to help parents supply their kids' needs for the school year). Dad and I took advantage of it yesterday to get some clothes--and both of us got new cheap pairs of sneakers.
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I took Moonshine in for an oil change at the Dandridge Pennzoil today. I'm only a month or so away from putting 100,000 miles on her since I bought her. And, like the song goes, so much has happened and nothing has changed.
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* Because my brother got me a smartphone to replace my flip-phone this week, I felt I had to return the favor and find a toy for him. I'll tell you all about it after I give it to him.

* Because my brother got me a smartphone to replace my flip-phone this week, I'm trying to figure out how to use it. So far, I'm way behind it and the whole touchscreen nonsense is somewhat counterintuitive to me.

* Because my brother got me a smartphone to replace my flip-phone this week, I went through Precious's soundfiles (and made some new ones by using a decompiler to loot soundtracks from .SWF files I downloaded over the years) in an ongoing attempt to generate ringtones. I still only partly know what I'm doing.

* In my travels to procure the toy for my brother, I saw a late-model Audi sedan outside Strange--the interior comprehensively burnt out. I started brainstorming hot rod ideas almost immediately.

* Still dabbling with reverse-engineering old Eastern-bloc paper models of aircraft carrier ships into much larger mixed-media models. I have seven downloaded patterns of a planned eight...but my internal math estimates that each "plate" in the scale I'm working with means $10 in materials. So I'll need funding of one form or another.
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I'm sorry I didn't get to hear your rap song today
My car was on fumes and I came to a station that would accept my plastic
I had to switch off the ignition so I could unlock the fuel cap
And that meant your would-be driveway moment wasn't gonna pass
I'll try to turn you all back on as fast as I could
The car's tank only holds about ten gallons...

But you're gone, and the radio already moved on to the next number on the playlist
And the deejay's left for the wings so I won't know what I've missed
I'm back on the street--that main drag pointed at the heart of town
Disgusted with the tune that replaced you so I turn the radio down
This errand is taking forever
I want to pull over
But I never do

That place I thought would never go away is gone
They've torn down the building and workmen are clearing out the rubble
Will it sit empty for ten years, or are they going to put something new there in a month
I don't know who to ask who would know or care
It's just a shock, though
I guess it will pass

This town just seems to have all the wrong businesses
Though I have no idea what the right ones could be
Stay here too long and you'll just want to move on to the next one
But the next town over is pretty much the same
And so's the one after that...and the one after that...
So why bother?
Where can you go from here?

That shopping center is an eyesore--the whole place is run down
They're replacing the old cheap supermarket with a cheaper one
So half the tenants that were there are closing or moving
The only place that seems to want to stay is a chain that has seven other locations here
Which makes no sense
They can't afford to do that

Yeah, my plan on leaving the house included that store downtown
But I changed my mind because I've had enough of messing with this traffic
If that traffic light had changed just a little earlier, before I committed
I could have taken that highway out through Baneberry
Now I have no choice
Back the way I came

December here only has one kind of weather
And the word for that kind of weather is "bleak"
It's bleak when it's cloudy because it never is cold enough for the snow lovers
It's bleak when it's sunny because the wind smacks down the sun lovers
There isn't even anything to satisfy the haters
So it's best just to be indifferent and give up caring

They won't play another rap song on the station I'm listening to
Because it's the wrong time of year
And they need to play something very long for a staff meeting
The deejay won't be back for at least thirty minutes
So I just shut it off
This car will be back in its carport before he returns...
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Last night I finished off a box of my usual store-brand frosted shreded wheat cereal, and we needed other foodstuffs in the house, so I went to a grocer in the course of my errands today.

I gave the cereal aisle some very close scrutiny, as I don't often do the food shopping myself and because things have changed since it was that Mum and I would go to the stores together. Anyway, I was about to give up when one of my favorites from my high school and college years, Kellogg's Cracklin' Oat Bran, was shown to be close-out priced at half of retail...or about what we paid every week or so for the store brand cereal I usually eat. So I got a box.

I ate about half a cup of it dry as I awaited this computer booting up. The smell reminds me of the sorghum-delivery vehicle stuff I used to throw in the feed buckets for my sister's horses thirty years ago. I guess I really am born Sagittarius/Year of the Horse.
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Over the weekend was the local IPMS club's Swap Meet, and I got several kits for very very cheap. Including a few more Spitfires.

Anybody feel like coming up with a paint scheme or two?

FP
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Dad and I went Christmas shopping today. We went to a store in Newport that I liked but he hadn't seen before, and sure enough he fell in love with the place.

But before that, we were driving there and talking about the relatives on Lynn's husband's side of the family...how their kids and their needs were going to play out in the near future. He mentioned that having all three of us, myself and my siblings, in college at mostly the same time almost brought the family to financial ruin. Now, only my brother Dana made it all the way to a four-year degree; Lynn dropped out to work and I had to settle for a two-year Associate's degree.

Dad reassured me, though, that he never regretted the fact that I went to flight school and completed it as much as I could. He'd wanted that for himself all his life, and couldn't because of an eye defect he had. So I wasn't just doing it for my own selfish ends.

I don't know if I'll ever get back in the cockpit again, but I guess I can't be so down on myself that I couldn't work in aviation like I wanted.
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Well, after that incident in Morristown in which I heard some really nasty noises come from Moonshine's underside last week, Dad and I scrambled to find a repair shop to get her back to rights.

Dad calls mechanic he knows #1--"Sorry, I've got a bunch of projects lined up. Be at least a couple weeks.'

Mechanic he knows #2--"I'm busy this weekend. Be out of town too."

I mentioned the place where we got Moonshine's new tires and Dad decides against that. So today he took Moonshine over towards Panther Creek...

New AAMCO shop!

MOONSHINE: Hey! Pull in here!

DAD: Okay, just a moment.

And so Dad tells them about the problems I'd had with the car, and the mechies look her over and get to working...

MECHIE: Two new front rotors! Reconditioned CV axle! And a new brake pad!

MOONSHINE: Eeee...

(Dad's in the lounge getting a cup of tea...)

MECHIE: Clean out and inspect the rear brakes!

MOONSHINE: Ohhhh...

(Dad's getting his shoes shined...)

MECHIE: New spark plugs and plug wiring!

MOONSHINE: Ahhh...

(Dad gets a back massage...)

Of course this takes all afternoon. Finally he gets back to Rather Manor and shows me the invoice.

DAD: 12 month guarantee on all the work.

ME: And you got $50 in discounts!?

He always manages to find good customer service. I'll have to take Moonshine for a test drive overmorrow.
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1) Last week I went to a science-fiction convention, where I did all the volunteer work for a scale model competition that only had three entries. As a result...

2) I caught Con Crud, which has been particularly intractable this time around. Luckily, I'm not too demoralized about that because...

3) Amazon.com has just started their "win your Wishlist" contest for the season. So I've been poking all over the Internet looking for Stuff I Want(TM). Between that and my usual Research Addiction(TM), I've been fruitlessly busy. Just the same...

4) My Internet connectivity has been its usual flaky, unreliable self.

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Stephen R Bierce

March 2022

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