R.I.P. Evel Knievel

His official site.

The AP story.

This dude has a page cataloging every rock song he could find about Evel Knievel.

I was gonna post the lyrics to 2 Skinnee J's "Viva Knievel," but they seem to have completely disappeared from the internet, and I can't understand all of them from listening to the song so I can't transcribe 'em. Alas.

Here's a bit I do know, tho':
"Evel Knievel, man on a mission
Made a rocketship thrust by a steam-powered engine
He went real high, he should've gone higher
His last five jumps ended in FIRE!

Evel Knievel, master of disaster
Nitro-burning rocket blaster
He went real fast, he should've gone faster
Now he's in a body cast wrapped in plaster

Evel Knievel, we are your people
American hero with no equal
In the stuntman church or the steeple

Evel deeds and they're done dirt cheap
Not a peep from the crowd as he hits the concrete
Forget the church, let's build a cathedral for
Viva, viva, viva Knievel!"

Wow. They just don't make people like that anymore. It does feel like the end of an era. R.I.P., Evel Knievel.

greetings from Canada!

Hey, y'all! We're having a really good time here in Ottawa. I wish we could stay for a few more days, because there's so much to do - I feel like we'll barely get the chance to scratch the surface before we'll have to go home on Wednesday.

The weather has been gorgeous - beautifully sunny, but still early-spring cool - really, just about perfect, as far as I'm concerned. This is the kind of weather I most miss, living in Florida (well, this and snowfall).

So far, I've managed to accomplish two of the four main goals I set out before I left home: I've entered a bunch of bills on Where's Willy (and spent most of them, too - man, that exchange rate is a killer right now), and today I had lunch with my Canadian bureaucrat pen pal! I've also made arrangements with Mini Ottawa East to pick up the extra-special, non-US parts for Lucy tomorrow, so barring some sort of disaster, I'll be able to cross that objective off my list, too.

That just leaves a bunch of postcards for me to send... and I bought a bunch of stamps today, so I'm pretty much set, there, too. Now I just need the time to sit down and write 'em. If you want to receive one, it's not too late - since it turns out I can check my e-mail from our room, I'll watch my Gmail account for requests until 11pm Tuesday night (May 8th).

Well, I'm off to bed now - I'm beat. Wandering around a city having fun is really exhausting, y'know?

O is for Ottawa

Saturday we will be leaving here bright and early and heading to Ottawa, Canada! I'm so excited - I have never been to Ottawa, and it's been ages since I last visited Canada.

We're going there because Johnny is attending this conference, and I am tagging along just for fun. Any excuse to travel! No, I can't really afford it at this point (I got my credit card bill today and it nearly gave me a heart attack), but at least Johnny's job is paying for the hotel (and his meals), so all I have to cover is airfare (and my meals). It'll be fine as long as I am frugal this summer.

I have four main goals I hope to accomplish on this trip:
1) Enter lots of bills on Where's Willy and a few on Where's George, too. I have been sprucing up my Where's Willy profile in preparation for my increased Willying activity. :)
ii) Meet my Canadian pen pal, with whom I have been corresponding for... cripes, it's been like, 10 years now! And we've still never met!
c) Get a Euro parcel shelf for Lucy from the Ottawa Mini dealer, since the parts are no longer available in the US.
4) Send out a ton of postcards! If you'd like one, just send your address to me at username: spitesprite on Gmail. Our hotel does offer wireless internet access, but from the description online, it sounds like it may only be available in the hotel's business center - so I may only be checking my e-mail once a day instead of my usual every-few-hours. Let's say, in order to make sure I have time to get the postcards written, stamped, and mailed, that you should get your address to me no later than noon EDT on Monday, May 7th. After that, no guarantees (well, no guarantees before that, either, really... but I'll do my best).

Saturday is also going to be exciting because it's 24 hours of Flickr day! I'm planning to participate - with any luck, I'll be able to get some interesting travel pictures to post. I'm also hoping, since I have to be up crazy early that day anyway, I can sneak down to the beach and catch some sunrise pics before we head to the airport. Whatever I end up getting pictures of that day, y'all will be able to see it on my Flickr as soon as I am able to post it.

So... anyone know any fun things to do in Ottawa?

omg y'all...

Gas is getting pretty expensive here! Lucy is a fuel-efficient little car, but she (like all Minis) takes 91 octane gas, so it's still not really cheap to fill her up. Luckily, I'm not doing much driving these days, so a tank of gas lasts me forever. I will say this for her little brother Bertie - Lucy's MPG is good, but his is significantly better! Johnny is saving a lot of money on his commute, even paying for higher grade gasoline, because he's not driving such a gas-guzzler anymore. It's also good to know that we won't have to pay too much for fuel on the big cross-country road trip Johnny wants to take this October when we go out to California for KP's wedding.

Poor Bertie's issues have not been fixed yet, tho', but he's driving just fine. They got the new fuel pump for him at the service place, but they told Johnny not to bother bringing him in yet, since the fuel pump didn't seem to be fixing the problem for other people. As I mentioned, his "check engine" light did come on once since we got him back, but it went off again on its own, and it's been off for over a week now. Curiouser and curiouser. Muffy (hi, Muffy! I'm glad Meg introduced us) seems to be having the same problem with her little Percy, I am sorry to say... I hope Mini can sort this all out soon. In the meantime, we're becoming quite familiar with the good folks at Lauderdale Mini's service department. They're really, really nice, but honestly, if we had the choice, I think we'd prefer not to get to know them so well, y'know?

cider for breakfast

Good morning, all! We're at Churchill's Pub so we can watch the West Ham v. Wigan football match.



Sorry if that pic seems a tad small - I'm going back to using smaller pics in the body of my posts for the time being, as it's the easiest solution I've found to the narrow-browser-window problem I mentioned a few posts ago. If you want to see a bigger version, you can always click on it. I'll work on figuring out a better way, but for now, y'all will just have to deal. Sorry. :(

So, Churchill's. We love this place. (Match update: West Ham just scored! Whooo!) It's a pub owned by a Brit expat situated in the middle of Miami's Little Haiti. On weekends, they show all the football matches on satellite TV (they show cricket and rugby, too - whatever people want to watch, basically), and expats & other football fans show up and start drinking at like, 9 or 10 in the morning. You can get bangers & mash, shepherd's pie, or fish & chips for grub. It is great.

Usually the crowd's a bit sparse until around noon, but it's pretty packed in here today. We figure it's 'cause it's near the end of the season and there are a lot of games on. (Update: West Ham scored again! It's 3-0 now! If they'd played this way all season, they wouldn't be in danger of getting relegated now.) We're at the far end of the bar from the TVs showing the West Ham game, so I can barely see what's going on, but the Middleborough v. Tottenham match on the closest telly is pretty interesting, too. Johnny does not have my nearsightedness, so he's telling me what's going on when I can't see it. All the matches today seem to be pretty high-scoring ones - in addition to the 3-0 West Ham tally, M'borough/T'ham is 2-3 and Portsmouth/Liverpool is 2-1.

Well, there are about 3 minutes to go until West Ham wins (they just showed an exodus of Wigan fans streaming out of the stadium), and then it will be time for us to get some bangers and mash to go with our cider. Mmm, sausages. Health food, it ain't - but it sure is tasty.

babies are expensive

Well, since it seems beyond the realm of possibility to have both our vehicles working at any one time, and since Bertie is holding up ok while we are waiting for his new fuel pump to arrive (the service people said it'd be alright to drive him for the time being, so we brought him home and have been driving him normally - his "check engine" light came on once for a day, but went off again on its own), this week it was Lucy's turn to need service. She is four and a half years old now, and has over 55,000 miles on her. She is due to start needing a lot of major maintenance work soon.

This time, she needed brake work, and her overheating problem which seemed like a coolant leak had returned, much to my alarm. A set of new brake pads and rotors and one new thermostat later, and I am $1410 poorer. Yikes! I gave her a little talking-to after I picked her up from the shop. Her driver's side window is having occasional sticking issues now, too (at least partially due to the dents left in the door by the two or three hit-and-run drivers who hit her while she was parked on our street in Syracuse, I am sure), but that would have been another $500-some dollars to fix, and I really don't have that much to spare right now. I told them to hold off on fixing that, since it's just not an essential repair. The body work I was hoping to have done on her is going to have to be postponed, now, as well. I want her to look all pretty again, but she needs to understand that I am not made of money.

*sigh* Kids these days.