For this to mean much you have to go back and skim this.
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I drove to the Nissan dealer in Marlborough for a replacement part for my windshield wiper - the arm that connects the motor to the center pivot assembly – and paid twenty-nine dollars for a thin piece of aluminum with a plastic bushing on either end. The parts guy, Dave, asked me if I needed anything else.
“I’ve two sets of keys. One works the door and the ignition, which I can’t find, and one works only the ignition. If my remote dies I won’t be able to get into my truck.”
“I can make you a new key.”
“But I don’t get it. Why doesn’t it work in the door?”
“Your key has a slight bend to it; that’s probably the problem.”
“Then how can you make me a new key?”
“Have you had the truck serviced here before?”
“I bought it here.”
Dave went to his computer and came back with the so-called key code.
“Ten dollars and I’ll cut you a new one.”
“Wait a minute. You mean if I were in Wyoming ( I was really thinking, Maine, in the backwoods, with the guys) and lost my keys all I’d have to do is call a Nissan dealer, or you, and I could have a new one made just like that?”
“That’s right. Better yet, I’ll print out the key code for you and you can stick it in your wallet.”
“I brought my truck in about two years ago for recall work, dropped off only the key, and the service manager called me the next day and had me drive back here to deliver the remote cause he couldn’t open the door. Why didn’t he suggest making another key?”
“I don’t know… .?
“He was an older guy. Nice guy. He’d had heart attacks, been in Vietnam…”
“That would have been Al. He’s dead now.”
Karen, at Shear Madness in Littleton, cuts my hair and came to our house and buzzed Diane’s head for nothing. She’s the best.
Maybe we are all mooned out, but here’s one of my brother’s shots from his deck in Cambridge.
Nikon D 300
Shutter speed – 1/2 sec
F – 5.6
Iso – 800
I queued up behind a phalanx of snow plows today hogging all three lanes of route 2. What is up with that? They can’t space themselves far enough apart so I, and like minded souls, can scoot by them? In spite of the snow, the road was reasonably safe at, say, 40, but the rolling road block slowed me and all those cars behind me to about fifteen miles an hour.
Michael,
Some of us are still not jaded by good lunar eclipse pictures–see this one.
Admittedly, it’s not a “purist’s” (no digital fiddling) picture, but few of them are these days. It’s a combination of a telescopic view (showing Jennifer’s stars) and a filtered camera shot.
–rakkity
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I’m tacking this photo onto rak’s post. I thought it was one of my better shots, but it was over exposed compared to what we were all looking at so I didn’t post it. Taken at about 10 PM.
Last night was the highlight of the year, clearly.
But, now that we’ve got the moon out of the way, I can go back to posting flower photos.
Mike,
It was misty, but we could see the moon being eclipsed. The mists took away the color, so it looked grey to the eye, and even through binocs.In my picture from our front yard (attached) without any fiddling of the saturation of the digital data, the moon is clearly red . The moon is at one side of the shadow umbra, so it looks like a crescent. I couldn’t see the moon through my viewfinder, and had to guess at the centering, so I couldn’t zoom. What you see in the picture is what you get with a 4-sec exposure and no zoom near the time of maximum eclipse.
I’m sure there will be some glorious pix on the web later tonight.
–rakkity
11:39 PM
Let’s finish this extraordinary night with a little humor.
This from last night’s poker game.
Michael,
According to the Acton web page, it’s clear right now. Tomorrow is supposed to be mostly cloudy, with clearing on Thursday. With luck you might be able to watch the lunar eclipse Wednesday night.
Out here in the west, it will be visible at dusk, but in the eastern US, you’ll see it around 10 pm.
–rakkity
