Wednesday, January 28, 2009

I Get E-Mail!

Boy, I thought this was the REAL THING!

Dear Customer!

We have been waiting for you to contact us for your Confirmed Package That
is registered with us for shipping to your residential location. We had
thought that your sender gave you our contact
Details. It may interest you to know that a letter is also added to Your
package. However, we cannot quote its content to you via email for Privacy
reasons.

We understand that the content of your package itself is a Bank Draft
Worth of $800,000.00 USD, FedEx do not ship money in CASH or in CHEQUES
but Bank Drafts are shippable. The package is registered with us for
mailing and still in our possession, and it is ready for delivery to your
door step.

Meanwhile, before the delivery or shipment will take place, you are advice
to send to us the following data mention below: We are sending you this
email because your package is been registered on a Special Order.

What you have to do now, is to contact our Delivery Department for
Immediate dispatch of your package to your residential address. Note
That as soon as our Delivery Team confirm your information, it will Take
only one working day (24 hours) for your package to arrive it's
Designated destination. For your information, the VAT & Shipping Charges
as well as Insurance fees have been paid for by your Colleague before your
package was registered. Note that the payment
That is made on the Insurance, Premium & Clearance Certificates, are to
certify that the Bank Draft is not a Drug Affiliated Fund (DAF)
Neither is it funds to sponsor Terrorism in your country. This will help
you avoid any form of query from the Monetary Authority of your
Country.

However, you will have to pay the sum of $210USD to the FedEx Delivery
Department being full payment for the Security Keeping Fee of the
FedEx company as stated in our privacy terms & condition page. Also be
informed that your colleague wished to pay for the Security Keeping
fee, but we do not accept such payment considering the facts that all
items & package that are registered with us have a time limitation and
we cannot accept payment not knowing when you will be contacting us for
your package or even responding to us. So we cannot take the risk
to have accepted such payment in case of any possible demurrage.

Kindly note that your colleague did not leave us with any further
Information. We hope that you respond to us as soon as possible because
if you fail to respond until the expiry date of your package, we may Refer
the package to the British Commission for Welfare as the package
Do not have a return address.

Kindly contact the delivery department (FedEx Delivery Post) with the
Details given below:

FedEx Online Delivery Post
Contact Person: KELLY MORGAN OSAGIE
Dispatch@terrapins.com

Kindly complete the below form and send it to the email address given
above. This is mandatory to reconfirm your Postal address and telephone
Numbers
.

FULL NAMES:
TELEPHONE:
POSTAL ADDRESS:
CITY:
STATE
:
COUNTRY:


As soon as your details are received, our delivery team will give you the
necessary payment procedure so that you can effect the payment for the
Security Keeping Fee. As soon as they confirm your payment Receipt
of$210USD, they will not hesitate to dispatch your package as well as the
attached letter to your residence. It usually takes 24 hours being an
overnight delivery service.

Note that we were not instructed to email you, but due to the high
Priority of your package we had to inform you as your sender did not
Leave us with his phone number because he stated that he just arrived
Nigeria and he hasn’t fix his phone yet. We indeed personally sealed
Your Bank Draft and we found your email contact in the receivers Column as
the recipient of the foremost package.

Ensure to contact the delivery department with the email address given
above and ensure to fill the above form as well to enable a successful
Reconfirmation.

Yours Faithfully,
Mrs. Margaret Blaire.
FedEx Online Team Management.
All rights reserved. © 1995-2009
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This E-mail is only for the above addresses. It may contain Confidential
or Privileged information. If you are not an addressee
you must not copy, distribute, disclose or use any of the information in
it or any attachments.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
FEDEX INTL>>>LICENCE OF FEDERAL EXPRESS CORPERATION.


But then, something looks funny about the spelling of that last word... Looks like a combination of "cooperation" and "corporation"!

Monday, January 26, 2009

The Big Trip -- Day Two Redux

We wandered around Seaside looking at stuff like the cemetery, houses I once lived in, schools, and places I frequented in a former life.

I remember this old building as a grocery store when I was little, now it's a "Super Mercado"!

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We went over to the Dennis the Menace Park and looked around. It's pretty neat, but all the old play equipment that I remember is long gone. I can't even find any pictures on the web, but one old postcard. Sad. The locomotive is still there, happily!

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The ducks are still at the duck pond. But they seem larger, somehow...

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We then headed out to Point Pinos to look at the lighthouse and the sunset, along with everyone else in Monterey who wasn't otherwise occupied.

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The sign is for the seismic monitoring station. I have focusing issues...

I was getting hungry, so we started looking for some place to eat. Cannery row seemed a bit crowded and touristy, so we headed downtown. We walked around downtown, and of all the exotic eateries we COULD have gone to, we ended up at Roundtable Pizza! Hey, it was good, and it had a very cool mural on the wall.

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After stuffing ourselves we walked over to Fisherman's Wharf. It was pretty busy for a Sunday evening, but not TOO busy. We took some pictures of some rowboats in the dark.

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A tripod might have useful here!

We had a time figuring out which building was ye olde customs house, then a bit of disagreement as to whether what I said was a bocci bowling was indeed that. But it turns out that it is. We then decided we needed some more beer. Or one of us did. We found a brewery, not sure of the name, but we are thinking it was possibly Peter B's Brewery & Restauant(enough qualifiers there?). It was pretty noisy, what with the half-dozen television screens, assorted colligiate-types, and a football game on. We sat outside where it was quiet and watch a couple guys playing chess. We drank some kind of Russian Stout Dark stuff. It was pretty stout!

We spent about a hour there, watching folks come and go, then decided we better find some place to stay for the night, so we headed off to motel row to find the waffle motel, better know as Comfort Inn.

Sunday, January 25, 2009

The Big Trio -- Day Two

Across the tracks from the Comfort Inn in Hanford is the Lacey Milling Company. It looks very old and industrialy and interesting, so I took a bunch of photos of it. I shall only inflict a couple on you here, you can go look at the rest on the Zooomr page.

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Someone could turn this into a nice model railroad industry!

I also made a little movie of some locomotives going past.



Notice the flashing lights on the police car at the end. Yes, The Man pulled someone over on a Sunday morning. I walked back to the hotel and had another pastry and coffee. Then we left for Monterey.

Thursday, January 22, 2009

Road Rage, With Garlic

While passing through Gilroy (the Garlic Capital Of The World, don't cha know!) on Sunday we observed a road rage incident right in front of us!

A white truck passed us, then a bit later a white car zoomed up and stopped in front of him and a guy got out and started yelling, then another car came up and a woman got out, too.

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This guy was easing his way out, as were we!! Hey, how come the white car has no front license plate, eh?

DISCLAIMER: All of my recollections of this incident are hazy, and as such I am a terrible witness. Maybe there wasn't any yelling. Maybe they wuz just asking directions. Don't quote me on nuthin'!!!

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Food Of The Gods

One nice thing about Solvang is that you will never go hungry there, as long as you have enough lucre.

Back in the 60s we stopped for lunch and I had a big bowl of sauerkraut. It was great!

On the Big Trip we stopped there for dessert. The first thing we saw was a stork. Storks are good luck! With any luck we would find a bakery soon!

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We walked around a bit, found the Big Shoe as seen on Huell Hower's television program.

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That little girl walking away said, "Mommy, I don't fit in the shoe anymore!"

We wandered around a bit more until we found the Solvang Bakery. What a fabulous place! We each got a pastry.

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I got the eclair, Matt got the cherry-powdered sugar thing. I just KNEW that was going to be a mess!

We walked around a bit more until we found a little park to sit in and consume our goodies!

That powdered sugar WAS messy!

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Hans Christian Andersen had to avert his gaze...

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I did NOT test my blood sugar after this debacle!

I just do not want to know...

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

On The Road

One of the places we ate at was the Taco Temple in Morro Bay.

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It's not your usual taco stand. There was a bit of a line, we had to wait about fifteen minutes to get a table.

I had the tacquito carnitas plate, with a diet Coke.

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It was different, but pretty good. Not a lot of cheese. None, in fact. I love cheese. There was a red salsa on the side that hadn't arrived yet.

I forget what Matt had, but this is it. It was also carnitas, and there are a couple of tortillas down there somewhere.

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It took him a while to eat it. I thought about ordering some nachos while I waited, but I was a good boy and did not. Good thing, too, as we ended up eating some baked goods in Solvang later on...

They serve beer and wine, too, as you can see.

A woman near us was sitting alone, pecking away on her personal electronic device. She had a bottle of wine and chips with salsa along with her meal. I was rather envious, I would never go out and eat alone. It all seemed very European.

I ran across a bad review of the place, they didn't like the food or the service. I found the waitress a little brusque, but in a sort of humorous way. She teased us about not ordering more food, probably because we are the big lads that we are. I heard the fish is excellent here, but I'm not a fish person. If I wanted typical taco stand Mexican food I would go elsewhere. The owners here are going for something different, and I think they've done a good job. I also found the decor nice, and even though it was busy, it wasn't noisy.