Fog Lights As DRLs Revisited

Finally accomplished what I set out to do all those weeks ago. To prevent to possible immolation of the dashboard I hooked the same +12v that goes to the fog light relay to where the voltage would be applied to the switch normally (how Mazda does it, just with a different source.) I then hooked the ground from the switch directly to the metal frame where the relays are mounted, bypassing the headlight switch, allowing the fog lights to operate without the need for the low beams to be on. Now if the ignition is on and the switch is pressed, the fog lights are on. I will now train myself to turn them on in the day and off at night, unless of course there is fog.

While I had the combination cruise control and fog light switch out of the dash I swapped the two colored light bulbs. For some odd reason the fog lights had a green lamp and the cruise had an orange one, while when the cruise is active there is a green light in the speedo cluster that says, oddly enough, CRUISE to let you know it is, well, active. My swapperoo matched greens for the cruise. The orange for the fog lights will make sense too when I do the future mod of getting some of that protective film in yellow to put over lights…

Toilet Paper On Your Shoe

Donna and her Mom usually go grocery shopping for the week on Sunday. Yesterday Mom was cooking Easter dinner, so I went with Donna. We took the Miata and because the trunk is a lot smaller than the Civic’s it was a lot fuller. No real problem fitting everything in there, but careless tucking in of the bags left us with the automotive equivalent of toilet paper on the bottom of your shoe, a couple inches of one of the plastic grocery bags stuck out of the trunk and flapped in the wind as we drove down the street. If the store had been more than the mile away it is, I might have pulled over and tucked it in, but we just continued on home hoping no one we knew would see us.

Clean Top

On one hand I like the cloth top on the new Miata, but on the other…It sure looks nice, but because it is a light tan in shows dirt easily. Not only that, but what do you clean it with? The vinyl top was easy, practically whatever was readily available worked fine. You sure can’t use Windex to clean off the bird doo off a cloth top. After some research in the Tops, Windows, Tonneaus, and Boots forum over on Miata.net I bought a 303 Cloth Top Care Kit. It consists of some cleaner specially designed for cloth and then a protectant that helps keep it that way and it restores the waterproofing too.It came via FedEx ground a couple days ago and maybe tomorrow afternoon I’ll go out and wash the car and then use my kit on the top.

Painting The Room Red

Don’t do it. The girl at the paint counter at Home Depot tried to warn us, but we were undaunted. We had picked out a nifty maroon paint color called Vin Rouge to redo our bedroom in and went out last evening to get the paint. The girl, before she even mixed the paint up, explained that red based paints use an ink base for the color as opposed to clay based for the rest of the spectrum. She pointed to a board that was divided into 4 squares, one white , one a light pink, one a dark pink and another a light red. She explained that represented a white wall with one, then two and finally 3 coats of red paint. We want that color we told her and we will see her tomorrow if we needed another can. She also warned us not to panic when we opened the can because the paint would look kind of pink, but would dry dark.

After this morning’s one coat, it looks like we will need at least three coats. The first coat even when dry looks magenta except where there was some overlapping which looks more like the finished maroon. Good news is that it only took a half a gallon to do that first coat. We will be able to get by even if we need four coats on the can we bought yesterday (and the one we bought today.)

Now I know why you see red walls in rich peoples houses, they can afford to hire someone to do all this painting and all the paint they will need to do it. So take my advise if you decide to paint a room red, don’t do it, use wallpaper, one coat will do.

A Wave Of Maroon

Ever since buying the new Garnet Red Miata, things are very slowly turning maroon around here. As I mentioned a couple days ago I will be painting our bedroom this weekend, we picked out our color tonight at Home Depot. Guess what it is called? Vin Rouge. Guess what color it is? Maroonish Red. Oh boy!Going to have to buy me some maroon shirts to replace all the blue ones I own…

Lemonade

On the way home this afternoon when we got to the exit of the parking lot at work, Donna said, “Go left.” As we normally go right, that phrase meant, let’s take the long way home. This is a great stress reliever for both of us, I like the drive and Donna likes the ride.

I proceeded to wind my way home via some of our usual back roads. It was a warm afternoon, but it felt good to be out driving around. The dogwoods are blooming along with the azaleas and everything that is not flowering is turning green. Even though there were a few more cars on our route than usual they didn’t diminish our enjoyment. About 3 miles from home on a relatively lightly trafficed road we passed a little girl selling lemonade along the side of the road. We looked at her as she looked at us as we went by.

It is spring break for the local schools this week and both Donna and I envisioned this little girl telling her mom she was bored and her mom saying, “Why don’t you go sell lemonade out in front of the house,” in an effort to keep her entertained and get her out of mom’s hair.

We got about 200 yards down the road and Donna said, “Do you have anything smaller than that ten?” I pulled out my wallet and sure enough there was a single in there too. We turned around in a driveway a little further along and headed back. The lemonade was 50 cents a glass, so we bought two. We drank it right there at the side of the road and chatted with her a bit. It was from a mix and not too cold, but it did hit spot. When finished we turned around in her driveway and drove off with a wave and toot of the horn.

I think we kind of made her day, I know she made ours.