Miata Washings

R.I.P. Mrs. Feeney

A $1,000,000 We Didn't WinAfter a bad month and a half, that started innocently enough with a fall that a broke a vertebra, my mother passed away in the Hospital of Central Connecticut this morning. We knew her health was failing with the reports I was getting from my siblings, so even though we had visited a couple months ago in April, Donna and I put in for vacation for the week of the 4th of July for another visit. Turns out it was a little less than a week too late. Oh, well, Donna and I spent a few very nice days with her back in April, including a wonderful day trip to see covered bridges in western CT.

She was a great mom (even if she did saddle me with this very painful Red Sox Fan illness thing) and I’ll miss her. My mom and dad split up when I was around 11 years old, so not only did she have to be a mother, but she also had to be the father to me and my sister and brother. Sometimes for the heck of it I would call her and wish her a happy Father’s Day. That’s Mom 3rd from the left in the bottom row from about a dozen years ago when we went to Las Vegas for Donna’s Mom’s 65th birthday. We are still heading up north starting tomorrow, just now for a different reason.

Lunch at the Evergreen Buffet. Various Chinese foodstuffs consumed by each with water to wash it down with.

Meal Cost: $12.30
Tip: $2.00
Spent Today: $14.30
Year to Date: $1394.90
Meals out 79 of a possible 528.

 
I was planning on washing the car before our trip up north anyway, so when I got home I pulled the car under the awning instead of into the garage. Washed the inside of the windows and gave it a quick waxing as well.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/07: 226

Spontaneous Debadging

The Emperor has been surviving on sponge baths, AKA Meguiars Quik Detailer, for a while now, but today after work I gave him a proper washing. Then I decided to lay a coat of wax on there too. I used some Meguiars paste cleaning wax I had under the cabinet. Looks a whole lot better now, but the finish doesn’t feel baby butt smooth. Maybe tomorrow when I get home from work I’ll put another layer of wax on. I have a bottle of something else under there, I think it is called Black Magic and maybe that is what I used last time. If one layer is good, two have got to be better. Right?

While I was taking off the wax, getting it off around the edges of the chrome Mazda logo on the back end, it came loose and one side fell down. The badge is held on by 2 pins and one was broke, so I pulled the badge off the car. There are usually these fancy one way push washers on the pins, but there wasn’t one on the non broken pin and there was some adhesive behind the lettering holding the badge on. What the heck, I might as well take off the MX-5 Miata badge on the other side too. On my ’95 the Mazda was held on by two pins, like this one, and the Miata was just held on by double stick tape. I went in the house and got a piece of dental floss to “saw” through the adhesive. The floss broke three times in about the same spot. That is when I realized on the ’03 the MX-5 Miata badge was held on by two pins as well. I wrapped a screwdriver in a rag and pried off the badge. Turns out it was held on by no adhesive and only one push on washer.

I now have 2 small holes on both sides of the license plate. With the dark color car they are hardly noticeable, but I think I may fill them in with something and then use touch up paint to hide them better. When I debadged the rear on the ’95 I replaced both badges with hand cut replicas made of blue reflective vinyl. The blue on blue was very subtle in the day but really stood out at night when headlights hit them.

Now, as I write this, I know why the badges were held on so haphazardly. The body shop weasels did it when they repaired my little trunk bender from last year. The adjuster put in the cost of new badges when he did the estimate. Satcher Ford’s Body Shop reused the old badges and charged the insurance company for new ones.

Started up, went down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/07: 135

Cross Country

EllenOur neighbor’s kid (well she’s no longer a kid, she’s in college) has been horsing around for for quite a while and we have been to see her do a few events in the area over the years. Today Ellen was competing in the cross-country portion of the 3 day event at Jumping Branch Farm in Montmorenci, where we had seen her show jump before a few years ago. Ellen’s mom invited us this morning to watch with her and she made an excellent guide, filling us equine novices in on the intricacies of 3-day eventing.

All that spectating made us hungry, so we stopped at Maria’s Mexican Restaurant on the way home. Carrnitas for me and two tacos for her. We both had agua helada to drink. Even though I list what we ordered separate, today, like last night, we pretty much divvy up each dish between us 60% what the person orders and 40% of the other’s item.

Meal Cost: $12.65
Tip: $2.35
Spent Today: $15.00
Year to Date: $616.99

I gave the Emperor a proper bath this afternoon. It was already needing it and after driving a mile or so of dirt road to see Ellen jump fences, it was really time. While washing, I noticed that I have a nice scrape on the lower portion of the front chin spoiler. Wonder how long it has been there? It is on the driver’s side, so I would see it each day as we walked back to the car after work, but… The only reason I probably haven’t noticed it before now is that the primer showing through is white and the parking lot lines are white and it must look like their reflection in the spoiler. Because I am forever parking in the farthest out spot and as close to the curb as possible to avoid door dings, I bet I scraped it ever so gently on one of those curbs. I think I have a bit of that spray can of car color left that I can use to touch it up.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/07: 76

Warm Sunday

For the first time this year we went for a bike ride. Fifteen miles and by the time we were done we were glad to get off the thing. Amazing how easily you fall out of shape if you don’t do it often enough. If Donna and I actually verbalized, or in some other way memorialized, our New Year’s resolutions, every year this one would be right up there at the top – Bike Ride More Often.

This afternoon I took advantage of the warm weather to do a little Miata service. I changed the oil & filter at the 52,788 mile mark. Remind me to never buy a Pure One filter for the Miata again. One thing is that the filter wrench doesn’t fit it, but more importantly and maybe it was just this one, but it didn’t have the little rubber gasket that seals it to the engine block. This is something you don’t want to find out like I did either, after you have drained all the oil out of the engine in the only car you own. Makes it kind of hard to take it back to the parts store and complain. Fortunately for me the gasket from the Fram filter I took off, was an exact replacement for the missing one. I definitely have to go back to buying a six pack of OEM filters from a dealer.

The Emperor also got his monthly bath. When I looked in the car wash bucket I realized I was out of car wash soap. I didn’t feel like driving somewhere to pick some up, so I substituted. No I didn’t use dish soap, I know that it is too harsh and will remove all your wax. I used clothes detergent. Yeah, it probably is even worse for the finish of the car, but I was desperate and I was sure it would be OK for the cloth convertible top. At least I didn’t use Rose Petal scented bubble we have in the house, although in hindsight…

Started up, went down, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/07: 19

I ♥ The Internet

No L Decorated the cubical for the holidays today and even Captain Jack Sparrow got into the spirit. Remind me tomorrow to tell you about Dead Man’s Chest and overstock dot com.

I own about 48 DVDs of movies I love, movies that I could watch over and over again. Trouble is I hardly ever watch them again after the first time when the shrink wrap came off. If I have a spare couple hours and think, “Hey let’s watch a movie!” I’ll open the cabinet and start looking at titles to pick a flick, then as I look at the box I watch the whole movie in my head in about 15 seconds, well, I guess I don’t have to watch that one. Pick up the next box, fast forward the movie, put it back. I never get to put one in the player. I think what would work though is one of those 200 disc changers where I could have it play a movie at random, once it got going I know I would enjoy the movie.

I have about 48 movies in my Netflix rental queue. Whenever I add a movie it goes to the bottom of the queue. I could move it to the top, but that would displace movies that are already there and most likely they got to the top by slowly percolating up as I watched the ones ahead of them. I really want to see most of the movies that are in the queue about equally, so its kind of hard for me to pick which ones to see first. Somewhere a while back I took the time to mix the genres up so I wouldn’t have a bunch of the same kind of movie back to back. One comedy, one drama, one sci-fi, one independent, repeat. But over time my careful mix has become scrambled again. What I need is a Netflix Queue Randomizer. I wrote to customer service to ask if they though maybe they could add that to the queue page. The response was typical customer service, “Thanks for your interest. We will hand your idea over to the development team for further study. Don’t call us, we’ll call you.”

Searched for Netflix Queue Randomizer with Google and got a bunch of hits. I found four different ways to accomplish my goal; 1) a script for Greasemonkey, 2) a script that you just copy into the address bar while on the queue page, 3) a small executable file that you could download and 4) a bookmarklet. I used the address bar script a couple of times to really shake things up for now, but I got the bookmarklet one all ready to try next. I ♥ the Internet.

Oh, yeah, I finally washed the Florida bugs off the front of the car. To make it even I washed the whole rest of the car too.

Started down, went up, back down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 499

Once A Week

Wet HoodWashed the Miata tonight and my next door neighbor is probably thinking I wash the Miata once a week. For the last month or so, he’d be right, this was the fourth time since October 5th.

Today’s bath was to get the red dirt off the inside (and outside) of the wheel wells because tomorrow is a MMC event and I want to look pretty. On Tuesday Donna and I delivered dinner, from her department, to a coworker who is home recuperating from surgery. This person lives down a dirt road and it had rained most of Tuesday, so the driving surface was easily transferred from ground to car as we slid precariously around a couple bends in the road.

Started down, went up, went down, back up, back down, up again, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 457

Field Number 9

Field Number 9Tuckered out from a long day yesterday, we went to bed early and then got up early, thereby missing out on the whole “get an extra hour of sleep” thing. After a normal breakfast we went for a nice walk in Hitchcock Woods. One of today’s photos made the grade and I used it for October’s entry in my 2006 Hitchcock Woods Gallery

At 11:30AM we had a date with Field Number 9. There was a baseball tournament going on at Citizen’s Park here in Aiken, our friend’s son Jared’s team was in it and we hadn’t seen him play in a while. When the game was over and we were leaving with Jared’s team having lost 10 to 3, his mom apologized about us having to see such a bad game. As Donna put it, I guess it is hard to be objective when you are a parent. It was a good game to watch for us because it was pretty well played baseball for 13-year olds, no real keystone cops type innings and the weather was near perfect. Sure the Bombers didn’t win, but it wasn’t so much that they lost, they got beat. The other team was hot and hit the stuffing out of the ball, didn’t matter who was on the mound.

Later in the afternoon the Emperor got a nice bath and because I was feeling magnanimous I waxed him as well.

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 437