Thursday

It was incredibly warm on Thursday morning. I didn’t even wear a coat to work!

I walked outside at 10:00 a.m. and it was wonderful.

I had to go to CVS for a birthday card for my Brother Joe. But, to tell you the truth, since the close of I-96 and the resultant increase of car and truck (especially semi-truck) traffic on Plymouth Road, it’s no longer time-effective to go home at lunch.

So, I went to the Newburgh Grille and had a cup of their lemon chicken rice soup (not that great, but WAY better than their Chicken and dumpling soup). I’m not complaining (or maybe I am) but the only soup they make that’s really good is their ham and bean soup (only available on Tuesdays). Then I ate one of their patty melts. Those are great!

I went to CVS and got my birthday card. I still had some time left, so I drove across the street (and across Newburgh) to the car wash. I knew it was supposed to rain sometime this afternoon, but I wanted to get the mud and crud off.

Now there are a ton of carwashes around where I work and where I live, but this one has a guy (or sometimes guys) who towel dry your vehicle after it comes out of the tunnel.

I drove back to work and got on with my afternoon. I walked outside at 3:00 p.m., but noticed the wind had picked up and the clouds were rolling in. Uh, oh…

But, it did get up to 65 degrees F. today! It still hadn’t rained when I drove home.

I pulled in the garage, shut the door, and went inside. I treated Caley and poured a glass of cranberry juice. I turned on the news and went to the bathroom. That’s when I discovered it was raining! The gods of truck-washing had smiled on me!

Now, as I think I mentioned, I was pretty sore from bending over and sanding that table. So, I didn’t do anything on it Thursday night. But, what I did do is take out the truck’s driver side floor mat. It had a lot of white salt-marks on it. I am hoping (against hope) the salt/snow season is over, so I thought I should deal with it.

I researched it and the simplest fix seemed to be combining one cup of warm water with one cup of white vinegar in a spray bottle. So I did that. I sprayed the mat with the solution and then wiped it off with a damp kitchen towel.

Note: Some people will tell you to scrub the spot with a brush. But, my friend B___ and other posts say that since it’s basically a carpet with a rubber backing, you damage the fibers doing that. Since I screwed up my couch with a brush and carpet cleaner (cat barf) exactly that way, I got the hint.

When it seemed to be clean, I hung it up over the laundry tub overnight (both to dry and to air out). I don’t want my truck to smell like a pickle…

For dinner, I heated up the last two bratwurst and the remaining wild rice.

There didn’t seem to be anything interesting on TV (it’s like that sometimes and I still haven’t got my Roku to work) so I watched Sylvester Stallone in “First Blood” for the millionth time. Then I went to bed.