Scratch and Sniff Post

Smell MeWhen I entered the garage this morning to get in the car I was struck by an odd smell. A very chemical smell. I opened the garage door and it was quickly disbursed.

I didn’t recognize it, wasn’t motor oil, wasn’t gasoline and it was not anti-freeze. Wasn’t coming from the car at all. It really only smelled right on the stairs from the house to the garage. I opened the cabinet doors one by one and sniffed. It was faintly there, but I was unable to pinpoint it. Didn’t smell like paint and it wasn’t natural gas. It had a sweet odor, so it certainly wasn’t a dead critter under the house.

As I pulled into the garage tonight after work the smell was still there, so I started a more thorough search of the garage. Wasn’t the fire ant killer or the potting soil. Not the 3 in 1 oil or the liquid wrench. Didn’t come from the car wax or Amour-All. Not the Simple Green nor the tire shine. Wasn’t coming from the bicycle chain lube. Ditto the “clean” rags. Not the wallpaper paste or the wallpaper remover. Kind of smells like it was coming from the spray paint area. Didn’t smell like paint, but I started pulling out the dozen cans of partially full cans. What’s this?

AH HA! A pint can of Paint & Varnish Remover way in the back. As soon as I put it on the counter I knew I’d found the culprit. I don’t remember ever buying this. Probably purchased when we first moved into the place to clean paint off the molding or something. Pretty toxic stuff I guess, only took 18 years to eat right through the metal can.

Started down, went up, back down, back up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/08: 46

The BMWs Are Coming, The BMWs Are Coming.

BMW Ultimate Drive? supporting Susan G. Komen for the Cure

Georgia
Savannah ? Monday, 3/24
Augusta ? Tuesday, 3/25
Athens ? Wednesday, 3/26

South Carolina
Greenville ? Saturday, 3/29
Columbia ? Tuesday, 12/9
Charleston ? Wednesday, 12/10

North Carolina
Charlotte ? Thursday, 12/4
Asheville ? Friday, 12/12

We have already put in for a vacation day for the Augusta event on March 25th. Whether we have any vacation days left in December to do the one in Columbia or Charleston remains to be seen. Registration opens for Augusta tomorrow and I’m going to sign up to drive the two new models for this year, the 1 Series and the X6. Registration is not absolutely necessary unless you can only be there at a certain time and want to drive a certain car. Donna and I will spend several hours there, so we will hitch a ride in anything that is sitting there. Hopefully we will drive at least 8 of the 14 mile loops so we can make it over the $100 mark.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/08: 42

Weekend Update

Car News: For some reason the BMW 6 Series convertible is back at the house down the street. The 5 Series sedan is gone. This guy must sell BMWs for a living or he has big repair issues with the 7 Series and swaps around loaner cars.

Other Car News: Halfway between here and there, some one traded in their Hummer H2 for a BMW Z4. It is an M edition no less. So I guess I was right about the Z4M, just off by a couple houses on the location.

Outdoors: Although we do enjoy laying around the house doing nothing, it can’t be the only thing, as we found out yesterday. By early last evening we had cabin fever, so today to stave off the late in the day boredom, we went for a walk in Hitchcock Woods around mid-day.

Komen’s Coming: They have got the BMW Ultimate Drive map for 2008 online. Shiny new BMWs with pink vinyl accents will be stopping in Augusta on Tuesday, March 25th. Donna and I will be putting in for our vacation day tomorrow.

Innings Pitched. Yesterday was the first official workout of Spring Training for pitchers and catchers in Fort Meyers. The FRS title defense begins soon.

Everthing Happens For A Reason: Only two of the famous numbers were picked in Saturday’s PowerBall drawing — 4 & 8

Sunday Night: And it is time to go watch some Law & Order: Criminal Intent on Bravo.

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/08: 40

We Are Lost Souls

I spent the whole day wearing my Oceanic Airlines T-shirt. The seller said it was pre-shrunk, but there was a lot of shrunk still left in it. After washing it still fits, but it is a little short, so I ordered an XXL in dark blue for back-up.

At one point this afternoon I was on the couch trolling the net for Lost stuff using links from other Lost pages while Donna was in the other room on the desktop reading the Lost forums. The best find is a toss-up between a blog from Jorge Garcia the actor who plays Hugo Reyes, AKA Hurley — Dispatches from the Island or some nude images of Mira Furlan who plays Danielle Rousseau, or as Sawyer refers to her, the French Chick from a 1985 Yugoslavian movie called ‘When Father Was Away on Business’.

With nothing left to watch DVD-wise, this evening, using the laptop, resting on the dinner table between us, we went online to ABC.com and rewatched the 3rd episode of season 4, The Economist, to see what all the losties on the forums were talking about.

We bought our next 5-week Powerball ticket today. Instead of the usual quick pick, we opted to pick our own — 4-8-15-16-23-42. That’s right, we are risking the curse, which I figure in this case will be nothing more than having to share the prize with thousands of fans of the show.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/08: 40

Where Is My Kevlar Underwear?

Because it was a borderline nice spring day and we were buoyed with optimism from our last successful visit, Donna and I decided to walk to Roma Pizza for some lunch. As we approached the end of our street there were two white Ford Crown Victorias parked side by side with one person leaning in the window of one of the cars. As he stood up he velcroed something black around his midsection.

When we reached him, Donna asked him if it was safe to keep walking. We weren’t too far from home and didn’t mind turning around now. He said, “Yeah, go ahead. There was an armed robbery at a quick cash place on Whiskey Road.” We continued on our way.

Hey, wait a minute, there is one of those places right next door to our destination. As we walked we discussed if maybe we shouldn’t be walking around here right now. When we arrived at the shopping center there were police vehicles everywhere. City cops, county sheriffs and the State police were milling about law enforcement vehicles of all shapes and descriptions.

While we were eating a local news crew set up outside and created quite a stir among the patrons and staff alike. There presence let us know that something important had transpired.

Too bad that it wasn’t during the local mid day news broadcast, because then we could have watched the live news feed on the TV above the bar with one eye while seeing the reporter and camera man with the other as we ate our pizza.

And it was a good thing that we didn’t start out for lunch a half hour earlier or we might have stumbled onto the robbers as they exited the cash place through the back door.

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/08: 38

Now That’s Interesting

On tonight’s episode of Lost we find out that the island has some strange power over the surrounding environment and every person on it. Oh, that’s right, we already knew that…

So of the “Oceanic 6” that get off the island, we now know 2/3rds of them. In the “flash forwards” so far we have found out that Jack is so afraid of something that he goes back to being a drunk, Hurley is so afraid of something that he hides out in a funny farm, Kate is so afraid of something that she is hiding and now we discover that Sayid is so afraid of Ben he kills people.

Interesting thing about watching the show on “live” TV is watching the commercials. For the longest time I figured I was the whole wrong demographic for the show. The ads skewed way young. Old Navy clothing, birth control pills, the hip new Ford car that you can talk to get it change the music playing instead of the archaic button pushing, etc. But finally in the next to the last commercial break I felt better, there was an ad for Viagra.

Speaking of Old Navy ads, was the new Urban Safari look advertised inspired by the whole running through the jungle on Lost or is that the new look and they picked Lost to sell it because of the whole running through jungle thing?

Started up, went down, still down.
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I Know Her

We finished watching the last 3 episodes of season 3 tonight and made a vow to wait at least 4 months before we start over again with season 1.

After we finished watching Lost I caught up with the latest episode of the Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles online. Midway through there is this scene between the man that Sarah was living with prior to her jumping ahead 8 years into 2007 and his current wife (the Sarah replacement if you will.) He was trying to convince her that he wasn’t lying, that he hadn’t seen Sarah recently. The wife looked real familiar. I had seen her in something recently. Real recent. No, it couldn’t be. With a quick check of IMDB and I found out it was who I thought it was — Penny!

Sonya Walger

Started up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/08: 37