Dumb Things I’ve Done

We went to Bed, Bath & Beyond on Monday to buy a couple of new pillows. We have two different sleeping styles, so we usually buy two different styles of pillows. I am a stomach sleeper and Donna is side or back sleeper, so I get a regular pillow and Donna gets a thicker one. Mine is $10 cheaper. I plopped both pillows down on the counter and the kid checking us out didn’t really pay attention, so he just scanned one pillow twice. It was my cheaper pillow he scanned, so in essence we were gifted ten dollars.

Later on we did a little mop-up shopping at Krogers. As we usually do whenever we are not doing our weekly shopping, we used the self-checkout. Donna asked if we should go to the express line because we had a coupon, but I waved her off noting that there was a clerk at the station. Donna also recommended I take $20 cash out for the work week, I agreed. I was buying wine, so I knew I’d have to show ID and scanned the first 4 items, saving the alcohol for last knowing that I wouldn’t be able to go any further until the attendant came over and looked at my license. Beep! “Attendant Has Been Notified To Assist You.” The attendant didn’t hop to, she was tapping away on her phone possibly making plans for when she got off shift, so I went to her. She came back, scanned my ID, then scanned the coupon before heading back to her station and texting. I grabbed the bags, the receipt and another $5 off coupon for my next wine purchase. It wasn’t until we got home that I remembered I never picked up the $20 bill.

Karma? Had pointed out the ten dollar undercharge at B,B & B would I have remembered the twenty at Krogers?

After yesterday’s breakfast with the MMC it was already getting hot, so for the drive home I decided to put our Cool Breeze Scoop in place. The name itself is sort of a misnomer on days like this as the air it scoops and directs into the cabin of the Miata is less than cool, but it does increase air circulation. But when you turn on the air conditioner the incoming air helps move the A/C’d around which does make it slightly cooler inside the cockpit.

When I got home and parked the car in the garage I pulled off the scoop to stow it back in the trunk. That is when I noticed that when I installed the scoop I scraped the heck out of my brand new back vinyl windshield header. I had created several 3 to 4 inch long ragged edge tears in the vinyl. Nice. 🙁 Guess we’ll be giving up the scoop.

So this morning after our breakfast run via bicycle I spent about an hour in the garage removing the damaged vinyl and replacing it. Things always go easier the second time and this was no exception, I bet it took twice as long last Sunday putting just this horizontal piece in place.

When I googled Cool Breeze Scoop this evening to get an image for this post¹ I did land on the site of the makers of the product and learned that I may still be able to use the scoop. I bought this thing in 2007 and the original mounting instructions were to insert one end of the mounting rod into the channel of the gasket that seals the windshield header to the front of the convertible top and slide it to the left while pushing down. This eases the rod in place and then you slide it back and forth a bit to seat it and line it up with the velcro tabs (this sliding is what damaged the vinyl.)

The instructions on the site now say lube up the middle 8-10 inches of the channel with Armor-All or similar and spread the channel at the ends of the rod with fingers and then push straight down. I think if I whittle a 1/16″ or so of material off the scoop where it won’t hit the header when inserted…

A little over two weeks ago we took the Emperor to Columbia to have some maintenance done. Panic Motorsports is closed on the weekends (they’re usually off racing Miatas somewhere), but they were nice enough to give me the gate code, so that Donna and I could drop off the car on Saturday, thereby avoiding the possibility of having to drive the 100 mile round trip on consecutive days.

When we got back home later that day and unloaded the Sonata I couldn’t find my favorite travel mug. Drove up there in the Miata drinking from it. I remember locking up the car and it wasn’t in the cupholder in the center console. Other than that I was unsure of anything else, so after the Emperor had been away at camp for a couple days I sent Steve an email:

From: Brian
To: Steve
Subj: How’s the prognosis?

And more importantly, did you find my Contigo Travel Mug?

From: Steve
To: Brian
Subj: It’s going home tomorrow.

Probably get the transmission out before the end of the day, then slam it back together and align in the morning.

Coffee mug is not on the premises sir.

From: Brian
To: Steve
Subj: Good deal

Let me know before 3:30 tomorrow if it is not. And if it is, let me know the total, because that is the first thing my CFO will ask.

I know I drove up there to drop off the car drinking from it…from that point I don’t know what I did with it. The thing didn’t come back in the support vehicle. There are a couple places I might have put it down, the roof of the Protege (you’d have seen it) and the front seat of the red Miata (probably noticeable when retrieving the keys.) The only other place might have been when I unlocked the gate…ooh, a memory just floated to the surface, my hand placing a bronze colored Contigo travel mug on a wooden fence post.

P.S. “Slam it back together” might be OK amongst us guys, but please use something like “precisely realigned” while the previously mentioned CFO is present…

We brought the Miata home and a day later thanks to Amazon Prime I was drinking from my new Contigo AUTOSEAL West Loop Stainless Steel Travel Mug in Trans-Matte Latte.

Fast forward to yesterday and I had almost forgot about losing the old one when an unexpected package arrived in the mail with a return address of Old Dunbar Road, West Columbia, SC.

From: Brian
To: Steve
Subj: Where Was It?

On the floor of the red Miata?

From: Steve
To: Brian
Subj: Nope

No, apparently you did leave it on the fence post. My neighbor in the cabinet shop came in and found/recovered it, and we haven’t seen each other in a couple weeks. He asked me if I’d lost a coffee cup and I said “No, I don’t drink coffee”. He said, “Well, it sure is a nice one” That’s when it clicked 🙂

One of my fears was that someone had found it and was enjoying drinking from the best travel mug in all the world on my dime. Well, when I opened the box and unscrewed the lid, I knew that wasn’t the case.

Maybe, just maybe, if I drank my coffee black it might have been salvageable, but the 1/2 oz of Dunkin Donuts coffee infused with Dunkin Donuts creamer/sweetener that I had left in there had turned into a petri dish full of the beginnings of some sort of alien life form. A quick rinse in some hot water removed quite a bit of the larger chunks of stringy, slimy black colored gunk. But there were still a crap ton of brownish-black large amoeba looking spots still stuck all over the sides, so I filled it up 3/4 of the way with a diluted solution of Simple Green and shook it up for a few minutes. Oooh, that’s still ugly in there. Now I started working on the insides with hot water, dish soap & a toothbrush.

I’m making slow progress when the CFO notices what I’m doing and says, “Throw it out and get a new one.” I hate to admit defeat, but acquiesce. I was confident I could get the stainless steel body clean enough to drink from, the rubber and plastic fancy mechanism top, not so much. After seeing the inside and how hard it was to try and get clean, I don’t think I would have felt comfortable drinking from it anyway.

I didn’t order a new one because I only need the one and if by some chance I leave this on a fence post somewhere too, a replacement is only $15-20 & 2 days away.

I’ve had this set of cheap JVC earbuds for sometime now, at least 3 years and maybe as long as six. They are used with the laptop to listen to Red Sox games, YouTube videos, and an occasional movie on an airplane.

Early on I knew I needed an easy way to differentiate between left & right buds. They of course have the letter L or R on the appropriate side, but the small silver letter was hard to see on the white body. Each bud is shaped mirror image of the other so that they fit in their own separate ear better, but that is not easy to discern quickly either.

Then I found a tip on the net to tie a small knot in the cord just below the left ear piece. Genius!

Tonight I started a video before having the buds in, so I reached for them, felt the knot and stuffed the left bud in. As I was seating it in the ear I felt a tiny little nub on the back. I felt the same spot on the right one and it was smooth. So I took the left bud back out and looked at it, sure enough there was a 1/64″ diameter x 1/64″ high bit sticking out that was molded onto the back of the bud.

How come I never noticed that before?

Because we had a fairly early flight out of Seattle on Saturday and it was supposed to be rainy we thought it might be less hassle if we returned the rental car on Friday night and spend a night in a hotel near the airport that had shuttle service.

To keep from having to schlep our 50 lb. suitcase from the rental car center to the airport and then to the hotel, we checked into a room at the Fairfield Inn before returning the car. This was a great idea, we dropped the car off and grabbed one of the always waiting shuttle buses to the airport. From the terminal we opted to just walk to the hotel instead of waiting for the hotel shuttle which you have to call for and then it will come get you.

The walk was about 1-3/4 miles, we had done the same walk a week before when we arrived, that time dragging the big ol’ suitcase, so this time it would be a lot easier. We felt like we were Seattle natives, walking in the cool light rain. About a quarter mile from the hotel I realized I still had the key fobs for the rental car in my pocket!

The Nissan Altima we had rented had the now ubiquitous push to start feature and because the Purple Whale has a fob, I guess I was used that weight in my left front pocket. The thing of it was, as we were pulling into rental car center I thought to myself, “Remember to give up the keys.” But somehow with the returning of the GPS and getting the receipt, that thought drifted away.

We turned back around to walk the mile and a half back to the terminal, hop on the rental car center shuttle buss to return the keys to the folks at the National counter. Back outside to board the shuttle back to the terminal. This time we called the hotel and waited patiently for their shuttle.