Post:Mid-August
From Fozzee.net
It's been another busy week... I had last Friday off, which gave me time to get some things done around the house, but was in Lincoln last night for my brother's 18th birthday. On Friday, the replacement bolt cover showed up for the Jetta, so it doesn't look like quite such a junker anymore. :)
We stopped at Menards Friday morning to pick up a new toilet lid (the 4-year-old ones were getting pretty gross; Both are now replaced with the antimicrobial ones) and was on the way to the checkout when I spotted some rubber floor mats on sale (I've had my eye on these for some time...) for $7, down from a "going rate" between $15 and $20 each. That made the price around $0.78/sqft (in 9sqft sections). I picked up 7, and added 7 more on Saturday. The "open floor" in my garage is around 15' wide (2-stall garage, less shelves on both sides), so 5 tiles, and 14 gives me (almost) 3 rows for a total of 9' from the front of the workbench against the back wall. These mats seem durable enough to park on, so the fronts of both cars rest on them, and they're really very nice to stand on. Their open pattern means that water and junk fall through, but can be easily vacuumed up. Moreover, water can't get "trapped" underneath. If money were no object, I would have finished out the garage (another 16 mats), but alas... Maybe next time. On an aside, the garage still smells like a tire factory, from the new mats off-gassing...
I also finally got around to finishing the roof rack brackets for the Jetta. I've had an old Yakima rig in the garage for a few years (Thanks, Dad!), and had tried to modify clips in the past with limited success... Sure, I could go out and buy the appropriate (Q103) clips, but I had a box of donor clips (For cars that dont exist anymore) to hack at... Basically today, I decided that the rack had to get useful or get gone. I'm sick of looming projects... Git-R-Done or decide you're just not going to! (paraphrasing GTD's philosophy)
In the non-garage department, we had a few people over for dinner on Friday night; I grilled some sort of bean-and-rice burger, which Becky will probably have posted on her site shortly.
We've also been doing some major cleaning out. Lots of stuff headed to Goodwill, eBay and Craigslist recently or in the near future. It seems somehow liberating being able to get rid of "stuff". More on that next time, I think.
