Monday, November 12, 2012

what's new?

Should I just pick this up like I never dropped it?

Last weekend the following things happened:
-UT beat Iowa State (yay)
-A&M beat Alabama (????)
-I spent 3 hours washing my car and I'm still not done
-Scream-a-thon

The football games were football. That's that. As far as washing my car, I decided that I wanted to take the time and really clean my car. That means bonding with it and hand-washing it myself, versus paying $8 at a car wash. It had been a long while since my car had been washed, so it had a pretty solid layer of grime. I pre-rinsed it and then worked a section at a time, soaping and rinsing. All-throughout, I was keeping the whole car wet because our water is pretty hard and it would start leaving water spots. Well, all of this went fairly smoothly until I went to go dry it. It turns out cheaping out on some terry towels at AutoZone was a bad idea; the towels had zero absorbing qualities. That was both annoying and tedious, going over the same spots of the car over and over again, spreading the water around with the cheap towels because it wasn't actually absorbing water (well, technically it was but it was all but useless).

Once dried, I worked a clay bar for the first time. You use a spray to lubricate the paint, and then take a clay bar (literally a bar of clay) and rub it across your paint. It pulls up various specks and other contaminants that you missed during washing to really smooth out your paint. That helps for the next step, waxing. A friend at work gave me an old spray bottle of some wax he thought I should try. It was fairly easy to use — just spray and wipe. I almost finished Windexing my windows before I had to stop for Scream-a-thon. Today I will wrap up cleaning the windows, vacuuming the inside, and tidying up my rims. If I was a true car-washing enthusiast I would have polished and sealed as well, but considering this already took 3 hours, it was enough for me.

Scream-a-thon was basically an 8 hour adventure where we watched all four Scream movies back-to-back. It was both enjoyable and tedious. The middle Scream movies aren't as good at the first and most recent, so it was a slight lull in the middle for me. The fourth one is the best in my opinion so it was a good way to wrap up.