See that thing on the armrest?

The thing on the armrest is the cover, screws, and lightbulb for my cargo light. Here is where it normally is:

Notice the lack of bulb and cover? (Oh, and click the pic!)

Both of my windows were rolled up, and both doors were locked. Which means someone broke into my truck just to put that in there. Nothing was stolen. Was the light on and they wanted to save my battery? Was it on and bothering them? Is someone messing with me? Just a joke? Just a little nudge to let me know that someone could break in my truck at any time? Who knows? Not this guy.

If you know anything about this, please let me know. It has me somewhat confused and a little creeped out. In the meantime, I’m gonna fix that hole in the passenger door and get my padlock apparatus working again.

]]> http://636benjamin.com/2009/09/58/feed/ 1 http://636benjamin.com/2009/08/a-clean-floor/ http://636benjamin.com/2009/08/a-clean-floor/#comments Sat, 22 Aug 2009 15:41:03 +0000 636benjamin http://636benjamin.com/?p=51 So, I started this process of cleaning my place. I don’t mean pick it up, I mean clean. It all started a few weeks ago, when I had an unpleasant experience with a small creature. It was just a bug, but enough to convince me that I needed to clean up. So, I’ve moved most of my furniture (all this with a lot of help from Janelle) and vacuumed behind things. Stuff has been dusted, picked up, scrubbed, put away, taken care of, you get the idea.

Well, my kitchen floor hadn’t been cleaned in any way for a long time. I’m thinking it’d been since I move in, so that floor had about 4 years of dirt on it. Now, I have vacuumed and swept in there, but no mopping or anything. So, I needed to go buy a mop, mop bucket, and some mop juice. I got all that stuff last week and couldn’t wait to get started. So yesterday I set off to get some stuff clean. Here is what I saw when I went to start:

As you can see, I didn't do this little test in Target.

Awesome. On a related note, does anyone have a use for a 10 quart bucket?

Lucky for me, my dad left some 5-Gallon buckets here, so here is my new mop bucket:

HHHHOOOOORRRRRRRAAAAAAAYYYYY!!!!!

My floor really needed some cleaning. I did 3 rounds with soap, then a round of clean water. Then I let it dry then I vacuumed some stuff up. Then 1 more soap and 2 more clean rounds. They were all really dirty. Here is some evidence:

This was how dirty the water was after the first soap round.

This was the "clean" water. I have to do this more often.

So, that was part of what I accomplished yesterday. I also got some work done, the paying kind.

To wrap up, I will be mopping much more often, and no, I will not help you mop your dirty floor.

This is my old jar. That's not raspberry jelly, its fat.

So, anytime I cook ground meat, I always drain the fat into a jar. I use a jar, because you shouldn’t just wash it down the drain, and it’s too hot to just pour into the trash. Here is the new jar I’ve started:

There was a lot of fat in that round of beef and sausage.

So, that is what I do when I cook. I just for some reason thought this would be a great topic to blog about. I hope I didn’t gross you out. Thanks for reading!

So, then it was on to my place to continue my bi-annual (at best) deep cleaning of my place. Today’s mission: Kitchen, bathroom and finish the living room. I started going through boxes of junk I had in the living room, pitching stuff that at one time I thought very important to keep forever (plastic stethoscope, Xtreme Radio air freshener, sparkly rock, among a lot of other things). Among all that stuff was nearly every ticket stub for anything I have ever been too. There were several DC Talk concert tickets, a Ratt ticket, countless Blues and Cardinals tickets (including some Blues 1993 playoff tickets) and a ton of movie stubs. Someday I plan to make a scrapbook, if I ever get artsy. It’d be awesome.

Among the gems I found, were some noted to a speech I apparently gave to someone at some point. I only found note cards 2-6, but the basis of the speech surrounded the history and awesomeness of Petra. Then I moved on to DC Talk, who, I noted, was my favorite band of all time. I finished this stellar speech with Michael Whittaker Smith (his website also has a section called SmittyTV. I recommend you check it out. I also just told Janelle I would probably resemble a 13 year old girl at a New Kids concert in the mid 90s if I ever met him even today), my favorite artist of all time. And yes, I made the distinction that DC Talk is a band and MWS is a soloist, which is how they can both be my all time favorites. It must have been the best speech ever.

So, I threw away a whole trach can full of stuff, and consolidated 4 big boxes into 2 small ones. Success. I also cleaned my shower (while I showered), but I left the rest of the bathroom and kitchen to (hopefully) tomorrow. Still a successful day. But I mentioned sorrow in the title. So, what was sorrowful? Let me show you.

It was a sad day at this Muehleisen house.

Yes, today I took down my Christmas tree. For those that don’t know, its been up for 4 years. It was a great conversation piece. But, I think it might have been a good call to take it down. It was caked with dust. It was time. I still have a few Christmas lights up though, so it’s still always Christmas at my house.

Now, I’m gonna help Janelle rearrange the living room, then enjoy some delightful taco salad. Great night coming, it’ll probably include some Skeet.