Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Two Laughs and a Lucky Guess

One lucky guess and two good laughs, all before lunch!   We've been mystified by an awful stink in the truck -- like hamburger gone bad! (Not laughing about that!)  No stinky clothes in the back seat, no varmints smushed in the engine compartment, nothing but paper in the glove compartment**, . . .  couldn't find a reason.  And hanging a green pine tree deoderizer just changed the stink to a different bad smell.  We were just about ready to ask Brickner's mechanics to look inside the dash and air vents. 

This morning I looked in the back seat again, on the passenger side this time:  aha!  One green pepper that rolled out of the farm market sack (two weeks ago!) had deteriorated into a puddle of yuck.  And we are so lucky:  the pepper had been residing in a hard plastic tray area alongside the seat; not on the seat, not in the carpet on the floor.  Easy to soak up and wash out.   Also explains why we paid for 10 green peppers and had only 9 to cut up for the freezer. 

Second laugh:  As long as I was mopping out that little tray I cleaned off the dash and pockets in the doors
. . . and found 4 really old gas receipts.  In Nov, 1999 (12 years ago; the truck was brand new then) regular unleaded gas was $1.289 per gallon.  By Feb. 2000 gas had gone up to $1.499.  And 6 years ago, in Nov. 2005, it was $2.399 per gallon.  Today we paid $3.699 / gallon.

** "Stink in the glove compartment" reminded me of an episode with the Studebaker truck Pa drove when we were kids.  One spring day, while out on Town of Birch business (Pa was on the Town Board), Pa picked up a baby skunk from alongside the road.  Needing to finish the Town business first, he stashed the baby in the glove compartment.  Skunky was too small to eject musk himself, but he kind of reeked of it anyway.  Once home Pa built a cage for the baby and we kids fed it and kept it all summer, until the family dog worried the wire loose on the cage and let Skunky escape.   Needless to say, Ma was not pleased about transporting skunks in the glove box.

Thursday, September 15, 2011

Spider Tale

Where's the spider?  (In the first photos, that is)
Oh, it took a black background to get the camera to focus on spider, not on leaves. So 2nd pic (gray-ish background) is spider's front side, and 3rd pic is his back side . . . . And since he/she was head-down in the web, that's how the photos are too.