Shiny clean car

My car is home again, and much cleaner than when I dropped it off. The dealer's body shop does a nice job on things, I have to say. One of the nice things about body-shop work is that they wash the car at some point. And I think I noticed a whiff of Windex when I got in this morning to drive it home.

On the other hand, the clean sparkliness does make it very easy to tell that the car's had some work done. Not that the paint doesn't match, because it does, perfectly. But, when it's clean, it's pretty obvious that 80% of the car has 8 years worth of little scuffs, scratches, and cart dings. The door and quarterpanel, on the other hand, have a just-off-the-showroom-floor finish, and well, it kind of stands out. :) Of course, given how (in)frequently I wash my poor car, most of the time the new finish will be covered in a nice layer of dust, courtesy of the lawn crew. It's the down-side to parking under a car port - my car collects the dust, but never gets a nice rain to rinse it off.

Other tidbits:

• The Sesame Street blocks arrived yesterday, and were a steal for $6. We haven't opened the box yet, but they seem to be made of a wood with some heft to it, and they're about 1.75" square, so they're about the size of the Peek-a-blocks. Big enough not to be a hazard, small enough to be grabbable.
• The One Skein book I've been waiting for finally made it back to the library. Unfortunately, it's about 90% knitting, so it won't be as helpful as I thought.
  
• I ordered some yarn last night, from Joann.com. It's the Patons Canadiana yarn, which I can only find online. Which makes it hard to do any color coordination. I need something to go with 7 skeins of very purple yarn, so I ended up ordering one skein of every purple shade, plus two shades of white, some blues, and two shades of rosewood. I'll end up having some colors that don't work, which is why I wanted to see the One Skein book - it's all patterns that take one skein of yarn or less.
• I think I'm giving up on having digital photos printed at Target. I've gone in twice now, once with a USB key, once with a SmartMedia card, and both times, neither machine would read the media. HyVee will be my next attempt. I'm trying to avoid Walmart, for various reasons, and since we still use dial-up, uploading dozens of pictures to an online site can take a while.
  
• After the photo attempt at Target, El Burrito and I went up to Gymboree, where I'd heard they were having a sale. They are. 99-cent socks, although the cutest ones (red argyle, and a pair with a horse head on the top) were sold out in his size. I did get a few things, at about 75% off. We came home with 2 pair of socks (one blue, one cream with a squirrel face), a nice green plaid shirt for $4.99 (reg. $24.50), zip-up cardigan for $6.99 (reg 32.50), and two long-sleeved romper type things, $6.99 each, marked down from $28.50. Total: $30, for clothes that would have been $120 originally. Oy! Gymboree is even more of a hazard than Carters is. Their things are usually really cute, and well-made, but the regular prices are a little out of my comfort zone. 75% or 80% off is much more my taste.
• The weather last week was colder than I realized. We set a new record low last week, after getting within a degree of a record high the week before. The magnolia at the corner of the building looks frozen, as do the forsythia along the sidewalk and the redbud south of our deck. I'm guessing the farmers market will be a little skimpy on the tree fruit this year, and the paper said that the local vineyards may be pretty bad off as well.