Can I join the club? I hope all of you have had success in removing your odor from your vehicles. When I bought my new car, the second month of ownership, I was running late to work and decided to take some milk in a spill-proof mug with me and have cereal at work. Well, as I got into the garage at work to park my car, the stupid mug got knocked over and the lid came undone, unleashing lots of fresh low-fat milk!!! all over the front passenger side. Can I tell you how tortured I was at knowing that I did this in my new car??? And have no one else to blame???? Anyway, after a week or so of trying pet-odor removers, carpet cleaners, and simply just soaking the area up with damp clothes, I learnt of applying baking soda on the area - just make sure the area is slightly damped before applying. I left the baking soda sit for about 1 week and then vacuumed feverishly. Odor gone! It was that easy. Now forward 3 years.....I was washing my car and I happened to clean my floor mats with some carpet upholstery cleaner. Well, I didn't notice that I left the passenger floor mat too damp. For the rest of the week, I didn't drive my car. But on the weekend, when I went to get groceries - I jumped in the car to only be greeted by the smell of dead animal!!! After making sure there was no dead animal in the trunk, engine compartment, below the car, underneath the seats, I came across a heavy dead animal odor beneath the passenger side floor mat! And noticed that it was still damp!!! Instantly, I knew this had to have been the return of the milk I spilled three years ago!!! This time around, I tried to treat it with carpet upholstery cleaner with no luck. I also tried using the baking soda. Despite having the baking soda in there overnight, the odor was still active the next morning. However, not as intense as dead animal, but more like a musty, dirty socks smell. I left the baking soda in a bit longer and went to Target and got a specific car upholstrey foam cleaner from Prestige for $4. I vacuumed the baking soda - really vacuumed it and the whole passenger front side. I simply sprayed the foam cleaner and left it in for 2 minutes to soak in. After that, you use the scrubber on the cap to scrub in the foam. And then lift the foam off with a damp clothe. I repeated it one more time. And then let it dry overnight. The next day what an improvement. By day 2, the odor was contained and I hope the milk residue from 3 years ago is gone. Plus, I have a good looking interior passenger carpet! I totally recommend this product.

I am totally and irrationally attached to my old car. We just got a "new" one - a 2008 hyundai santa fe, but I am already thinking about what to get next when we sell this one. We got a killer deal on a low mileage used one and could probably even make money if we sold it today (and would make money if we totaled it). I love having a bigger car with a toddler and I love AWD in bad weather but I do not really love the crappy gas mileage so hoping in a couple of years our options are better for a CUV with better fuel economy (some of the models coming out this year look good so we'll see how good they really are and then look for a good deal in a couple of years). But we just put a lot of money (where a "lot" is relative to the value of the car) our 2001 Honda Accord. NOTHING special about it at all but I just love that car. It needed a new CV joint, 4 new tires, an expensive 100k mile service and new brakes. Somewhat recently it had the timing belt done and a new clutch. It runs like new now and even though it's nothing luxurious or sporty and never was, if I am going somewhere by myself and the weather is OK I will always take the old car. To me it's like that perfectly faded, broken in pair of jeans that are just starting to get good after 10 years. yeah there are a couple of frayed edges but oooh so comfortable. DH wanted to sell it when we got the "new" car and go back down to one car again (we have shared a car for the last 10 years or so that he has been working from home) but it's really much harder to do that with a child... and I just could not bear to give up the old car.

Thanks for the advice regarding batiks. From what I can tell, I like working with batiks better than regular quilting cottons. The only bad thing is that it's had to tell which side is bottom and which is top, and where the selvage is. Last night, I laid all my pieces out and organized them into 7 rows. I started to a little bit in class, but ran short on time and was too tired (and mad about the phone breaking I had to get home so I could cuss t-mobile out, only had that silly phone 4 months!) even though the teacher said she would stay late with me if I wanted to finish. It would have been nice to get her advice and that of the other students about placement of colors. It was tough finding a place to lay all the pieces out in my small apartment. I had to roll the portable dishwasher out of the way and move a chair and garbage pail! It was also really tough to decide where to put the colors so that one wasn't too concentrated in any one area. Some of them still are, but I did the best I could with that pattern. There are 14 colors, one of the blocks has 3 colors, one has 4 and then there are 2 spacers in each row so the colors repeat a lot! I stacked them up in 7 piles, but I was too tired to label the rows and pin last night so I went to bed. When I got up, my cat had played with his toy mousey in my piles and I got to do the whole thing all over again tonight! This time I pinned them to the carpet! I even got the first row sewn together, so only 6 more to go and then I can sew the rows to each other. I'll be glad when it's over... it's been fun, but it's been consuming my life lately! I keep staying up til 4 AM messing with quilt parts and having the strewn all about the living space while dishes and laundry are piling up! My machine does have an extra high lift presser foot... I'm about to see if it will accommodate a 15 pound playful tabby. Jasper is going to be the center piece of my next quilt so he doesn't keep messing me up... though I know part of it is my fault for not confining him or pinning like I should when pieces are loose and scattered. Off to bed now... just think, next week at this time, I may be sleeping under a quilt that I made! Thank you all so very much for being there for me :o) Kate, if you make it to the quilt shop, let me know what you think. I've never been to any other one, so I don't know how it compares. I hear Queen Anne's Lace in Kissimmee rocks, have you been there?

Thanks to all of you for your personal experiences! Chispa, Your point about the ka-chunk is valid, since I may use a wheelchair someday, and will be using a wheeled walker and a wheeled stool. While the wheelchair's tires may not do that, the stool's wheels will, and moving around on the uneven floor will be difficult for that stool. I think that I was not letting myself see that the tile really would leave an uneven floor surface. I was thinking that the slippery surface was not an issue because of all of the grout, so your experience is helpful there, too. The tiles are only 2" x 2.25" and I was imagining the foot having contact with lots of grout with each step. If the recessed grout really does not do this, though, it is good to know! A Sawenz, this is supposed to be a floor tile, and it is porcelain, but I see your point about the PEI number. I will keep that in mind as I look at other floor tiles. I have been looking for porcelain, rather than ceramic, for the harder material.