52 New Things

I cam across this idea from a blog that I follow. The author has teamed up with another blog to bring the world ’52 New Things.’ The idea is, every week you have to try something new. It doesn't matter what it is, but it must be something you’ve never done/eaten/sung/ran etc before. I think it sounds like fun! I really love the idea so I’m going to tag along for the ride.

Seeing as I’m one week behind in the game I’m going to write two ’52 New Things’ this week.
The first new thing I’ve tried this year was… mouse mat cleaning. I know, it sounds weird but there was some sort of method to my madness or at least that's the excuse I'm going to use. I figure that I touch my mouse everyday and the mat touches the mouse (obviously!) which gets covered in all sorts of germs and lovelies that are out to harm my fragile self. I've never cleaned a mouse mat before so I thought I would give it a go. I took my Medical Area Spray bottle and went to town on my mouse mat.

After spraying three squirts on my mouse mat I realised that liquids and mouse mat's don't mix very well and I should probably abort the mission at the first possible exit. Not only did the Medical Area Cleaner soak into the mouse mate and give off a hospital smell that still permeated the air 2hrs after I sprayed it, but it also dribbled out of the mat onto my desk. The cleaning liquid went into the mat clear and lightly misty… it came out brown and fast!

It’s not enough to have Medical Cleaner running down your desk threatening your note book and named stationery, (yes named stationery… it made sense to put my name of my things in primary school and it still makes sense now) the brown concoction that stank like hospital mop water started to stick to my table top and no amount of napkin scrubbing was picking it up. All the bloody napkins seemed to be doing was moving a pool of brown liquid around my desk making it even stickier! True, I was using horrible scratchy paper napkins to try and soak it up but surely even the most terrible of napkins need some sort of absorbency level? I feel a consumer review coming on…

It's to the point that I'm giving up. I'm now left with a sticky desk and wet mouse mat that I can’t rest my wrist on for fear of the itchies setting in. In a word, my mouse mat is GROSS! Far worse now than what it started out as. I would like to share with the masses the following piece of advice; when deciding to clean your mouse mat with industrial strength cleaner, I would recommend you just throw the damn thing a away and get a new one!

So my ’52 New Things,’ is off to shaky, dodgy smelling, sticky start but at least I’m giving it ago!