thewayne | CLEAN CAR!

The core list of what I miss that is not in Alamogordo is as follows (not in any particular order):

-- Good Book Store
-- Good Pizza
-- Good Mexican Food
-- heck, good food period :-)
-- MOVIES
-- and a full-service Car Wash.

There is a marginally-acceptable book store here, a Hasting's. They have a decent magazine selecton, but I really like good used stores. Fortunately, a hundred miles away, there's Coas Books in Las Cruces. EXCELLENT used book store, perhaps not as good as Bookman's, but still pretty darn good. We usually get down to 'Cruces about once a month, so that ususally takes care of me. They're also the only decent game store in the area, so double-plus good!

Pizza, well, we no longer have Peter Piper Pizza, so the overall quality in town has improved. We have Domino's, Papa John's, and two Pizza Hut's (one pick-up/delivery, the other sit-down dining). We also have two independent pizza restaurants that I really need to try, I might get lucky. So most of our pizza business goes to Pizza Hut or Papa John's, but usually I'll just get a frozen at Walmart.

Mexican food. Lots of Mexican restaurants in town. I've eaten at most of them, there's only one that I return to solo. It's ok, but not outstanding. I've been spoiled by El Charro in Tucson and have pretty high standards. They do have good chips and salsa, I will definitely give them that.

Movies. We have five screens. We'll get most big movies, sometimes they'll be delayed a couple of weeks, but they'll come. I doubt we'll get Praerie Home Companion, though. We might have to go down to 'Cruces for that, there's something like 20 screens down there.

CAR WASHES. The topic of this little post. All we have in Alamogordo are gas station car washes. They keep your car clean, or at least somewhat clean, but that's it. And with water restrictions in Cloudcroft, we can't wash cars up here. While I was in Phoenix over the weekend, I got my car washed at a good quality car wash, and it was so beautiful coming out that I wept.

OK, I didn't weep. Would you buy that I was choked up? OK, I was happy. We'll leave it at that. But it was very pretty. And now that I'm home, it'll soon be dirty again. It will be interesting to see if the Armor-All on the dash was a mistake, it was pretty dirty before its bath.