Velcrometer
Throwing stuff at the internet to see what sticks
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M. Giant's Velcrometer Throwing stuff at the internet to see what sticks |
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Wednesday, November 11, 2009 Not Getting Things Done I had the afternoon off and I was already in the car, so I was going to go pick up Trash's birthday present really quick. Trash called my cell and insisted I come home first instead. Yes, Veteran's Day might be a little early to start hanging Christmas lights on the roofline, but she doesn't like me up there when there's snow and ice on the ground and when am I going to have another chance to do it when it's 60 degrees outside? Without moving out of state, that is? I told her I'd just do my "errands" and then come home and get it done quickly. She said I could get it done quickly and then go do my errands. Or better yet, save even more time and order online. So I deferred to her birthday power and headed home. The first thing I needed to do was pull down the lights from the garage ceiling, where they had served as sole illumination for the haunted house. The nice thing about hanging lights for Halloween as opposed to for Christmas is that no one cares if they look random and tangled, but the downside is then you have to get them down without using a hedge clipper. Then I had to get the staple gun and the staples. I found both reasonably quickly, but one didn't fit inside the other, so I had to make a trip to the hardware store to get the right kind of staples. I thought about making a run for it and dong the birthday shopping while I was out, but I'm not good at switching tasks. Then I got home and found that a piece of my staple gun was missing, so I had to jury-rig it with duct-tape, and even then it only works when I hold it at a certain angle. Then I couldn't find the adapter that I've been using for 16 years that lets me plug light strings into my porch light socket. Fortunately I did find a yard stake with six outlets on it with a built-in timer and everything, but I couldn't get it to work at all. Trash suggested I hang the lights now and then plug them in later, which she never would have done had she ever hung a string of lights in her life. You have to have them plugged in as you're installing them, otherwise how will you know they suddenly don't work any more for no reason? Anyway, by the time I'd done most of what I need a ladder for, more than two hours had passed. So much for my timeline. But then, that night, after M. Edium was asleep, I got right on ordering her birthday gifts online. That went great, by comparison. I went into two different online vendors' sites through a points reward site we're part of, kept getting hung up, booted out, and kicked back to the beginning, all while distracted by Glee and Top Chef playing in the background, changed the stuff in the order around a bunch of times to spend just enough to get free shipping, attempted to use a store credit to do an online order (you can't do that), went around in circles trying to use a gift card and a credit card, and two hours later I didn't know what I'd ordered, from where, whether I'm getting my loyalty points, when or if the package will get here, or how much I'd actually spent. So that's a total of four hours spent attempting to accomplish two projects I thought would take a matter of minutes each. Sometimes I wonder how I ever get anything done at all. posted by M. Giant 8:58 PM 0 comments 0 Comments:
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