Getting more not done by 9 than most people fail to do in a day

I enjoy my Scion. I really do. It’s the first car that I’ve ever named. I like having a car that has some real power and handling. I do not like that the tires tend to deflate and attract nails. I’ve had three nail patches since I got the car. The yellow light on the dashboard comes on too often. After my latest oil change/nail removal I had been in the clear. The light came on last week. I went to the QT closest to work. Out of order. I tried the QT at home. Same. Last I checked, I didn’t see the yellow plastic bag over the machine anymore so I thought I could stop by early in the morning.

Our condo is in the midst of a remodel, so our cable and internet are unplugged. We’re eating out a lot this week. I’ve been scraping through the fridge for leftovers every day. I had a slight issue, though. During Thanksgiving I made the mistake of bringing out my laptop, with my jump drive attached, to the couch of the house in which we were staying. My nephew dove onto the couch and broke the jump drive. I would have cried had I owned tear ducts. I sent the pieces that remained to a service (Merry Christmas, Ryan) that e-mailed me a link to my files.

I got the e-mail on Monday. The only Internet connection we had was a sketchy unsecured line that moved at dial-up speed. Plus, my laptop didn’t have the storage room for the jump drive. I had to come up with a plan.

I had a simple morning plan. Get up, put the leftover panang in my lunch bag and everything else in my computer bag. Go to get my tire filled, stop at Target to look for a jump drive, go to Panera and use their Wi-Fi to download the files, and come into work a hero. I pulled into the gas station at 7:50. That was the extent of things going as planned. The woman in front of me in the air line, as it were, took the usual five minutes to fill her tires. I walked around my car and took off the four screws to I could put in the air without any inconvenience. I grabbed the air hose and pressed the button. Someone had removed the piece of the hose that connected to the tire. Fail one.

Target was next. You will never see as many people working at a Target as when it just opens. There are people moving about like it’s a rush. When I got to the “media storage” row, I looked over the options. There was an 8 GB flash drive on sale for $19.99. Bingo. Most of the drives were accessible by sliding their plastic handles over the metal holder. For the model I wanted, there was a plastic device keeping you from doing so. Suddenly, there were no employees nearby. I tried to break the plastic handle with my keys. The plastic containers have been designed in a way that you couldn’t cut through them with a welding torch. Once you do manage to get through, the plastic is so sharp that if you cut yourself you’d bleed out in minutes. I found a wandering employee and he freed the device. When I got to the register, the lady said “$41.19, please.” Wait, wasn’t this model on sale? I went back to the display, saw the sale price and the sign that said it expired on December 5. Of all the. . . My day turned when she agreed to sell me the drive at the sale price.

I drove to the Panera close to work. It wasn’t quite like my experience a couple of days ago when Alison and I went to a Caribou Coffee to use the Wi-Fi and there were 1.2 laptops per person. I ordered a “low fat” strawberry smoothie and set up the computer. I managed not to draw blood while opening the jump drive’s plastic casing. It installed and after a couple of minutes I was connected. I downloaded the software necessary to extract my files. I started to download my files.

I go back to the dial-up comment. Remember when you would download something from the Web and it would take four hours? That’s not quite the expectation now. When I first started downloading, my computer told me that it would take 22 hours. The transfer rate was slow. It eventually dropped to slightly less than two hours. I needed to be in the office in 15 minutes. For frak’s sake. I shut down and went to work, where I was able to complete the download. My files are safe.

By the way, the smoothies at Panera are quite good, and they give you a giant straw. That’s a key item in any milkshake-like beverage. Remember the DQ shakes that seemed cement-like in their consistency?

I didn’t complete all my tasks in a timely fashion, but I did complete them. The next fun task will be trying to get the TV and Internet/computers hooked back up when our hardwoods are finished.