The First, and Last, Place I Looked

Please tell me this has happened to you. Please tell me I'm not the only one.

I needed a distributor tube to finish a snake repair. Don't worry about what it is, just trust me it's essential and that I had to have it. When I began fixing the drain machine it came from I had set the thing aside for when I could reassemble said snake.

Saturday I was all ready to finish that repair. I could not find that tube anywhere. Ninety minutes of searching came up with zilch, zero, nada. Finally surrendering to the omnipotent forces of drain snake repair I decided to leave it to Monday. Well, after I tripped over some junk which should not have been there to trip over and skinned up my left knee pretty bad. But that story is for another day. You've done that too I'm sure.

I opened the old barn at 6:30 this morning to put out an APB on that distributor tube. May as well start early, I figured, because if I don't find it by 8 I'll just have to go to the parts house and get a replacement on my dime. Right is right, eh?

The first place I looked was the top drawer on my work bench. But it's not there. It cannot possibly be there. That's the first place I looked on Saturday.

It was there. 

How in the name of all that is good and holy could I have overlooked it? It wasn't hidden, wasn't buried under the flotsam and jetsam which hides so much in the Shop. It. Was. Right. There.

Please tell me I'm not the only one who's done that. Please.

I Forget

Whelp, I was supposed to blog about something particular this morning, but I can't remember what it was. The only thing I definitely recall is a promise not to say, Quiet Ron. So I guess the floor is yours Ron old buddy, because I got nuthin'.

Oooh, Shiny

Does it happen to you? Do you have trouble finding things you just had?

I was up at the old barn this morning to make sure I had a repair completed for 10 o'clock. Easy peasy lemon squeezy. Everything was done except for the chuck. I had attached the chuck to the drive shaft of that particular unit and was promptly distracted. Minutes later, I can't find the shaft with the new part. 

Not on the work bench. Not back in the office. Not on a shelf near the bathroom. I couldn't find it. It wasn't near anyplace I'd been, it seemed. You would think that a drive shaft with an obviously new silver chuck would stand out. Nope.

It had reached the point where I had determined to go into my parts bin and simply get new everything to install when I saw what I sought. The drive shaft and chuck were sitting right next to the repair. And I mean right smack dab next to the machine. How could I have not seen it?

It's gonna be a long week...

Distractions

I had a box in my front hall yesterday which I wanted to take to the Shop. But I walked out of the house and into my new old van and drove off without it.

Heavy, disgruntled sigh. I loop the block and park in front of the house and get out of the van. 

My cell rings. I take the call, start chatting with an old friend on the other end, walk up onto the porch, unlock the door, and step inside the house. The conversation goes on another minute or two and we hang up.

Putting the phone in my pocket, I take out my keys, head out the door, lock it, and get back in the van heading towards the old barn. Without the box.

Heavier, disgruntleder sigh. 

I went back home. I did not forget the box a third time. 

Where Oh Where

Where's Phil isn't quite like Where's Waldo. Very like our famous picture book friend, me brother Phil can get lost in a crowd. It's his strength. Even at that, I found myself wondering just where the hell he was last Thursday.

We run the Shop fairly loosey-goosey, so I wasn't all that concerned when he was a few minutes late. I assumed he had some little chore to deal with. I'd take it out of his pay.

When he wasn't around by the time I decided to go for lunch I thought, well, maybe he's got a doctor's appointment which I forgot about. I just locked up and went home for a sandwich.

But after lunch, still no Phil. I began to go from a little miffed to a point of some worry. You know, with all the usual suspects: there was an accident, he had our brother Patrick at the doctor's and some mildly emergency tests needed to be run, that sort of thing. Yet it wasn't like him not to call or text, so part of me was upset about that.

Right around 2:30 I decided that I might lock up and stop by his house. Patrick lives there too and if they weren't out together, maybe he knew what was up. 

It was then that Phil pulled up by the Shop door. He walked around to the side and opened the sliding door of his van to remove the drains snakes he had picked up. That's when I remembered that I had sent him to Toledo to do some running around for the business. I had instructed him the night before not to bother coming up to the old barn but to head to Ohio when he was ready. 

He might have told me he was actually going to do that, though.

$10.71

Ten Dollars and Seventy One Cents is not a relative term. It stands for exactly that: $10.71. However, the value of it in terms of what it can buy might vary.

Last Thursday I had to make a delivery to Grand Rapids, about a five or five and a half hour round trip from Detroit. I was sure I had taken the complete order.  Yet it turns out I had forgotten a three dollar steel clip.

The customer called me in the late afternoon that Thursday, almost as soon as I was back home. I promised to ship it first thing Friday. I did: for $10.71.

That seems like a lot to send a clip which hardly weighed an ounce. But that's where I began to wax philosophic. I have made mistakes in the past which have cost me far more than $10.71, and I certainly wasn't going to make a round trip to Grand Rapids for Ten Dollars and Seventy One Cents. So it wasn't nearly the most costly mistake of my life, and it bought me five hours of time. I can live with that.

Obligatory Sunday

It's the writer's equivalent of walking upstairs and forgetting what you went upstairs for. When I popped awake an hour ago I knew exactly what I was going to write. It was perfect too. You'd have been amazed.

Now, gone. I suppose I didn't help myself. There's the obligatory trip down the hall first thing in the morning (you know what I mean) and the obligatory cup of coffee. Then there's the obligatory look at Facebook and the obligatory check of email, and of course logging onto Blogger to write brought the obligatory look at my most recent stats (they're good). Then there was the obligatory correction I had to make to my blog from yesterday because, accuracy (thanks Jay). Then there's the obligatory putting on a sweatshirt because I'm cold. And then I would write...this.

The worst part is that when I woke I knew I had a good idea. Ah well. Glad I have a good sense of obligatory thinking up drivel. Now I'll have to get the obligatory pen and paper for the nightstand for he next time this happens.

It comes with age

I have gotten into the habit of eating lunch for breakfast. By that I mean I eat after my morning walk and typically skip actual lunch. It gives me longer to burn the daily fat, I figure, and I am typically not hungry at Noon either. Still, it qualifies as lunch for breakfast. I usually eat a sandwich.

So I walked, went by the Shop for a bit to refresh myself on what items I needed to order today, and came home. Going into the kitchen, I gathered all the sandwich stuff I had decided I wanted this morning, made lunch for breakfast, and went before the computer to see what was up. You know, to write this blog and stuff.

As the computer booted up I took a bite of my sandwich. All I tasted was bread and mayo.

I set the food back down on the napkin which I was purposefully using as a plate and traced my steps back to the kitchen table. There sat open lunch meat and an open package of cheese as well as the condiments I had meant to yet did not use. I had absentmindedly made myself a mayonnaise sandwich for lunch.

No, I wasn't going to write about this today. It's simply that I'm curious: does this sort of forgetfulness come with age?

I'm asking for a friend, because I forgot where I was going with this.

The first thing to go

The perils of getting old...

I do a middling amount of work from home, so much so that it isn't unusual to lock up my Shop for a few minutes at a time so I can do something online or what not. I've even cautioned my customers to call if they get to the Shop and it's locked, because I'll come up if I can (it's only a couple blocks away). Often I'll drive my van back and forth to save a few seconds as against walking.

Yesterday as I worked from home I got a call about some cables. I told the guy I was at home, but call when he was close and I'd meet him. An hour or so later he calls; he's at my Shop. I ask him to give me five minutes and I'll be there.

I walk out the door, lock the house and start fumbling in my pocket for my van keys. At the same time I look out at the street: no van. It wasn't in front of the house or across the street from it, or even down the road a bit. My van wasn't there, anywhere.

Of course I began to get mad. I can't believe this is happening! And in the middle of the day! Someone took my van...no, Marty, you took your van. To the Mechanic. Because it had a broken coil spring.

In my defense, this was around 12:30 and I had already been up since 1 AM and driven a 400 mile road trip. But you aren't going to cut me any slack for that, are you?