Road awareness

Joe is trying to help promote "road awareness" when I'm driving.  It seems that on long trips with him, I have a tendency to get behind the wheel and stop paying any attention to what road I'm on.

So far, on the way to Wisconsin that had the negative affect of taking us two hours out of our way up to Houghton (hi, Michigan Tech!) when we should have been heading west across the UP.  How was I supposed to know the road I was on was really two roads that at some point would split with seemingly zero notification*?  And that one of those roads would head north instead of west?

The good news is that even though our 10 hour trip became a 12 hour trip, we ended up arriving within 60 seconds of the rest of his family, and we were both able to (mostly) laugh it off.  His parents recommended using a GPS, which as it turns out, we had with us in the car and just hadn't turned on since Joe knew where he was going.  Apparently I did not.

Fast forward a few months to last week, and we were on our way back from Iowa.  This time my lack of road awareness actually shaved a few miles off our trip (but don't worry, Joe, if you're reading this... I will still try to pay attention to roads next time).  Joe had driven the first stretch, so I took over somewhere in Illinois when we stopped for gas.  As I drove, I called out the states as we entered them, and it wasn't long before I had said both Indiana and Michigan.

This seemed like good news until Joe asked me what road I was on.  Of course I was still on I-80.  Wait, I-80 doesn't go into Michigan... so, I must be on something else.  Maybe 69?  No, I don't remember turning onto 69.  How about 94?  I vaguely remember seeing a sign at some point telling me I was on both 94 and 80 simultaneously.  Must have just taken the 94 fork instead of the 80 fork.

Silly roads that diverge.

Anyway, the good news is that (1) I have a GPS, (2) I have a sister that gets lost more than me, so I have enough lost experiences with her to not worry about them too much anymore, and (3) my next trip is to head home, which I could probably do with my eyes closed**.

* Note: There may have been some sort of notification but obviously I somehow missed it, so that must mean it's not sufficient...

** I would not recommend ever trying to drive with your eyes closed, nor will I actually try it when I head home.

Christmas Shoes (not the song)

I was reading a blog the other day by a pastor whose church did the whole "let's give our shoes away for Christmas" thing on a recent Sunday.  I've heard of it before, but for those of you who don't know, it's when a church partners with someone like Soles4Souls or some other organization that helps people needing shoes, and then some Sunday, everyone just takes off the shoes he or she is wearing and drops them in a donation box to be given away.  And I suppose they then walk out of the church barefoot.

A couple thoughts on this:

1. Sweet idea.  Great way to incorporate an object lesson and teach people about giving during the Christmas season.

2. This probably works best in warmer climates, so your church doesn't have to walk out into a foot of snow with nothing on their feet.  Then again maybe this will help teach them what it's like to be shoe-less and thus give them more joy for helping someone without shoes on a regular basis.

3. This probably also works best in states where it's legal to drive barefoot.  Fortunately I remember reading some article a while back that despite the fact that people often think it's illegal to drive barefoot, there aren't too many states with laws against it, unless maybe you're driving a motorcycle.

4. Would I have to give away the shoes on my feet or could I come back later with a different pair of shoes? Does wanting to keep my own shoes make me selfish?

Thought #4 was actually the prompting for this blog post.  I talked to my brother Josh about it it a little after reading the article because I realized that one of my initial reactions to the story was, "Hmm, guess I should stop wearing my boots to church," mostly because I don't want to give up my boots.

They're just boots, you might say.  But, for someone who often walks to work, they're not just boots -- they're something that helps prevent trench foot and keeps my pants dry and provides overall peace of mind on an otherwise blustery day.

Which leads to some questions... would they bring the same joy to someone else?  Possibly.  Could I just go out and buy a new pair of boots after giving mine up?  Probably, BUT it took me a while to find these and they happened to be at a store near my parents that I've never heard of anywhere else, and I got a really good deal on them that I probably couldn't get again because it required opening a charge account AND taking advantage of the sale of the day going on at that point, and... you're right, they're all just excuses.

But, would someone want a new pair of boots more than my slightly used pair?  Then I wouldn't have to be too particular about the boots and could just buy some at a store in town... or does that mean I'm caring less about the quality of their boots than I do about my own?

Anyway, I didn't come to any complete conclusions, just gave me something to think about.

Adopt-a-family woes

Whoever wanted a pillow as a pet anyway?!

I read the wish-list for the family we were adopting this year for Christmas.  Consistently, I saw the words "pillow pet" followed by an animal of choice.  A pig here, a unicorn there.  Add in a bumble-bee and a turtle or a frog.

At this point in my existence, I did not know that these so-called "pillow pets" were so prevalent they could rise up and take over mankind.  At this point, I had never heard of such an absurd-sounding gift.  A pillow pet?

I put the powers of Google to use, and lo and behold, found pillowpet.com or some such site that advertised these monstrosities as "As seen on TV!" and "Don't be fooled by a fake; get the REAL pillow pet!" or something like that.

They looked cute enough and soft enough, and well, I was starting to want one for myself, but I stuck to the list, found the ones I needed, and then got called away from my computer to do something else.  When I came back, the turtle AND the frog were sold out.  But I needed one of them.  I found the frog elsewhere and purchased it separately from the other three, then sat back to wait and enjoy the fact that I had shopped so far ahead of time (this was December 6th, a whole 3 weeks before Christmas).

And then I waited and waited and waited some more.

By this point, I had figured out that pillow pets were indeed EVERYWHERE, at least about eight different kinds of them.  I started to come up with a back-up plan.  If my pillow pets didn't arrive by the weekend before I needed to turn them in, I would buy another set at a local store (for less than I paid online, since I didn't have to ship them...).

Unfortunately, the frog and the pig are no where to be found in local stores.  Fortunately, the frog arrived in the mail on Friday.  Unfortunately, the pig did not.  Fortunately, pig and penguin both start with a 'p,' so I got a penguin instead.  Unfortunately, the similarities between pigs and penguins end right there.

I wrapped all the animals, including the replacement penguin, and prepared to write a note to go along with it -- "So sorry the pig didn't make it in the mail on time.  I hope this penguin will suffice even though all your siblings got exactly what they wanted.  Guess this is a good lesson on how the real world works.  Bah humbug and merry Christmas."

Then I delivered the animals to the front desk of the building where they were being collected and emailed the person in charge -- "Hey, if there's any chance I can swap out a pillow pet pig if it comes in the mail soon, let me know."

Turns out that even though the gifts were being collected Monday, they weren't being delivered until Thursday.  This still placed my deadline at Tuesday since I would be fleeing town on Wednesday.

I had tried to track my package before, but half the time the order tracking part of the site is down, which leaves me in the lurch.  At some point Monday, I was able to see that my package had left Belleville, MI, which I assumed meant it could be somewhere nearby.  Still by Tuesday morning, there was no package and no update to the tracking information.  I was beginning to lose hope until I refreshed the tracking page after lunch, and saw a note saying it had made it to the post office.  (Side note: I didn't realize shipping something half-FedEx, half-USPS was an option).

I called the post office.  They didn't have the package.  "Can you check again?"  Not in another spot where packages go either.  Finally, she checked, and sure enough, it had already gone out for delivery.  Knowing that my mail usually arrives before noon, I instantly regretted not going home for lunch (just kidding, I had delicious Indian food instead, who's going to regret that?).

So I high-tailed it out of the office, raced home, found the box, drove to Walgreens to buy gift bags, stuffed the new pillow pets inside, and went and made the swap.

The guys at the front desk of the drop-off building seemed to be slightly puzzled by the fact that I walked in with 3 gift bags and walked out with 3 stuffed animals.

And now I never want to see a pillow pet again.

Tyler Stanton's "Glorified Pamphlet"

If you've been wanting to buy Tyler Stanton's book (Everyday Absurdities), check out your options here:

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You can also download the first chapter free.

For more info, see tylerstanton.com, or watch the video promotion.

Card delivery (or why I should never be a mail person)

A friend of mine and used-to-be-colleague, Shawn, asked if I would deliver some Christmas cards from him to people around work.  This sort of thing is usually not too tricky, so I agreed, and we decided he'd drop off the cards on Sunday night.

Now Sunday night, I had a Christmas party at the church, and I told him about this, so he said he could meet me there, or we could arrange a way to get them afterward.  Since I didn't get any calls from him or see him during the party, I assumed I would need to call him afterward and decided to do this after my drive home.

It's winter, and with winter comes road sludge, so my windshield was a mess.  As I pressed the lever to move my windshield wipers, I noticed something white moving with them.  And other white things flying away.  A few firing synapses later, my brain made the connection: these were Shawn's cards.  I pulled into the next available driveway and started the trudge back the way I had come.  I knew there was at least one envelope that had gone flying and I was determined to find it.  Just as I was calling Joe to turn around and bring me a flashlight, I spotted the wayward card.  The lettering on the envelope was a little smudged from landing in a snow bank, but that's not too bad in the grand scheme of things, right?

At that point, I tried calling Shawn to verify the number of cards I should have.  My count was the one from the snow bank plus three from under my wiper plus one precariously on the hood of my car, giving me a grand total of five.  That sounded like it could be right, but I couldn't be sure since both phone numbers I had for Shawn seemed to be disconnected.

Upon arriving at Joe's house, I sent Shawn an email, something like this:

"Hey, sorry I missed you... also, exactly how many cards was I supposed to have because I didn't find them until I was already driving and I'm afraid some flew off my windshield."

Content with the five I had retrieved, I still did one last check on my drive home from Joe's and went to bed, expecting that all was well.

And awoke to an email stating there should have been seven (seven!!) cards in total.  Oops.

So I drove back again.  Normally I'd walk to work, but I had to deliver some adopt-a-family presents (that's another nightmare for another time), so I hopped in my car, detoured out of my way, and retraced my route again.  I'm not sure what the cars around me thought as I putzed along the road, scanning the side for the sight of a bright white rectangle against a muddy white snow bank.  I found one more card, so I turned on my hazards, pulled over, and retrieved it.  Slightly wet and smudged from a night on the street, but still deliverable.  But alas, even after another pass back and forth, I still couldn't find the seventh card.

The good news is that Shawn seems to be ok with this and will just make another card.  Whew.

Merry Christmas.