I hate to announce this, but hackers recently gained access to Dave’s Fiction Warehouse and stole all your personal information. Sorry. If it helps, I’m also missing a .22 pistol and perhaps some other articles. These hackers are truly the scourge of modern life.
That’s my story, anyway. The alternative explanation — I had a funeral to attend, and I had this semi-load of useless shit to sort through upon my return — isn’t as dramatic as one might wish. But the fact is, since getting back I’ve had no time to do anything but keep driving out to Lowe’s to pick up stuff I forgot on previous trips. No one can craft witty blog posts under such conditions.
I call it Knadler’s Law: Take the number of trips to the hardware store that a barely-functional adult might be expected to make, and multiply it by three. That’s how you arrive at the number of trips this barely-functional adult will actually make. The first one was to buy hoses for the washing machine. I had spent a number of hours cursing the movers for leaving them behind. Then, after hooking up the washer, I moved on to the dryer. In the dryer, I found the hoses. I cursed the movers some more. The whole day went like that.
There were other miscues and missteps. There were other tapestries of obscenity, mouthed by yours truly, that still shimmer in the humid air of Jacksonville. Tonight the neighbors rue the day this barely functional adult came to town. I suppose property values around here have declined about 15 percent as a result of one cranky man cursing. I can hardly wait until tomorrow.
My furnace is kaput
A few small annoyances
A cold night in January
There’s never been a better time to wait
Been there. BTW, Knadler’s Law seems to be a modern corollary of the ancient Greek and Roman architectural design method of taking your best guess of how strong something needs to be (to hold up the roof, for example), then multiplying that by three.
Yes, but at least those crazy Greeks and Romans were building something. All I’m doing is wasting time and cash.