Screw It

I had a weird long holiday weekend. It wasn't a bad weekend although the universe did seem to be conspiring against me.

Thursday morning, I woke to find my computer, printer, scanner and office lamp were all dead. Upon further investigation, I discovered that my power strip had died. I could be wrong but I think that's a pretty rare occurrence. We hadn't had bad weather or anything. The damn thing just died. Fortunately, for me (not for the workers) WalMart was open and I bought a new surge protector and everything has worked fine since.

On Saturday, I decided to put up my Christmas decorations. I have a small townhouse but I have a lot of decorations so it's an all day job, especially when I stop every ten minutes to eat something, drink something or watch something on television. When I was ready to put up my tree, I noticed I only had three screws for the stand. I knew the other screw was probably somewhere in the tree but I couldn't open the tree to look for the screw without putting it in the stand. So, I left it on the floor, sat down to watch "Love Actually" (excellent if you like fairy tales, by the way) and decided to go to the hardware store Sunday to get another screw.

Sunday, besides screw shopping, I also needed to go to the drugstore to pick up a prescription (damn cholesterol) which I had called in on Friday. Since I had called it in, it would be a quick, simple transaction. I would be in and out in ten minutes max. You're way ahead of me aren't you? The girl at the counter asked to see my card and said it had to be re-entered into the system because there was a problem. After waiting about ten minutes, someone paged me over the store intercom (even though I was sitting only three feet away) to go to the prescription drop-off window. When I got to the window, the woman there told me I had been terminated. I told her that I was, in fact, not terminated but I could tell by her expression that she didn't care and/or didn't believe me. Crap! I would deal with that at work Monday.

Off to the hardware store to buy a screw for my Christmas tree stand. At the first hardware store, I handed the screw to a helpful man who showed the screw to a not-so-helpful man who didn't even look at me and just told helpful man that he didn't have a screw to match. In a hardware store with six bazillion screws, he knew within one second that he couldn't match my screw. I was impressed. I had met the Rain Man of screws.

Well, screw him, says I, and I moved on to the next hardware store. At this store, I met a very nice guy who found exactly what I needed right away. When I got home, I threw the screws on the floor (I bought extra) and began to assemble my tree stand. Guess what. The stand only uses three screws. I was a screw short alright...in my head.

I got my insurance problem straightened out but the tree is still laying on the floor in my living room taunting me. I'm sure I'll decorate it someday but for now, I need to eat something or drink something or watch something on television.