If I Still Owe You E-Mail, Here's the Reason Why

Man, I had really, really intended to spend most of today catching up on my e-mail and maybe working on my Phoenix zine, and it just completely ended up not happening. I really should have known better than to decide to go shopping...

The thing is, I needed a new stereo. I was trying to copy a tape for a friend of mine before I left when the tape deck quit working... Not exactly a surprise, that, since the thing dates back to a time when turntables were standard equipment and CDs were still the coming thing. So I had decided that it was high time I got myself a new one. I was also in desperate need of some new jeans, and, gee, I had no groceries in the house at all... So I figured an expedition up to Wally-world was in order. Well, that's three hours for shopping, right there, counting the 90-mile round trip, which was made even slower by having to navigate the 15 miles or so of Orange Barrel Hell north of town.

Anyway, I did end up buying myself a stereo. OK, it was a cheap-ass stereo, but then, I'd been playing my tapes on the vintage 80's relic and my CDs on a boombox, so it's still a major step up for me. Problem was, having decided to purchase a stereo, I realized I was going to need a place to put it, since it wasn't going to fit on the stand for the old one. So I bought a bookcase. Which I had to put together. Now, the stereo wouldn't fit on the bookcase (not deep enough), which was fine, because I could put it on top of the entertainment center, which previously held books. Of course, I couldn't then just move those displaced books onto the new bookshelves, because that would throw my whole book-organization system off. So I had to move all the books in the living room around. And I had to move the old stereo (and the poster above it) so I could fit in the new bookcase. And then I realized that now that I had empty shelf space and could take my Star Trek mug collection (don't laugh; it was a Christmas present!) out of the box it was sitting in and put it back out on a shelf. And then...

Ah, skip the details. The point is, I think I damn near ended up rearranging my entire living room. Which is why I didn't get to my e-mail, or pretty much anything else I'd intended to do.

And the moral is: Shopping is evil and will take over your entire life. Although when you're listening to the latest Tom Petty CD with the volume cranked up in the midst of your amazingly-organized living room, it does kind of seem worth it.

But now I'm very, very tired.