When I moved here to San Diego 10 years ago, I purchased a lot of new things. Amongst them were a couple of simple, everyday objects: a key chain and an alarm clock. Both held up very well over the past decade, but the key chain finally bit the dust the other day.
I came home from work on Thursday and noticed I had huge black streaks on my thumb and forefinger. Now normally that means I was using a Sharpie™ pen. I don't how I manage it, but every time I uncap a Sharpie™, I manage to get it all over my hands. Black, red, blue: it makes no difference, I'm battle-scarred by the time I recap the damn thing. And since they're indelible ink, it lasts for a little while.
But this streak was different, more like something you'd get from touching burnt rubber or a tire or something. And then I looked closer at my key chain--the only thing I could remember touching recently. It had a thick black rubber casing and a bright little flashlight inside. I noticed the top part of it was all eaten away, as if a battery had leaked and acid was eating the rubber away. The light had ceased working a while back, so I'm uncertain why I kept it...now it was evidently trying its best to do me in.
So I went over to Brookstone, the poor man's Sharper Image (which doesn't exist anymore, at least not in malls), in the mall that's in my backyard, and bought a new key chain, a little plastic one, also with a flashlight on it, one guaranteed for 10 years and with a bright blue light that can be seen up to a mile. I have no idea how this will save me some day. Perhaps during an earthquake and I'll have to flash morse code for someone to rescue me (note to self: learn morse code) or if I'm stranded in the desert between here and Las Vegas, it'll come in handy. But I have it now, and I have no doubt I will sleep much better this evening.
While at Brookstone, I also bought a new clock. As mentioned above, I've had the same alarm clock for 10 years now, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with it, other than you have to actually press the top bar to see what time it is, an action which is just too much work in the middle of the night. I want to look over and SEE what time it is, preferably in large enough type that all I have to do is barely crack an eyelid, lest it make me actually wake up.
I'm a time figurer-outer when it comes to sleep. If I get up in the middle of the night to go use the facilities (and I don't mean the gym on the third floor or the laundry room down the hall), I always amble into my kitchen and check the clock on my microwave. Then I compute how many more hours of sleep I can nab. It's not so much how much sleep I get, it's how many hours I can put off going to work. This doesn't mean as much on Saturday or Sunday, but the new clock I bought today has the day of the week on it, too, and as I grow older, that simple fact becomes harder and harder to grasp. Sadly, I have to wrack my brain to figure out what I watched on TV the evening before to figure out what day it actually is, because when it's sunny and 72, they all kind of blend together. (Note to self: get out more.)
But here's the rub: I can't get the damn new clock to work*. So I have to take it back tomorrow, but there's good news: I promise not to bore you with 7 more paragraphs about keychains and clocks. If mundane crap like this isn't why God created blogging, I'm at a loss to figure out his true intentions.
*Just so you all don't worry: the clock works. They just left off an important little fact on the instructions, which is turn off the light function when you set the clock.
