Forward Progress

An article by Don Quixote

I’m tried of looking at this stupid Christmas Tree.

I have this 12 foot green monstrosity taking up my living room and it’s calling to be decorated. I’ve been trying for about two weeks to get the ladder from our friends, but without success.

So today I broke down and headed to the Home Depot. I honestly have no idea how people find things in this place. They hide things everywhere. I found ladders in three different places and none of them had what I am looking for. So when you finally find someone dressed in an orange apron to ask for help they point you to this HUGE display that any blind idiot should have been able to find (after looking for 20 minutes straight).

I wasn’t really thrilled about getting *another* ladder. I have three already. I have a normal 6 foot folding later, a 12 foot extension ladder (to change light bulbs in the house) and a 24 foot extension ladder to get on the roof and change flood lights (oh and to hang the monster Lord of the Rings banner that I have in the living room). However none of those space sucking devices would help decorating the tree. So what’s a handy-challenged guy to do? Buy another ladder.

I had considered just getting a normal 12 foot folding ladder, but man, what a useless waste of space. That’s when I found this amazing contraption called the Gorilla Ladder. It’s that crazy 4 in 1 ladder that is a 21 foot extension ladder, a 10.5 foot folding ladder, some odd shape that you can use on the stairs, and a built in scaffolding holder. Madness I tell you, madness. It was about $30 bucks more than the ladder I was going to buy, but man, at have the storage size and 4 times the versatility, I couldn’t pass it up.

Now I just have to get my buttocks off the couch and decorate this thing. Looks like a job for tomorrow.

While I was at the Home Depot, I decided it was time to get the materials to check off a long standing task from my task list: Replace the mailbox.

We’ve had the worst mailbox since we moved into the house almost 3 years ago. It was a cheap plastic one to begin with on a metal pole crammed into the ground. Well the night we closed on the house (we did the paper work ourselves with the help of the guy who actually built the house), the builder was backing out of the drive and ran it right over mangling the pole and breaking off the stupid red flag.

He offered to replace it, but the current owners were like, “Oh, don’t worry about it, it’s not big deal.” No big deal for you maybe, you just sold the house, but that’s my stinking mailbox now! It was a dreadful sight, the pole is all bent, and it’s being held in place by a pile of rocks and one good tug trying to open it will yank it out of the ground. It wobbles worse than the Weebles do. To add to the frustration we haven’t been able to put out going mail in the box since we bought the place.

So enough was enough; I bought a post (the kind you drive in, I didn’t want to mess with digging a huge hole pouring concert and that whole mess), a new box and some numbers. 15 minutes and a burnt fingertip later (I managed to strip out a screw since my drill isn’t that powerful and I made the mistake of touching the head and it burnt a nice little scar into my finger), it was done. It looks pretty good if I do say so myself.

Maybe I am more handy that I thought.

Spent the rest of the day watching the Lions play football and taking a nap. Man do I lead a life of excitement or what?