Not So Worthless Now, Huh, Jeremy?

Whew…Good thing there are three auto parts stores within 4 miles of each other

Hang on just a second here, Jeremy.  I believe you mentioned Not All That Long Ago that this was not such a great idea.  

Well, as it turns out, I was entirely wrong.  When you take certain things into account.  

So, not long ago, I came to the realization that both of the fog lamps on my car had burned out.  My car is nearly 6 years old and has all of its original fog and head lamps, so I figure they don't owe me anything, so I'll just set about replacing them.  This is where things take a turn.  

If you walk into an auto parts store like the one 3 miles from my house, you will quickly be greeted by a reasonably substantial wall of light bulbs, suitable for any car and price range.  There are basic bulbs, krypton, xenon, LED, Long Life, High Output...just lots and lots of options in lots and lots of shapes.  I decide that if I'm going to replace bulbs for my car, I'm going to replace them with good ones, so I look to the upper racks.  I use the book to find out what number fog lamps my car takes.   For what it's worth, my car needs "H7" fog lamps.   None of the three best options for light bulbs have an "H7" on the racks.  There's a Basic "H7," but I've already made up my mind that I don't want that, and I know that there is another auto parts store 2 miles to the north, so I walk out of the store which, for strictly Blag purposes, we'll call "Car Area".  

I drive 2 miles north to the next auto parts store near the mall.  Strangely enough, it's another "Car Area" franchise.  Feeling slightly less optimistic, I walk in looking for H7 in a high-quality fog lamp.  Hooray!  There it is!  In both of the top two options.  The price is pretty reasonable, so I decide to go for it.  

The problem is, when you buy bulbs of a higher quality than the lesser ones, they advertise and even celebrate the fact that they aren't the same color as regular bulbs.  Unless I want my car to look stupid, having different color fog lamps and headlights, I need to replace the headlight bulbs, too.  Not too big a deal...the headlights are also 6 years old and probably running on borrowed time themselves.  So, back to the book I go to find the matching headlights to the fog lamps that I picked out.  H8!  

Guess what head lights "Car Area" doesn't carry.  

I know that there is another auto parts store 2 miles to the north, so I walk out of "Car Area" and head on up to "Progressforward Auto Parts."   I scour the rack looking for all of the bulbs I need.  Right out in front, there's the H8 in the exact brand and model that I was looking for some 5 minutes ago.  I grab the H8 headlights off the rack and seek out the matching H7 fog lamps.  

Guess what fog lamps "Progressforward Auto Parts" doesn't carry.  

So, I buy the H8s, and head back south to the northernmost "Car Area" to pick up the H7s.  Four stops in three auto parts stores later, I finally have a matched set of quality headlights and fog lamps.  This type of nonsense really should be easily avoided by having any of the auto parts stores I visited actually carry the full array of light bulbs, but this is apparently too much to ask for.  At least all of the stores are ridiculously close to each other. 

I'll Ask Again In Two Years

Let the 2018 election season commence!  


Dear God, Jeremy.  We've barely maintained our sanity just getting through this election, and you're on to the next one?  


I'm actually behind.  There are already Plenty of Articles out There about who is going to run for president in 2020.  These articles are by people who do this type of stuff for a living.  It's nonsense, sure...but it's paid nonsense.

But LIR is right.  We shouldn't get ahead of ourselves and look past today's election and the importance it brings to our country, our democracy, and quite frankly, our place in the world.  I'm going to give my bi-annual message to the people.  It's a little different than most other messages you'll hear today, but I think it's just as valid:

Don't be afraid to not vote.  

Everyone else tells you how important this election is, and how critical it is to make your voice heard in the sea of millions of voters.  But to me, those can be conflicting messages.  Here's what I mean.  If the election and voting is important to you, by all means, vote. 

If you have to be reminded that today is election day, and reminded that it's your "civic duty" to vote, please don't vote. 

If you don't know 100% which candidate you're voting for in each race, please don't vote.  If you only care about the presidential race, it's perfectly okay to leave the others blank.

If you don't know where each candidate truly stands on whatever issues that matter to you, please don't vote.  Of course, by "truly stands," I mean not listening to what the other candidate says about their opponents policy positions, not getting the bulk of your policy information from pithy Facebook posts by partisan blogs, only watching/listening to media sources which provide opinions you already agree with.  The League of Women Voters runs a great informational website on every race without bias or slant on policy proposals.  It's not too late to become an informed voter. 

I firmly believe that the most important part of a democracy is informed voters.  I am an informed voter.  When I walked into my voting booth at number 89 this morning, I knew exactly who I was voting for and why.  I perfectly understand that regardless of my personal position on any policy issue, approximately half of the people in the country disagree with that stand.  That's okay.  If you disagree with me, and you vote the other direction, then we'll count up who wins.  If I get my vote cancelled by somebody else for whom my preferred policies do not work as well, so be it.  That's what voting is for. 

If I get my vote cancelled out by somebody who says, "I'm a registered *insert political party here* so that other candidate is trying to destroy America," then I have a problem.  A thoroughly uninformed vote is cancelling mine out for no reason other than a D or an R at the end of someone's name, or a fear of a phantom policy position they saw on a picture on Twitter, or that guy on *insert partisan media outlet here* told them to. 

I have voted.  By the time you read this, most of you probably will have as well.  But, if I can save one informed vote from the purgatory of the ignorant, it will have been worth it. 

My TV Misses Me

Did I miss anything good on TV over the weekend?  

Pretty sure there were some reruns of "How I Met Your Mother" on a channel or two.  Probably about it.  

So, if you're like me, you've decided to live in a perpetual state of denial over the next 29 days and avoid television like the plague.  

Unfortunately, you're reading this on the internets, and there's a decent chance that you'll read something other than pithy Blag comedy, even if by accident.  

So, I guess if there's anything that happens for the next 4 weeks in terms of the fall television season (I don't even have any shows that I watch anymore), the new football season (which apparently is like 5 weeks old already), or the baseball playoffs (which are apparently happening), or the new hockey season (Opening Day is Wednesday!), I'm probably going to at least pretend to not notice. 

It will be a whole lot better than the alternative of actually watching what people are talking about and seeing how they're treating each other.  Because there's really no good that is coming out of that at the moment, and it doesn't really help anybody.  I'm going to live in my little bubble of denial and hope that 4 weeks from Wednesday, people will start being civil again.  

I'll probably have to start a new bubble of denial then, but it's good to have goals, right? 

What's The Deal With The Red Stick On The Box Again?

The problem with never using stamps is that you lose your stamps  

Fortunately, Jeremy has a connection where he buys stamps...the post office.  And all was well in the world...

So not the point.  

The point, I guess, is that mail isn't what it used to be.  It's an issue that's been addressed across multiple media outlets, social and otherwise, about how people don't pay all that much attention to the mail anymore.  I sure don't.  Quite seriously, I go out to my mailbox and empty its contents roughly once per week or so, mostly because there's never anything worthwhile in it.  There's the standard town "newspaper" and advertising circulars, solicitations from various cell phone/cable TV/sattelite radio/insurance providers which go straight into the rubbish, the occasional political mailing, a year's subscription to Sports Illustrated that I'm still not 100% sure how I ended up with, and every once in a great while...bills. 

It's a sign of the times that there are precisely two bills that I get in paper form, and of those, only one that I pay in paper form.  One doesn't have electronic billing, but I can pay directly from my bank's website, and the other charges a $3 "convenience fee" for electronic payment, so they get a check mailed to them.  That second bill is my water bill, which arrives like clockwork every 90 days and gets paid a little less like clockwork when I darn well choose because even if I forget about it, they'll just tack an additional 60 cents on to my next bill for a late payment and I care less than 60 cents worth about the whole thing.  Also, it's the only time ever that I have to drag out my check book and envelopes and stamps.  It's a hassle.

It's less of a hassle than it could be because I keep all of these gubbins in one place.  I reach into a single shelf on my desk and pull out my check book, an attached pen, and stamps squeezed in between.  Directly above that is a box of envelopes which I had to buy not long ago for the first time in 8 1/2 years.  I checked the box.  

Not long ago, I embarked on this process because the friggin water people wanted to get paid again, and they still haven't accepted the inevitability of free online bill payment (Thanks, Town Water Department).  I grabbed all of my stuff, and to my dismay, the stamps were not attached to the check book (which incidentally also hasn't seen an update in at least 8 1/2 years, since the checks still don't have my current address on them).  I had no idea where else they could have been since the only time I ever use them is every three months when using the same three items to pay the same one stupid bill.  I looked all over the desk for the stamps of which I'm almost entirely certain I still had several left.  No avail.  To this day, I have no idea where those stamps are.

My water bill got sent out two days later when I finally went to the post office to buy new stamps.  The rest of them went right to the shelf on top of my check book.  See you in 90 days!