Anything You Want

Inspirational song: Alice's Restaurant (Arlo Guthrie)

Rotary felt very crowded today. There were a lot of extra people there, to be sure, but we were also squished into a smaller space than usual. The first thing I noticed when I walked up was that the buffet line went the wrong direction, right next to the back door I use when I park in the underground garage. It made me itchy just to see a change I wasn't expecting, and I dreaded walking into something new. Once I got into the room, I understood the awkward layout, and felt better realizing it would be temporary. The church where we meet is renovating their sanctuary. All of the pews and fixtures from the altar area were crammed into the fellowship hall. The altar itself was down by the podium from which our program is presented. The man who gave our "moment of inspiration" jokingly asked whether he ought to go up there to read it.

I'm working on an organizational project, creating a new space to put stuff away in. I was at Ace and Lowe's, getting hardware today. I needed just a couple more casters, and I couldn't remember what size I'd gotten, so I skipped the ones at Ace (wasn't sure they'd match) and grabbed what I thought matched at Lowe's. Came home, and found that I'd bought ones that were too big. After consideration, I decided that the original set were too small, so those were the ones I returned. I asked for a store credit, since I was intending to walk around the desk immediately to buy four more packs of 1 5/8" casters. I marched over to the hardware section (after lollygagging for five minutes by the Halloween display that went up this week -- the lights! oh, the lights!) and found the box with the right size wheels. There was one pack. One. I asked the friendly gentleman over at the hardware desk whether he might have more of them hidden somewhere. He checked the computer, and it said there should be six of them. We went to the shelves, and dug around. There were multiple empty bags crammed around the boxes. He said, "We tend to have a lot of theft." Are you kidding me? THIS is the thing people steal? Caster wheels? And it's only the size that I want that were stolen? I hate people.

Tomorrow I get to drive to other cities, looking for these same wheels. This is not what I wanted to do. This project keeps getting more expensive. Organization is hard.