June 12, 1997

Today was a Charlie Brown day for me, for sure. Lucy was always there to pull that football away. I felt like the whole world existed solely to frustrate me in my attempts to get anything done. Ever since I've moved to Washington, I feel like that a lot of the time.

I finally have my monitor, but it wasn't easy. UPS was completely wrong the first time I called, so thoroughly wrong that when I called later to see what was going on, that person thought I was loopy. Of course, I am loopy... The moral of the story: don't try and traverse the whole of Montgomery County between the hours of 4-7pm. I did this at 6pm, and it still took 1 hour and 15 minutes. Traffic SUCKS here, but I think I've mentioned that before. Let's not even discuss how hard it was for me to fit a 90lb 36"x36" box in my car. I wound up taking the monitor out of the box and putting the thing itself in the back seat. I suppose I should be happy that I have a 19" monitor for $450, but I swear, I'm never buying anything through the mail again.

Somehow, there was this feeling that buying something over the internet was unlike buying from a catalog in some special, fast, magic kind of way. What I now know is that it's exactly the same, right down to the vagaries of shipping. I don't deal well with waiting for things in the snail mail, and I think that's why I'll do all my shopping in person from now on.