I’m pleased to say that I’m not at work today. In fact, between my work from home days, holidays, and a few strategically placed vacation and furlough days, I only have to go to the office two more times between now and January 8^th which, sadly, marks the return of the useless meetings from hell, proving that our “director” level mucky-muck has very few actual job responsibilities. In fact, it was pointed out that I had failed to attend the office “Holiday Gathering” for two years in a row, proving that he really has way too much time on his hands. No doubt I’ll be interrogated about it when stupid meeting day rolls around. For the time being, however, I’ll try not to think about that. Anyhow, to celebrate my few impending days of freedom, I popped some chicken wings in the oven and settled down in my chair to watch “Rehab Addict” (yes, this is how wild and crazy I am), and then promptly fell asleep.

Fortunately I woke up and turned the oven off before the smoke alarm sounded. Unfortunately, the alarm started blaring shortly thereafter, waking up my wife (who I’m pretty sure hates me now – both for waking her up and also for the fact that I’m off today and she had to go to work). On the bright side, it’s nice to know that the smoke alarm is loud enough to wake her up in the event of an emergency.

The wings were more or less charcoal, but I ate most of them anyway. I’ll be damned if I’ll waste money, and one good thing is that since all the hot sauce was burned off, I’m not feeling any intestinal side effects this morning.

Other than picking blackened chunks of chicken out of my teeth I don’t have much of anything planned for today, though you never know when inspiration will strike. I have a couple of projects in mind, but I need to figure out the logistics in my head and then see if I have enough scrap wood laying around to get the job done (because I sure as hell don’t want to leave the house to go get anything). I think I’ll spend the day reading, since I’ve been neglecting my Kindle lately. I’m also expecting a package delivery, assuming it actually shows up (nothing exciting – just a set of very inexpensive speaker mounts. Five speaker mounts cost less than the very plain black curtain rod I just got. Go figure).

I say “assuming” it shows up, because it was supposed to show up yesterday. In fact it arrived in Syracuse just before midnight on 12/16 and showed a “guaranteed” delivery date of 12/18. Right up until it didn’t show up and then suddenly it was an “estimated” delivery date of 12/19. So much for 2-day delivery, I guess. And the tracking still hasn’t updated to show “out for delivery” or anything, so I’m kind fo wondering if they lost it in the warehouse or something. I’d bitch but it wouldn’t do me any good and I don’t want to get the poor UPS guys in trouble because I assume they’re really humping trying to get all these holiday packages delivered.

When it comes to shipping, I’m starting to wonder what the whole “2 day” thing really means, though. For instance, that curtain rod I mentioned before was shipped from Chicago via USPS “Priority Mail 2-Day”. That was on 12/9 (a Monday). So if we take the day it shipped off the table, you’d expect 2 days to be 12/11, no? Well, the estimated delivery date on the tracking was Thursday, 12/12. OK, close enough (I mean, it’s just a curtain rod, not a replacement liver or something). So on 12/12, it didn’t show up (same estimated delivery date though). Didn’t come on Friday the 13^th or even Saturday (on Sunday, they did change the delivery date to 12/16, which is when it finally arrived).

To me, that’s not two days, and it wouldn’t appear to be much of a priority, either. But, hey, I guess there was some crappy weather in the Midwest and I think the USPS by and large does an amazing job of moving the mail (I mean, they basically touch every single residential and business address every single day, six days a week plus they’re fellow civil servants so I’m not gonna diss them). Try sending a letter FedEx from NY to LA for 46¢ and see what they say.

Oh well, time to go do a scrap wood inventory and see what other trouble I can get myself into.