2007-06-15 - 9:32 a.m.
This week I've been sick but not really sick, if you know what I mean. I stayed home from work yesterday because I felt pretty terrible but enlivened by the prospect of getting things done on my day off, I went errand-nuts. I decorated my room so much with Turkmen and Uzbek handicrafts that Katie noted that it looked "like the bazaar." I was so excited about getting things done, my energy level belied my supposed sickness. I gave away my dirty secret.
In the meantime, I'm cooking up something fun for the blogosphere and the internets. Hopefully in the next few weeks there'll be something fun for children of all ages to left-click and right-click.
I don't think I have any illusions about the fact that I'm a little clueless, naive, and "not with it" when it comes to stuff. However, even I surprise my own brainlessness. Let's take every interaction I have with Netflix for example.
When I lived with my parents this winter after coming back from Turkmenistan they had Blockbuster Online, which I used almost daily to get through the seasons of Lost, Desperate Housewives, and dozens of movies I'd missed. Every day I was taking a movie back to Blockbuster to trade in for a new one, receiving another one in the mail a following day. It was clockwork and I was mechanically efficient in getting the DVDs in and out of the house without rest, problem, or error.
For reasons I cannot discern Netflix is an entirely different story.
If I have to return a movie that Katie and I have to watch, I will say to myself, "Why don't you put Such-and-Such movie in its respective envelope and into the mailing pouch?" I will then walk over to the DVD player, open it up, take the Alias Season Five, Disk Three that I'm in the middle of watching and haven't finished yet, put it into a third completely unrelated movie's envelope, stick it into a mailing pouch, and seal it.
After staring blankly at the envelope for a few seconds, I will realize that I didn't do anything even remotely related to what I told myself to do. Repeat ad infinitum.
I cannot tell you how many times Katie will find a Netflix envelope lying around that doesn't match the DVDs in the house. Or how many times I've sealed an envelope with a video we haven't watched yet. Or mailed a DVD in the pouch without an envelope. Were I an outside observer, I would liken me to a monkey infant trying to figure out legos, how to put on a sock, or why that button I keep pushing gives me a banana half of the time.
The system confounds me.
