Karmic Apology
2004-12-14,

Winter fell on we NE Ohioans in the usual fashion; you'd think that everyone living here would expect it. But alas, every year we have the 'First Real Snow of the Year' extravaganza, in which 80 percent of the populous has to somehow try and remember how to drive in the snow. Agonizing at best. Granted, it was a good 3-5 inches, which is more than usually falls first time 'round, but still. I found myself driving - when it was possible to circumvent the timid - in the virtually empty speed lane, zipping along at a relatively fast 35-40 mph, whizzing by scores of pokeys in the granny lane who were, I'm sure, white-knuckled in their unmitigated fear of the frozen water falling from the sky.

This is, of course, the day that I choose to drive from Cuyahoga Falls to Lakewood (a diagonal line from SE to NW across the busiest part of Greater Cleveland, for those who are not NE OH savvy), right at the forward end of rush hour. From beginning to destination and destination to home, I spent a little over 3 hours driving amongst the dangerously under-skilled peoples.

Why, you ask, would I put life and vehicle in jeopardy in such a way? Well, it goes like this:

H and I went a couple of weeks ago to this store called Flower Child, poking around for Xmas ideas and stuff for the house, and she came across this awesome hat - 40's style, brown, open-top, short-brimmed, and I think it may have had a small net - that looked perfect on her. Thriftiness got the better of her, however, and we bought it not.

So I get the idea of going back to buy it later - because buying it then in some sneaky fashion would have been too easy, apparently. Time constraints due to rehearsals and such kept me from heading back there until yesterday, the first free afternoon I had since. And naturally, that's when the sky decides to open up and try to bury Cleveland. I really should have taken it as a sign, like the downpour on Election Day (speaking of which - check this out, and see if it's time to start throwing things yet). I was determined to get there, however, so on I drove under the darkening, flurrying sky and into the automotive fray. There were points when it took 10 minutes to drive a mile, and people who were growing impatient started trying time-saving maneuvers that oft nearly caused accidents right in front of me. But I pressed on.

After thankfully remembering where the shop was and managing to get there without incident, I walked in and headed to the room where the hat had first been discovered, the very corner where she placed it on her head. Nothing found. Being the kind of place where stuff gets shuffled around, I searched the room. Nada. I searched again. Still nada. With hope fading, I approached one of the ladies working the shop, and she was nice enough to help search other rooms in which the person who provided the hat for sale was consigning. Nothing. I even found another hat that H liked, but not at a fraction of the one for which my hunt seemed increasingly fleeting.

Returning to the store counter empty-handed, another of the attendants recalled that just last Wednesday, a lady came in and "bought a whole bunch of hats." Thus ended my hat search. It was gone, and with it, my magical surprise birthday present for my wife. Sigh.

And then I had to drive home. In rush hour traffic. I headed north from work at just after 4pm. I finally got home at 730pm. It was not my day, and I felt betrayed by the flow of the universe. Or maybe my balance on my cosmic surfboard wasn't very good. Either way, it was obvious to H by the expression on my face that things had not gone my way.

She knew I was out buying something for her, she just had no idea what. After some small deliberation on present-based disclosure, I told her about my journey. Naturally, she reacted practically as if I'd actually gotten the thing. She tells me that girls eat this stuff up. When you look at it in an epic kind of way, I suppose I can understand the reaction. Trudging home, armor tattered, no holy grail. But she still loves me, and loves that I tried. Proving, once again, that boys are dumb and girls are crazy.

Onward went our evening. We went out to some stores in town to try and salvage something positive out of the shopping experience. One of our stops was a hardware store, looking for something for my dad. It turns out that it was the completely wrong place to find what we were searching for; however, it was the perfect place for the thing we ended up finding.

We were heading out the door as some of the employees were wheeling in some display models that were along the walk in front of the store-- lawn mowers and weed whackers and such left from summer that they were trying to clear out of inventory. Resting by the entryway was an electric mulching mower, a Black and Decker, even. I'd been wanting to get one for a couple of years now, but hadn't had the funds to do so. I looked down out of curiosity at the price tag: fifty dollars. H and I look at each other, and then wheel the thing inside and to the sales counter. You just can't say no to a fifty-dollar lawn mower. I decided that it was karma attempting an apology for my crappy afternoon. I now really look forward to Spring-- as if the thought of cold and snow wasn't enough to bring on the anticipation. Maybe it's cos I'm getting old, but Winter is really starting to become my least favourite season.

On a completely different tack, I'm really starting to like my Gmail account. I just today found the feature that lets you set up news filters-- it searches it's news server and emails you results by keyword, either daily, weekly or as it happens. The first one I set up, of course, was 'Ohio recount'. I also set up a daily search for news on Taiwan, because I'm worried that governmental tension between they and China will somehow grow and interfere with our trip in late Spring/early Summer. Little chance of that, but it never hurts to keep an eye on it, especially an automated one.

-- End Transmission --