July 7, 1995
Dear Everyone:
I have discovered
that my clever, little printer can do envelopes; and he only chews the
ends up a little bit as he
spits each one out. No more
cutting and pasting! And no
more trying to deal with labels, except at work where everyone wants
Versatile
to be able to produce more kinds of labels.
Also, my PC has a
name, now. You may address
him as “Oberon”
(Shakespeare’s King of the Fairies in
A
Midsummer Night’s Dream).
Since computers are, by definition, magic, it seemed a good fit.
Temptations to nickname the printer “Puck”
are being valiantly resisted.
I continue to buy
presents for my new toy, the latest being a monitor stand.
Since moving the case (that’s the part that everything else plugs
into) to the lower shelf, the monitor, sitting on top of the cart, was
too low. Now it’s just the
right height (provided I sit up straight), and the stand includes a sort
of tray underneath to hold files, papers, etc.
One problem with all
these things (PC, monitor, printer, stand, ergonomically correct
keyboard) is that they all arrive in
boxes, often with lots of
packing involved. You have
to keep the box, at least until the warranty expires, just in case you
have to pack the whole thing up again and send it back to the
manufacturer. One box even
recommended keeping the box in case you ever have to move the contents
ever again.
Clearly, there is a
conspiracy at work here.
Boxes of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your closet
space. A recent census
revealed that there are nine empty shoe boxes in my place.
(There is a tenth in the supply closet; but it is well-marked “Band-Aids”,
so presumably, it serves a function, preventing a mass stampede of old
boxes of Band-Aids. I
haven’t looked in it in years.)
This could reach epidemic proportions soon.
I have two pairs of shoes on order at
Macy’s, waiting for
the sale to begin next week.
Buy shoes.
Take the shoes out of the box and put them in the closet.
Put the box in another closet.
Keep the box for years after you’ve thrown the shoes away because
they were worn out, in case you ever need a box just that size.
In fact, at least one of my shoe boxes arrived
sans shoes, with a Christmas
present inside, proving that you can, indeed, recycle shoe boxes.
At least as far as the next person’s closet.
And it’s not just
shoe boxes. Anything that
comes in a box produces another empty box.
A few weeks ago, I bought 500 envelopes at
Costco.
I go through a lot of envelopes, even when Puck doesn’t chew them
up (we’re getting better at this).
When I looked in one of the closets, there was the box that the
last 500 envelopes came in.
Trouble is, these
newest boxes didn’t have anything as small as shoes or envelopes in
them. They came with
computer parts. I can’t put
them in the closet because:
1.
The
closets are full of empty boxes.
2.
These
boxes are bigger than the closet.
I suppose in time I
could take lots of empty little boxes out of the closets, put them in
the big boxes, and put the big boxes in the dumpsters.
Then I’d have more room in the closets, which I could fill up
with new empty boxes.
And life goes on...
Love, as always,
Pete
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