Low Tech

1) Cheap pens. My favorite pens are free plastic retractable ball points with the built in pocket clip. Pocket clip doesn't do me any good, none of my shirts have pockets anymore, but it does not seem possible to get a pen without a pocket clip. For a while this style was all the rage and I collected several of them. They're great, except for one thing. They won't fit in the front pocket of my trousers. Well, that's not exactly true, they will fit, but they won't lie flat in the bottom, which means they tend to get wedged in and are hard to remove.

Then I found another free pen, a little shorter and a little fatter and it fits just perfect. It is really ugly. It was a promotional pen from a drug company and has cartoonish pictures of multi-colored bugs all over it. It usually works, but not always. Same thing happened to Jack. He had a pen he carried in his truck. Pulled it out to use it one day, and it wouldn't write. Took in the house and left it for a couple of days and tried it again and it worked fine. So I am wondering if the constant jiggling upsets the pens, because my short one is working fine now.

Anyway, a folded sheet of paper and a pen that works comprise my PDA.

2) Candles. There is a small candle in the basement bathroom that I light occasionally because, let's face it, sometimes it just stinks in there. The candle sits in the bottom of a small glass container about the size of a shot glass. The wick gave out before the wax did. My wife gave me another candle, but without a glass, so I just set in on top of the old wax. Eventually the wick on that one gave out also. At the end, there was just a tip of the wick sticking up and trying to light it, my fingers got hot so I dropped the match into the jar. It burned for quite a while. As the days went by I continued dropping lit matches into the jar. Some of them would burn for a while, some would go out immediately. I dropped one in there before lunch and when I came back downstairs the whole surface of the wax was liquid and on fire. I had to huff and puff to blow it out. Impressive for such a little candle.

3) Slippers. I got a new pair of slippers for Christmas. They were a little expensive, made from Elf, er, Elk hide, from Eddie Bauer, but they are comfortable enough. However, one of the seams is starting to come undone. Eventually it will unravel enough to make them unwearable, but so far they are holding together well enough. But what should I do about it? Take them back to the store? I imagine they would exchange them without any fuss. But that means actually going INSIDE the mall, not to mention burning a bunch of time getting there. And what if the new ones suffer from the same problem? I could take them to a shoe repair shop and get them sewn up properly, but that is more time spent fooling around. Or I could just fix them myself. Hmmm. Probably would not take any more time, but I would actually have to do something. Think I'll just wait till they unravel so much I can't wear them anymore.

Update December 2016 replaced missing pictures.