In Which I Mock Products to Make Up for My Lack of Progress on Goals

Goals: I normally do a quarterly wrap-up of progress on my goals for the year. But I have done next to nothing in that direction over the past 3 months. I even fell behind on keeping track of spending in April and May, though I got back on track in June. And I knitted almost all of another big afghan square (the ones that count as 4).

Most of that lack of progress has been due to a certain general malaise, largely out of feeling overwhelmed with dealing with the estate stuff. Oddly, the past week has suddenly been better, largely out of having figured out where I can out stacks of books so they are out of my way but I can still get to them to go through them. And that realization has me filled with energy, which I’ve put to use the past couple of days trying to catch up on household paperwork.

So things are getting better and will get done.

Celebrity Death Watch: Patrick Macnee played Mr. Steed on The Avengers. Sir Nicholas Winton organized the rescue of a large number of Jewish children from Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia.

Sleep and Weather: There were severe storms here last night. My neighborhood was spared the worst of them, but I know there was still plenty of wind and rain, based on the wet, leaf and petal covered pavement this morning. Normally, that sort of thing wakes me up and I complain about feeling like I am trying to sleep inside a shower.

What is weird is that I did wake up a couple of times last night, but was completely unaware of this storm until this morning.

Product Mockery: There is always the Hammacher Schlemmer catalogue to provide amusement should all else fail. The most recent one includes the following gems:

• Fish Catching RC Boat: So suppose you want to go fishing. But you don’t want to actually sit in a boat or stand on the shore or hold a fishing pole or anything like that. This lets you hold the controllers for a radio-controlled boat that does the fishing automatically for you. That sounds like all the boredom of waiting for fish to bite with none of the challenges or pleasures of actually fighting for a fish.
  
  
• Automatic Tile Shuffling Mahjong Table: Because shuffling the tiles with your hands takes too long. At least your $1700 (plus $350 for shipping since it weighs 200 pounds) does get you a set of mah jong tiles included.
  
  
• Identity Theft Thwarting Aluminum Wallet: The idea here is to block RFID chips. Except that credit cards don’t have RFID chips. And there is nothing that actually stops a thief from stealing the whole bloody wallet.
  
  
• Front and Rear Roadtrip Recorder: I know people who are obsessed enough with photographic evidence of their lives that I can imagine them wanting this. But it only keeps about 90 minutes of video. I don’t know about you, but my roadtrips tend to be longer than that. (I do realize this could be useful for documenting accidents. So my mockery is a bit mixed. But, still …)
  
  
• 12 MPH Cooler: This is, basically, a riding cooler. I’m not imagining that – the picture shows a guy straddling it and steering. Apparently, pulling a wheeled cooler is not sufficiently low effort. It has a 320 pound riding capacity, but it isn’t clear if you have to subtract off the weight of the beer or soda from that.
  
  
• Transparent Canoe Kayak: Because … no, I cannot for the life of me imagine why one might want a transparent canoe kayak.