Errands Day

I took the day off work today to vote and run some errands I’ve been putting off for a really long time, because I hate leaving the house. I find that almost anything that can be done out in the physical world can be done much more quickly and accurately online. But sometimes you have to go do things out there. With people. Today was one of those days.

First, I had to go to the post office to mail some hair to Florida. That went smoothly enough.

Then, I went to do early voting. When I registered to vote here in Albuquerque, I got my voter registration card, and my name on it was spelled “Elizabeht Urello.” For those of you not familiar with the most familiar of names, mine is typically spelled “Elizabeth.” Now, granted, sometimes it’s spelled “Elisabeth,” for people whose parents intended to name them Elizabeth, but messed it up because they’re stupid. But it’s rarely if ever spelled “Elizabeht.” I forgot that my voter registration said this until the nice old lady at the counter (“Oh, you were born 1981? That’s the year I got married the first time!”) handed me my ballot and I saw it misspelled on there. I asked her if it would cause any problems and she squinted at it. “It should have a…G?” she asked.

I mean…is Elizabeth just a really, really uncommon name in New Mexico? Why is this so hard?

She said that it wouldn’t really matter, because the city had me down as “Elizabeht,” so at this point, that might as well be my name.

I voted according to the dictates of my liberal guilt, and then, unburdened, I headed over to Verizon to buy a new iPhone 6. My Sprint contract was up a few months ago, and Sprint doesn’t work at all in the Southwest, so I’d been meaning to switch to Verizon, which also has terrible coverage here but ever so slightly better than any other carrier. Also I have dropped my iPhone from a great height approximately several thousand times over the past year, and it is now so cracked and shattered that you can see the metal bits underneath. It looks like this:

I put off replacing it for this long, because (see above) I don’t like to leave the house and talk to people. But today, I was determined. Well, it turned out I needed to have all kinds of information with me that I didn’t have, and also no brick-and-mortar shops in Albuquerque have the 6 or will have it until at the very least mid-November.

But did you know you can do all that shit online? Including port your phone number over? Even if you’re changing contracts? I did not know this. Or I never would have put on pants and dragged myself to an actual, physical store, like I was someone’s grandma who got married the first time in 1981, and then had an incredibly awkward and halting conversation with a teenage boy who looked like he wanted to die even more than I did.

The whole thing took five seconds online once I got home, and my phone should ship before too long, I’m told (vaguely, which probably means I’ll get it sometime next year, but that’s ok, as long as I don’t have to talk to anyone again).

The next errand on my list was to finally get this pair of jeans hemmed that I’ve been avoiding having hemmed since about a million years ago. You can see a picture of me in them, not hemmed, in this post from last APRIL, and they weren’t new then, so that’s how long I let these things go. When I got to the tailor’s, they were closed, and there was a sign on the door saying that due to a death in the family, they would not reopen until November 3rd.

Now, of course, nothing but sympathies to the family, really. But given the starting date of the sign, they closed the business down for two full weeks?! I love my family as much as the next hermit, but life goes the fuck on. This is a capitalist society! Who shuts down for two weeks because someone kicks it?

Having failed in 2/3 of my errands today, I had one more thing I needed to get. There’s a certain type of facial moisturizer I use. It’s not anything special. It’s fragrance free and non-comodogenic of course, but it’s not made of unicorn tears or anything. The last time I tried to buy it on Amazon, I would have had to pay for shipping unless I wanted some Costco-style family pack of 400 moisturizers, and since I’m not planning on going into business as an esthetician any time soon, I didn’t find that offer attractive. So off I went to Target to buy this stuff from an actual store.

Guess where this is going? On the shelves were every kind of moisturizer known to man, and an empty hole where my moisturizer should have been. It was sold out, because that’s the best moisturizer and the only kind anybody ever uses, and yet, Target had apparently failed to restock it. So that the trip to Target wouldn’t feel like a total waste of time, I went to buy a small saucepan to heat soup in, because the only kind I have are great big ones that I don’t like to wash. They didn’t have any. Then, I figured, well, maybe I can get a 100% cotton blanket here. Nope!

So I came home and bought everything online.

This post is addressed to everyone who makes fun of me for never leaving the house, and for people who question the ethics of buying goods and services online instead of supporting local industry. I try sometimes, I really do, but every time I leave the house, it’s just one big, long parade of wasted time and uncomfortable interactions. I’m not doing it anymore.

I just need to find a tailor I can mail my pants to, and then I’ll be all set.

ETA: To make myself feel better about the whole day, I stopped off at Whole Foods on the way home and bought some really expensive dried kiwi slices. I just had one, and they’re disgusting.