Thursday, March 23, 2006




Procrastination is a really great thing! Procrastination has saved me thousands of dollars, and solved mysteries, and won arguments. It is defined as "dilatoriness: slowness as a consequence of not getting around to it " by one account.

There are even websites dedicated to it such as Procrastination and You.
I can tell you just can't wait to see how I saved the money, so I'll tell you. If I had been keen, motivated, and well, competent, I could have spent thousands of $ starting to finish the basement in my almost new house. But I did diddly sqat, except outside painting and waging war against the grass growing. SO, when the big floods of 2005 arrived and half filled the basement with water, all I had to fix was the wet furnace. My keen neighbors, on the other hand, were throwing out carpet, drywall, stereos, and the like. Well, that was the neighbors who didn't have driftwood and mud fill their basements. Or the ones who lost half their yards to the flood. I had speculated on the possibility of filling in the 6' deep hole the flood waters washed in my front field, but I was pretty dang busy watching that grass grow. Eventually, after trying to justify having a pond out front, the local gas company called me up and told me that they had filled it in and levelled things out for me! Worked again. I was pretty happy that I'd just been sitting back watching the grass grow while the paint dried all that time! Speaking of grass. No, the kind that you mow and cows eat. After my weed eater died and I procrastinated getting a new one, I realized it was much easier to just burn the grass whenever it was windy and cold. Just once or twice a year, not every bloody week! One hint though; when burning in cold (key word) and windy conditions, you should beware of having your garden hose freeze up on you. A frozen hose does not really impress a speeding fire in tall grass. This is not a good time to practice procrastination or watching the paint blister. Vinyl siding and fire are not good neighbors either, in case you were wondering.
Most recently, the local grocery store who shall remain nameless (Safeway in Canmore) stopped carrying the one food item that even I could cook. When I finally got around (can you see a pattern here?) to asking where the heck my food was, no one in the store had any idea what I was talking about, and could find no such thing on their computer. I think they thought I had made it up - or bought it at Sobey's.
Fortunately, my carefully stacked carboard recycling was still carefully stacked where I had stacked it, quite some time ago. Since the grass was burnt and the paint was dry, I dug through and triumphantly located a packing box to prove I was right once again.
Check the pics. The neighbors got hit big time, but I was on higher ground and just plain lucky. If you are a trained observer and have been paying attention to this blog for a month or so, you will note the familiar blue truck and camper parked at my house and the barely visible pond in the foreground, before it was filled. And these pics were last summer. The area now has snow and burnt grass!

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