Bopping around the house this week as part of my usual don’t-get-sick-right-before-vacation cooldown period. Life changing strategy.

Almost thought the flawless system had been compromised when right in the middle of the week, my inability to read the instructions for a combo COVID/Flu test led to a 90 minute catastrophic freakout. It was trying to communicate “I am a broken piece of garbage; please ignore me” by blinking the little lights next to both “Pos -” and Neg -" at the same time, but my brain just processed a blinking “POSITIVE” as rather insistent.

Hat tip to my darling wife for asking “if you’re sick, why is the negative light blinking too?” The instructions are actually super clear about this:

How many dozens of these things have I done mindlessly in the last four years? I don’t even read the directions anymore. Complacency breeds contempt, et al. Time to go watch a bunch of Air Crash Investigations and U.S. Chemical Safety Board videos.

My penance for panicking myself for no reason: building four different Home Depot shelving units to try to make some sense of the unfinished closets in my office and the guest room. We should eventually install some of that generic white wire hanging stuff, but for now this gets things off the floor.

Rules to live by: 1. Everything has a home. 2. Nothing’s home is the floor.

And with that, away to London. Hello from a shockingly on-time flight, somewhere over the Atlantic.