No Deadlines In This Job

I don't consider myself overly environmental; I drive my big 'ole SUV and take long showers that waste water. But, I do try to make up for this by doing some smaller things: I recycle and advocate wind energy off of Cape Cod. The other thing that I've been trying to do is cut down on the amount of junk mail I get. I've attempted to get off many mailing lists, or at least transfer to email lists when possible in an effort to save some trees along the way. The less mail I get, the better. So, I emailed the Eastbay company and told them that since I get their emails every day I could stand to not get their catalog physically mailed to me. They said it would be no problem, but it would take a few weeks for the system to update and I will probably still get a catalog or two in the mail. I thought this was weird, because how long does it take to update a mailing list? Ten, maybe fifteen seconds?

But, I moved on. Next on my list of corrections to reduce my mail was a call to Sports Illustrated. I don't have a subscription to the magazine, but was getting copies of it anyway. There was a mix-up somewhere along the line and while it was my address, it was another guy's name. I would hate to think someone was being deprived of the chance to read Selena Roberts and see who's in this issue's "Faces in the Crowd" on a weekly basis. When I told the woman about it she told me that it would also take a couple weeks because the labels are printed in advance. Now, like all things in life I sort of accepted it in the moment, but in retrospect I have a ton of questions. How can you print labels weeks in advance when the label is on the front cover, not on a sticker? The cover isn't chosen in advance, so why (and how) would the label be printed this way? It makes no sense. I think the moral of the story is that you are looking for an easy gig, you should work in database management for a magazine, it appears to be one of the lowest pressure jobs in history: "Here's a stack of address to be updated. Get to it... I don't know... eventually."

-Recently I've been getting into Sudoku. A Sudoku puzzle was my brain teaser of the day on my calendar and I found it a challenge, so I wanted to try another one. I went online trying to find an easy puzzle, since I'm still new to them. Anyway, the center square of the puzzle I found online had 8 of the 9 boxes filled in. This puzzle literally insulted my intelligence. I wanted easy, but not toddler-level.