It’s a conspiracy, that’s what it is.

I think if a Fed Ex pick up box says “last pick up at 6:00p.m.,” it should mean that the Fed Ex picker upper should never ever come even a millisecond before six.

And if I was so good as to sacrifice proofreading my multi-page grant proposal so that I could have it ready to go by 5:54 p.m., just in case the Fed Ex clock did not jive with the rest of the world’s time sequence, then I should be rewarded with a prompt and efficient pick up at 6, just as the heavens intended.

But shoulds/woulds/coulds make little sense in a world that is out to get you.

Let me say, for those who do not have their computer homepage set to the weather in Wisconsin, today we had a high temp of 2 degrees F. That was in the mid-afternoon, when the sun was gunning its engines full blast. Who knows what level of Arctic misery was being inflicted upon us by 5:54 p.m..

But there I stood outside, me and my grant proposal, waiting, because being raised to be suspicious of anything associated with capitalism, I had to see if Fed Ex would really come at 6 [OR THEREAFTER!].

They didn’t come. Or, more likely, they came at 5:53p.m.

Thoughts that were going through my exposed (vanity=no hat) head during the 36 minute wait:

- a fur-coated animal has no chance right now..survival of the fittest means that if I spot one, it turns into a hat.
- Even if I succumb to hypothermia, I will not regret putting off writing the proposal in order to try to get three wins in a row in Spider Solitaire
- I don’t even want this grant, I have enough other work to do at the moment.
- Does anyone still believe that Michael Jackson is innocent?
- Why hasn’t Katie Couric ridden the subway in the last 10 years? If she did (to celebrate today’s 100th anniversary of the subway system in NYC, for instance), and it was rush hour, would everyone get up to give her a seat?
- My poor housebound dog: it's been almost 12 hours for him.
- Should Dean hang it up?

And so on.

In the end I had to drive to the airport Fed Ex station, which, of course, I could have done from the beginning, but one always thinks “if I wait just one more minute, surely they’ll come..”