Crappy things, good fortune, and a whirlwind of fake cash

I went dark for most of the evening last night.  Not dark as in, “taking candy from babies”, “kicking puppies”, “brooding over Man’s inherent Evil”, or “eating the last Double Stuf after having already had my fair serving”, that is, but dark as in, “lights out”.  Yep, I was pretty much offline all night.

Of course, that’s not to say I was completely devoid of online contact.  Goodness, no.  Just the idea of that sort of thing would’ve had me curling into a little ball and begging the Puddinette to bring me my special fuzzy bear.  I was still getting mail, texts, etc, on my phone, which is to say that I didn’t end up needing sedation.

I did, however, spend the evening packing up my desk area at home (which included the dismantling of my desktop computer) because later today, we’re moving it.  So, if you’re wondering, that’s why there was no Monday post, no lame/inane tweets, no facebook comments, nothing.

What’s with the desk migration, you ask?  Stuff it, you did too.  I heard you.

Anyway, the Puddinette and I have been discussing ways to better make use of the space in the house, and ultimately decided that everyone would be best served if I moved all my crap to the basement (don’t worry, the finished side, not the dungeony part labeled Here There Be Monsters).

I’m excited about this because there will be more space around my desk down there.  I don’t know why, but for some reason, I feel like I have an easier time writing when I’m not crammed into a enclosed area.

Then again, that’s probably about as valid as someone saying they prefer to write between the hours of 11:18 am and 1:56 pm, and only after they’ve eaten 3 pomegranates, a room-temperature cheese frank, and exactly 17 green M&M’s.  It’s mostly all just nonsense and excuses.

But dammit, these are my nonsense excuses, and I’ll cling to them as I like so long as I’m getting the words out one way or the other.  So there.

Besides, it’s not like I’m holding out for Neil Gaiman’s writing gazebo.

Oddly enough, the point here – and you can’t have possibly seen this coming unless you’re like a psychic or medium or something, in which case, let’s talk Super Bowl bets – is that, sometimes good thing happen to balance out crappy things.

If you’ll recall last week, the Family Puddin met with a bit of misfortune on Tuesday, which is a nice way of saying, “Man! What a crappy day that was!”  You know, first it was tires and then the microwave, and well, my sanity wasn’t far behind.

In the midst of all that, after the Puddinette and I shook our respective fists at the sky and muttered in the appropriate old-people manner, we discussed potentially putting off my office relocation.  Because to make the move to the basement, the basement needs some seating.  I mean, come on, we’re a family of six.  Nobody’s going to want to hang out with Dad in the basement if the only place to sit is a dirty, upside-down construction bucket or a 15 year-old weight bench in front of a static-y TV.

Gulag Nouveaux isn’t exactly the most inviting design philosophy.  And believe it or not, I do kind of like to have my kids around when I’m home.

And that’s where a little “lucky” comes in.  Just as we were ready to put the official “postponed” stamp on the desk transition, the Puddinette noticed that the store selling the furniture we’d be eyeing was doing a special Sunday promotion: the money box.

You’re familiar with the “money box” concept, right?  That’s where some hapless fool gets sealed into a plexiglass cabinet with wind-tunnel-like conditions while some form of representative cash flurries around them, which said fool attempts to grab by the fistful.  In many cases, this begets more humor than actual money, as the poor victim ends up grasping at thin air like a dog snapping at dust motes in a sunbeam.

You see where I’m going with this, right?  On Sunday, I got to be the hapless fool victim clutching for swirling denominations of dolla dolla bills, y’all.  Much to my disappointment, the goal wasn’t to stuff them into my bra (which totally would have made my life complete regardless of the fact I was braless), but instead to feed them through a slot in the cabinet wall.

Foolish-looking spectacle or not, in the course of what I can only assume was some massively gawk-worthy flailing about I managed to grab enough representative dollars to make Operation Get Some Furniture a success.

Which is why my desk, where I do most of my writing, is moving to my exciting new Man Cave this evening.

I’d say that’s worth a night or two offline, wouldn’t you?

And I’ll throw in the looking-stupid in public for free.  Odds are good I was going to do that anyway.

Pud’n