Thursday, August 31, 2006

Oh, There it is!

Right before Nationals, my printer died. Well, it didn't die as in dead die, just as in smearing black ink over everything died. Most stuff we printed was still readable, and the aquarium tickets I printed on it got us into the Atlanta aquarium without a problem, but there's no way I'd be sending out queries and the like on a printer smearing black marks all over the page. Just not my kind of professional.

So, Mr. Honey and I finally bought a new printer last weekend. We ordered it online, and Mr. Honey, being the brilliant forward-thinking man that he is, requested that UPS not require a signature and that they just drop the box off on our doorstep. Both of us are usually driving home from work at the time the UPS man comes through the neighborhood, and we wouldn't have liked passing him on his way out of the neighborhood, knowing we'd have to climb back in the car and chase him down, or wait until such-and-such time to go pick it up ourselves at the UPS place. So why not let it sit on our doorstep for three minutes?

Last night at 5:45 PM, Mr. Honey came barrelling out of our office and into the kitchen, where I was making dinner. "Did you bring the box in?" he asked.

"What box?"

"The printer box that UPS dropped off today."

At this point, we both stare at each other, realization dawning that I forgot we were supposed to get our printer delivered and that the printer was not, in fact, on our doorstep. Nor had it been on our doorstep at any time in the previous two hours. So Mr. Honey went back to the computer room and called UPS. He came out a minute later, beads of sweat forming at his hairline. This was his new printer, it has duplex capabilities, and the UPS man reported it was in our carport. But it wasn't. It wasn't anywhere in our carport. It wasn't in our duplex-mate's carport. It wasn't in a single carport in our neighborhood, and Mother Nature had finally decided to grant us a pouring rain that sent streams gushing through all the carports within a 3-mile radius. Thank God for the rain, but where in the world was our printer, and just how wet was it going to be when we finally located it?

Mr. Honey knocked on the neighbor's door. Nope, she hadn't seen a box. He toured her carport again. He toured our carport again. He opened one of the storage closets, for goodness' sakes! Nope, no printer box. I'm starting to panic. He's a little beyond that.

And then he stops in front of the other closet, the smaller closet in the carport, the one further back by the garbage cans. He grabs a little yellow and brown piece of paper sticking half out of the door crack. And he grins. We've found the printer.

Smart UPS man didn't want to leave it out in plain sight with a thunderstorm brewing, so he tossed it in the most unlikely place. As Mr. Honey said, we would've preferred the note that the printer was in the closet to be attached to our front door, rather than to the closet door, but our printer was safe and sound, and now Mr. Honey can print duplex pages to his heart's content.

And yes, K & E & A, I'm going to send the &%$^% query now. :) As soon as I turn duplexing off while Mr. Honey's up at DragonCon.

Posted by Honey :: 8:50 AM :: 5 Comments:

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