Thursday 15 December 2011

No Upper Body Strength

The weekly Princess Auto flyer arrived in the mail today. I am always inexplicably excited when it arrives. You can’t imagine how excited I get when I actually buy something.

This is a weekly tradition for me, I get the flyer, set it down in front of me and smooth out the center fold so that I can view the flyer in all of its pristine glory. I make a coffee or a tea depending on whether I feel I should be wired or mellow when I read it. I turn the radio on low so that I can have music in the background but it won’t be so loud as to divert my attention from the Princess Auto flyer. I study each page slowly as if it were a legal document and if perchance I missed a line I would end up in some kind of debtor’s prison.

I look at all of the gizmos and gim-gaws, wondering just what the hell they do. There is about half of the stuff in there that I really don’t know what it could possibly be used for. Some kind of manufacturing I guess. On page three there is an infrared thermometer for $40 bucks off. What a deal! Why with that, I could tell if Louise had a fever from across the room. Hell, I could check out everyone in the local coffee shop to see if anyone is a carrier of some virus. Why don’t they use these things in the doctor’s office when you walk in? They could just point the gun like thing at you and sort the feverish patients into one corner. All that for only $39.

There is a paper towel/chemical holder on page four for just $9.99. It is regularly $19.99, so you get a ten buck discount. I wonder why they couldn’t make up their minds as to what it should be used for? Really, paper towels or chemicals? I can see paper towels or rags, or chemicals or paint, I mean wouldn’t you think that they should build a holder for like substances? Oh well.

God, they have a circular saw bag! I wouldn’t have to put the saw on the shelf in the garage any more, I could put it in a bag and put the bag on the shelf. No, that wouldn’t work for me. I would forget that I put it in a bag and spend three days looking for it before I remembered. There is a 6,000 pound trailer axle and a 12.000 lb weld-on drop leg trailer jack. I am sure that there are guys out there wetting their pants about these things, but for the life of me I wouldn’t know what to do with them if I were given them for free.

I just like to look through the flyer on the off chance there is something that I can’t live without or that I must have. There was a sale a few weeks ago and I bought one of those suction grips for carrying glass. The price was too good to pass up. Yes, I just bought one. I know I would need two if I were to carry a large pane of glass or mirror, but in the close to sixty years I have been on this planet I haven’t yet needed to carry a large pane of glass. If I ever have to though, I will only need to buy one suction thingy because I already have one. I took it to one of those buildings that have the smooth shiny marble to see if I could use it to climb up the side of the building. You certainly need to have two of these things and a well developed set of upper body muscles. It turns out that you also need a permit to climb the side of a building even if you only have one suction cup and no upper body strength. Cops really don’t have a sense of humour as a rule. I shouldn’t say that, I have seen videos of a group of cops laughing as someone “falls” down a staircase.

Well, I had fun with the flyer, and now I can look forward to next weeks. I still have six days to decide if I have any need for an English Wheel or a cordless grease gun. When did grease guns get cords?

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