Thank you for your patience…

If there’s one thing that makes me want to smash things, it’s non-human devices that thank me for my patience.  It’s not just the automated voice that interrupts my elevator music every two minutes while I’m on hold scooping flesh out of my face with my fingernails.  Today’s tirade is dedicated to my Toshiba flat screen TV, which thanks me for my patience during the entire sixty grueling seconds that it takes to warm up, while I stand there calculating how many cumulative hours I’ve spent dumbly staring at it with my remote control.  If I had the money, I’d take a sledgehammer to it, but sadly, I can’t afford a sledgehammer.

How quickly she forgets.

Every year I get a letter from my Alma Mater. As much as I love Carolina, it seems the only time she writes, she’s looking for money. I don’t know why I feel that way—maybe it’s because she ends each letter with “I, I/we want to give to Carolina. Please check one: $100, $250, $500, $1,000, $2,000, or other.” Seems like just yesterday I paid off a multi-thousand-dollar donation known as “tuition.”