I work from home most days. This allows me to do errands and schedule appointments that I would have to take a day off from work otherwise as my office is a good 35 miles from my home (unlike my wife who works 4 miles from our house). This past Sunday evening, I looked at my list of chores for Monday, take dog to groomers, stop at supermarket to get bread as our son is having a growth spurt, get my driver's license renewed and, courtesy of a vomiting cat who likes to sit on top of the cable box, go to the Cablevision office and exchange the cable box, and decided I would have to use up some of my comp time (I can't remember the last time I only worked 35 hours in a week, outside of weeks I took a day off or there was a holiday) and dutifully emailed my director. My wife was envious I'd have some child free time off from work (very rare these days) on a beautiful summer day, even though I'd be running errands. Turns out she didn't have to be envious.
I split my errands into two parts as I had a mid day meeting to call into. The first part was groomer, supermarket and cable store. The after lunch part was going to be the local MVC office. The dog, my mother-in-law's, was first on the list. Now, though I live in the suburbs, I live in walking distance of mass transit and almost all shopping (though we learned long ago not to walk to the stores because, even though there are crosswalks and pedestrian lights, drivers, even during rush hour when buses are dropping passengers off regularly, forget to look for pedestrians), so it was only 5 minutes to the pet store where the grooming would be done. Within 10 minutes of dropping off my mother-in-law's ewok (a cocker-spaniel long past the time for her haircut), I was in the adjacent supermarket paying for the bread and some salad for my lunch. I was tempted to buy some perishables, but not knowing how long I would be at the cable store up the road, decided against it. Stupid me.
In less than 5 minutes I was at the cable store. As I pulled up I saw two people enter the office and figured I'd be there for a while. It turns out they were the only people in the office and, within 15 minutes I was home again attaching my new cable box to my TV (note to cable people: could you make a cable wire something other than the standard black, it would make life easier when reattaching cables) and ready to go back to work. All in all it took 30 minutes. Well, I figured, this good karma will get me when I head to the MVC after lunch.
Now when I dropped off the dog, the groomer told me she would be ready at 2. Knowing that, I left for the MVC, a 10 minute drive from my home a little before one. Currently, our local MVC office is a few miles from the inspection station, in a small shopping center that surrounds a pond and small park. Very peaceful, hardly the place you expect to find a stress factory like the MVC. I'm going to miss this office next time I renew my license as the office will have moved to the inspection station by then, but it is awfully small and it probably makes sense. Anyway, I digress.
I entered the office, all stressed out, hoping that I had the right documents (many of my bills are electronic these days and I had trouble finding a hard copy of anything with our address until I spotted our property tax bill) and before I could even think, the woman at the reception desk was asking if she could help me. Within moments, she directed me to the correct line, 3 deep. Long story short, the MVC is much more efficient these days. Much to my surprise, I was out of there in about 20 minutes with my new license in hand. If I had come in just a few minutes later, I would've gotten out even faster as there was no one on line behind me. I sure hope this office stays quiet once it merges locations with the inspection station.
I got out so fast, that I actually had time to kill before picking up the dog. I did a quick drive by of the inspection station, as my wife's car needs an inspection this month and I wanted to see how the site was doing with the construction (note to self: bring a book for that one) and then headed to the electronics store in the same shopping center as the pet store to browse while I waited.
Those type of stores can be very dangerous for me. However, miracles of miracles, I did not spend any money there and was soon picking up the dog and headed for home. By 2:10 or so I was back at work amazed that nothing went wrong. Then, as I was going through the emails that piled up in my absence, and planned to attend another boring meeting I originally declined, I realized that karma was about to catch up. Instead of spending a beautiful summer, child free day away from my home office, I was back at work, answering emails that could wait and staring at my laptop's screen. Whoops.
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