All this for democracy!
It’s municipal election time around here (Toronto, Ward 44). Liz is working as the campaign CFO and I’m the webmaster for a candidate site – www.forward44.org. One of the benefits of working the political scene is that you get to do all sorts of tasks that you never expected to be part of the normal routine. One of those is that Liz voluntold me to undertake the mission-critical task of putting an election sign in place.
So, we have the sign, we have the stakes and all we need are the tools. Getting the hammer is no problem – I have lots!
The other critical item is a staple gun. Once upon a time I had a nice staple gun. I’d had it for years. And then I bought another staple gun (these are real ‘guy’ tools, along with assorted hammers, duct tape and a can of WD40), so putting up the sign was only going to be a moment’s work. ha ha!!
I searched the workshop and couldn’t find a stapler. I searched the house and couldn’t find the stapler. Unwilling to be the butt of another ‘oh you really must have looked hard for that’ comment from the boss, I searched again. No stapler, so I admitted defeat. It took Liz about an hour to find – ‘someone’ had put it in a butter box, under some golf balls, under some golf towels in the basement!
Next task – find the staples as the new staple gun is empty. I take a much smarter approach to this. After searching for at least 30 seconds, it’s obvious that someone has stolen all my staples, so it’s off to the store to buy some. Thirty minutes later, it’s obvious it would have been a really good idea to have taken the stapler along to ensure what I bought was the right size. Since it’s late, I defer buying more staples until another day. Another day takes several days to arrive (plus I’m worried that Liz is going to ask about the sign), but eventually I manage – with the assistance of a very helpful young lady at the hardware store – to locate and purchase staples that fit. Since there are really no excuses left that will work …
… it’s time to undertake ‘the project’. It’s probably not necessary to describe in detail – I’ll leave it to your imagination to figure out how a hammer, a stapler, two bits of wood, and a sign come together in perfect harmony with brute force. The image should give you a clue.
Final score
To be determined on election day (November 10). The ‘bonus points’ in this story is that we’ve found one of our staplers and have the staples to fit!
FLASH UPDATE
And on November 10, the winner was … Gay Cowbourne!! (with webmaster modestly hanging around in background)
Artistic license disclaimer: the lawn seen in the picture is not the lawn where I put the sign. It was really put on our lawn, but it was a cold, wet, day and I wasn’t going to ask Liz to take a picture of that one – so I settled on a picture of our front lawn.
