Grabber

Okay, this is kind of silly, but I'm going to write about it anyway. It's the tale of Grabber and his journey home to us from the Panasonic repair center. Grabber is our DVR/DVD-recorder, and our most beloved piece of electronics. Unfortunately, Grabber has been having problems with its TV Guide functions, and has spent a lot of time in the shop the last month and a half. It's now on its way back to us, and I've been following its progress via UPS online tracking. It's been quite a journey, from Palatine, Illinois, to Indianapolis, to Louisville, to Manchester NH, and then on to (back to?) Windsor Locks, Connecticut. Hello? Didn't we just pass Boston? The tracking still says it's on time for delivery tomorrow, though.

What made it more interesting was a book I just finished reading, Uncommon Carriers, by John McPhee. Great book. It's about what it's like to drive an 18-wheeler, or pilot a ship at a ship pilot's school in Europe, or drive a coal train, or...get packages sorted at the enormous UPS Louisville facility, located, according to McPhee, between two runways at the Louisville airport. His description made it sound like something out of Monsters, Inc.—an enormous building with incomprehensible mazes of conveyor belts, and packages zipping and zorting this way and that, all under computer control. At the time I checked the UPS progress report, Grabber was in fact at that place, riding a conveyor from somewhere to somewhere. It was quite the vicarious ride.

We'll see if Grabber arrives tomorrow, and if so, whether all has been made well.

"Confusion is a word we have invented for an order that is not yet understood." —Henry Miller