A few days ago, I made mention to the fact I’ve been playing hell trying to get my hands on a phone from Rogers to replace the one I have now that’s both getting to be outdated, and, I suspect, is now starting to have issues with the battery–a thing I wasn’t suspicious of when all this started. Well, as hinted at in that post, the order actually went through–eventually. And, Friday night, they sent the package to be shipped out. It was due to come in yesterday. There was just one small problem. It didn’t actually leave the originating facility until yesterday, which meant they had to reschedule the delivery date. The official date is now the eleventh of November–also known as rememberence day, when not only did I not think things actually got delivered, but I won’t actually be home. Adding to the overall confusion of a move like that, the package itself is, or was at 9:35 this morning, sitting in an office in Pembroke. Pembroke is about 15 minutes away from me if you stay within the speed limit. If I had a vehicle, or a transportation system that vaguely resembled the one in Ottawa, I could have been there, picked up the thing, and been back here well before noon.
The scheduling fubar isn’t entirely the fault of UPS, though. In this area, UPS at some point–I have no idea at which point, though–hands off anything destined for Pembroke and area to Purolator, who I personally wouldn’t recommend to ship a postcard let alone something you actually paid good money for. From then on, I think it kind of gets fit in around the packages they actually get scheduled directly to ship. Which means, if they have to get it here before 8:00 tonight, I expect to see it by about 7:50. Just in time for me to get up in between periods and sign for it.
Small town life does have its absolutely positive perks, particularly when, assuming one’s relatives living in the said small town actually behave themselves, they’re a lot more accessible to actually go out and do things with more often–without the need to spend a couple days working out travel times first, and aranging to have somewhere to stay before one leaves to do those things. It’s nice, contrary to what I might complain about on here while I live here. There’s just, simply put, no such thing as a shortcut to doing much of anything. You escentially have to shoot past here, and double back, in order to get here unless you’re driving directly on your own–buses stop here coming from either North Bay, or Ottawa. And that’s probably what my package from Rogers ends up doing. So it ends up taking probably 9 or 10 hours to make a trip you could do directly, without stopping save for meals etc, in 4 or 5. Talk about long way around for a shortcut. And you can’t do much without it.