Hoarding vs Backups [NOT 3/1/24]

3/1/24 brightersideoflife 28

Hi, friends!

Today I ordered a new pair of running shoes. I usually keep a spare unused pair of them at all times. I pronate and have crappy feet and it took a lot of trial and error to find good shoes, so now I have existential dread that somehow after 30 years Asics might suddenly stop making the style I wear. So always have a backup! It’s definitely irrational, but also, sanity.

Do you have something like this? I’m also like this with the face sunscreen I’ve used for 11 years. Always a backup in the cabinet. Just in case.

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28 Comments

  1. I usually have extra 2025 or 2032 watch batteries. Never know if you’re gonna need a battery for a garage door opener…

    I didn’t realize till this summer I shared that habit with dad after I found several years worth of batteries in his desk!

    • Nope too many people get brown recluse spider bites from newspaper and cardboard. Those spiders love living in that material. I’ll be bad about some things but paper products is not among them.

      *Please don’t panic about risks of brown recluse spiders. Missouri and Arkansas are like the two worst states for them so it’s a much more considerable risk here than many other places.

  3. I hoard plans… In my head usually.

    When things go sideways I usually have something for it.

    Unlike current managers and some former colleagues, I know that asshole Murphy and his goddamn law is going to fuck me over hard so I usually have contingencies.

  4. I tossed an old pair of running shoes in the trash a few days ago to start the new year. I’ve landed on Brooks as my my brand and they seem to have a good record of not screwing with their product lines, so I’m pretty confident there will be more in the future. Unlike, say, New Balance, which is horrible about maintaining consistency.

    • I don’t know how helpful this is, but I had to get custom shoes made. I had to go to an orthotics place. I told the very knowledgeable tech that I had been struggling along with Propét shoes that I had been buying on Amazon (and I was wearing a pair when I saw him) and he said, “Oh, aside from custom, those are the best shoes you could have bought.”

      I’m telling you, you learn something new every day.

    • I have trouble throwing out old shoes.  I might wear the old pair when I paint or for a super muddy job.  I have too many old shoes in the garage I need to dump.  I just saw my Helly Hanson boots I love the other day & thought, I should clean them up & wear them!  Then I thought about how many spiders would become homeless & chose another easier route.

    • I like Brooks and Asics. Too bad Brooks has a limited selection of colors. My new pair of Asics literally fell apart at the seams in less than a year. I was surprised because my previous pair lasted me over three years. I’m not looking forward to hunting for new shoes and trying to gauge if they are cheaply made by zooming in on a million photos from different angles and reading reviews. I solely wear running shoes due to untreated foot injuries from years ago and hip pain.

      • My foot doctor told me to buy Brooks Ghosts & I love them.  Only way I was able to walk 10 miles a day in Europe.  The Brooks outlet in Bothell is an amazing store.

      • Yeah I’m a fat woman, my running shoes start breaking down after 3-4 months. Regardless of brand.

        Then they get put in rotation for casual wear shoes and work. But no longer for exercise.

  5. As for hoarding, you’ve come to the right place. This is Better Half’s fault. When he does the monthly big shop he takes inventory but then ignores it all and buys another three months’ worth. This came in really handy, though, when the pandemic descended on us. Hand sanitizer? We have a decade’s worth. Toilet paper? Hundreds of rolls, take whatever you need. Enough paper towels to circle the equator several times over. It’s completely insane but our staff and neighbors appreciated it when all these things disappeared and we were like, “Oh, we have some extra if you want it.”

  7. Mrs Butcher is a hoarder. She’s always keeping things because she has big plans for how to repurpose them…but they just sit there and take up space.
    I typically get a replacement for something just before I need to get it.

    • I have only been reading Sedaris books recently.  He cracks me up.  For awhile I was almost convinced  Cousin Matty was really David but then I realized Matty could not live in NC for a beach house.

      • That’s one of the most flattering things anyone has ever said about me. I have been a huge fan of David Sedaris (and his sister, Amy) ever since I read “The Santaland Diaries” in a defunct New York alt-press weekly (“The NewYork Press”) more than 30 years ago. The part where he’s the Macy’s Christmas elf and learns enough ASL so he can tell the busload of deaf schoolchildren waiting in line–I won’t repeat it.

        I forget what book this is in but there’s another one where he and Hugh go to the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam and they tour the attic space and the only thing he can think is, “This little room would make an adorable study/office.”

        David and I are twins of a different mother.

    • only 6 to 8?

      we definitely have more up here in the north

      we also still…..have the blackface petes up here in the north…tho the rest of the country has moved away from that shit….what can i say….. bumpkinland is stubborn

  9. OK. Time for another “Hawaii 5-0” recap. Move right along if this bores you.

    In this one, we learn that Hawaii is plagued by four crime families. Everyone knows this, but no one can pin anything on the ringleaders. A war of sorts breaks out among them for greater control of the grift and graft. They would have had a field day in contemporary New York.

    What’s interesting is one of the four ringleaders is found dead with his pinkie finger chopped off and next to him. So Steve McGarrett has a talk with another one of them, because apparently this is some kind of honorable Samoan custom and he’s Samoan and he’s being framed. What?!

    Another patriarch takes two in the hat. Another one is constantly bitching because he’s in the midst of taking inventory in his import/export warehouse. We’re back at the Honolulu Airport, of course, where the United Airlines flight is dropping off a character or two. We’ve left the Ilakai hotel behind, it seems, which is too bad because the nightclub has this tiki theme that the tourists seem to enjoy.

    Fabelhaft, as we used to say in the BRD.

    • So, the truth of that time was we had 2 big mafia presence, Yakuza & Hawaiian mafia.  The Hawaiians allowed the Yakuza to control prostitution because they brought in some serious talent & paid it back to the Hawaiians. Some said senator Dan Inouye was the real leader of the mafia but the known head was a rancher that owned the biggest security company in the state.  They had the airport contract which made moving drugs easy.  I worked w/ his son that was a serious fuck up but nobody dared fire him.  Fun fact:  said godfather once offered to “take care of” my brother-in-law at the time that was abusing my sister.  Dad did NOT want to owe him favors.

      • Yes! At one point Steve McGarrett goes on a rampage about the crimes the families are committing and he mentions drugs and gambling and prostitution (these all used to be illegal in New York, but not anymore) and “refugee smuggling.” I wonder what he meant. It’s not explained. Fallout from the Vietnam War, no doubt, and people at the time would have understood the reference.

        What’s so disappointing about this episode is that my heartthrob, Danny “Danno” Williams barely shows up in it, so I have a feeling he was doing another project. But even to this day it takes forever to get to Hawaii (well, not so much from LA) and if we could ever get our act together and revive the Concorde and not fly at speeds that haven’t changed since the 1940s…

        Oh, there he goes again.

  10. I’m going to post this again, with some commentary:

    I said before that the dance they’re doing at the end when they hop around in a circle has a name. Mostly they’re doing “The Swim” or “The Monkey (Rope Climb.) But the bouncing around in a circle has its own name.

    Anyway, imagine being that little boy and Michael Stipe in his prime picks you up and you’re in a music video with him and Kate Pierson. He probably didn’t really realize what was going on but the rest of us do. He’s also probably about 40 now, which is a sobering thought.

    My point is, if I had any idea that all this talent was coming out of the University of Georgia I might have applied to go there myself. My parents would have been appalled, but I bet it would have been fun. And Athens (LOL) Georgia seems like it must be one of those “make your own fun” places so there would be lots of quality time to be had with the likes of Kate Pierson and Michael Stipe.

    • Most excellent. How old are your children? The ones I know are now in their 20s and they grew up on a diet of “Blues Clues” and the “Teletubbies” and “The Wiggles.” Now, I should say that I knew everyone involved in “Blues Clues,” including Steve, and his successor, whose character name I can’t remember, and all the voices and the writers and the production staff. So I won’t say anything bad about them.

      But I always tried to get the kids I knew to watch “Sesame Street” and they wouldn’t do it. I’m talking about 30 or 40 children. This is incredible to me. But also when I was 8 I didn’t have a smartphone, unlike one kid/young adult whom I know.

      • My kids are 22 & 20.  They both loved Sesame Street & all the other shows you mentioned.  The youngest used to talk in her sleep and yell “Swiper no swiping!” which was a quote from Dora the Explorer.

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