Triskaidekaphobic? Not me.

No, I can have "bad luck" any time, usually brought on myself.

1. I went to the local comic book store on Free Comic Book Day last month and bought a book called Persepolis, actually The Complete Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi, which is about that Iranian girl talking about the period before and after the rise of the Ayatollah Khomenini. It was made into an Oscar-nominated film in the past year that I meant to see but didn't; it'll be out on DVD June 24. See, FCBD CAN generate sales.

Generally, I don’t bring books with me when I travel, but I was so intrigued about reading this particular book that I took it with me when I went to my work conference the day after FCBD. Naturally, I left it at the hotel. I realized this even before I got home and called the hotel to ask them if they could send it to me, and they replied quickly. What I didn’t know was that the charge for sending me the book would be $30 – at least $5 more than I paid for the book in the first place. The actual shipping cost was $10.40, but there was a COD charge. And it would have been $1.60 more if I had paid in cash, for then the post office would have had to pay to buy a money order to send to the hotel. Now I could have just blown it off, and bought a new copy of the book, but since I had initiated them sending it to me, I felt it was my error and that I should just eat the extra cost.

2. My friend Uthaclena came up to help me fix my computer. We went out and bought some wine after dinner and I put one of the bottles in the freezer. The next day I opened the freezer door to find that the cork had popped out of said bottle with slushy alcohol across the bottom of the freezer. Fortunately, it spilled only about 10% of the volume. I sat the wine on the counter and it reconstituted into the potable beverage. I suppose it could have been worse; the bottle could have exploded, with broken glass everywhere.

Oh, I must thank my friend Lori in Florida, who I knew from when we went to church together about a decade ago. Because of my injury, she was kind enough to let me dictate content to her over the phone, type it, then e-mail it to me. She did this for about seven posts, including today's, and I am most grateful.
ROG