Batteries: The Next Great Commodity

My life now revolves around little AA batteries. Without them, my life is desolate. I begin to despair.

Why might you ask are batteries so important? I ask why not. These beautiful metallic shiny cylinders of contained energy are not only ascetically pleasing, but they have single handedly kept me from going completely insane. (As is well known, I’ve been insane for a long time, but my AAs are keeping me from hospitalization.)

My temp job has reached a place of zen. I can do my data entry assignments with almost no thinking. I must keep a little of my mind on task though. If I try to talk to my neighbors, I work too slow. But if I just work, my mind wanders too much. And my mind can be a cesspool of self-debt and second guessing, weird ideas and impossible plans. I learned this long ago from driving tractor 12 hours a day. I would finally be in my padded room, calmly institutionalized, and on meds if it wasn’t for… batteries.

We aren’t allowed to use to computer cd player. We might bring a virus. We can’t plug in any electronics. That’s misuse of company electricity. So I rely on batteries. I started with my little tape player/ walkman/ radio that looks like I bought it in the early 90s. It picks up 5 radio stations, and to pick up those, I sometimes have to lean in certain directions to make the reception better. One talk, one christian, one country, one modern filth (vs. the music I actually like from this decade), and one 70s (sometimes distressingly annoying, sometimes kick-my-shoes-off-and-dance good). I could survive off this alone, but it requires those precious batteries. Luckily for me, if I only listen to the radio and play no tapes, 2 batteries can last over a week.

I’ve been upping the ante recently. I’ve started listening to cds on my bright cherry red, portable cd player. For those of you who know that I’m a cheap-scape that I own almost no cds except bargain basket castaways…. I’ve been checking good music out of the library. But after 3 weeks of Gershwin, Etta James, and Diana Krall, I’m about to die of lovesickness. I’m not sure yet if the music causes my to be sick in want of love or sick of love, but I decided to move away from the sappy jazz; however good and entertaining it is.

Now, I’m moving on to books on CD. I started with books on tape, but when my little tape player/ radio to a flying dive off my desk, the little nob got the walkman stuck on radio, and I can’t play tapes anymore. Unfortunately, this is a great battery waste. My little cd player will burn up 2 AA batteries in 12 hours easy. Considering I can listen at work to my CD player for 4-5 hours a night easily, this is an expensive hobby. So what’s my brilliant plan? I buy a battery charger with rechargeable batteries. Except then I dropped that too, and now it doesn’t work either. (By the way, my walkman dropped 4 times before the little nob broke. It only took the battery charger once.) AHHHH. The INSANITY. Luckily, my old batteries held out tonight. I was able to finish the last Amelia Peabody mystery by switching inbetween old batteries. Tomorrow, I will try to refund my battery charge and fix my predicament.

Then, it’s back to work. And for my next book on cd. It’s a biography on CS Lewis. Fun and educational. See I don’t need straightjacket…not yet…