I Like Convenience. Who Doesn't?
I like convenience. In fact, I love convenience.
I love convenience so much, it follows that I hate inconvenience, or something close to that. Yesterday, we went through yet another period of inconvenience called a power outage. It began Tuesday night at 7:30 during a strong winter storm, with heavy rain and harsh winds. You’d think we’d be immune, since our power lines are all underground in our over 55 community called Leisure World. But we may have a water problem that leaks into our wiring system just the same. You see, our over 55 community is itself over 55. The infrastructure is aging right along with the residents. The power remained out for about 18 hours before being restored.
We’ve had five outages since last July, the first creating twenty hours of inconvenience. At least we were safe in the warmth of summer. But this last time was a different story. We awoke Wednesday morning in the clutches of low forty-degree air and pouring rain outside. We treated ourselves to breakfast and a warm place to sit at a local eatery, where we are close to being on a first name basis with the servers. They are also learning the name/number of our little neighborhood governing body, Mutual 9. I think, however, that we are number one when it comes to power outages, this being the fifth in seven months. Besides the possibility of water damage, we suffer from an old, weakened power grid with numerous transformers that cannot stand the strain of high summer electrical usage. We residents do so love our air conditioning.
We were also beginning to suffer the inconvenience of discharging our cell phone batteries. We solved that by spending time at a recreational building so we could plug in and charge up. Very inconvenient.
To deal with the cold indoors, I put on a heavy hoodie I bought in France a few years ago. To my dismay, the garment is left-handed. That’s right. You have to pull the zipper up with your left hand. Now, that is inconvenient for a righty.
Growing up in a suburb of Boston, I lived across a street from a small hospital with an Emergency room directly opposite my house. That was very convenient, since me and my brothers all had turns getting stitches there. I’ve always felt better when my wife and I chose housing very close to a good Emergency room. I feel the same about having a Fire House close by, too. Very convenient.
I’m sure I’m not alone in my love of convenience. How has it effected your life choices?