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Whew. That was a lot of errands!

• Stopped at a store to pick up an item to add to a box I was mailing.
• Took two boxes to the post office to mail. Unfortunately, the box that had needed something added to it wasn’t yet sealed, and despite reminding myself to bring tape, I had forgotten to bring tape. And I have so many rolls of packaging tape at home that I didn’t want to buy yet another one. So I mailed the box that was already taped up, and brought the other one home, to be taped up and mailed tomorrow. This is not the first time this kind of thing has happened. I should start keeping a roll of packaging tape in the car.

• Went to pick up my luggage. A shoe- and luggage-repair person in Sunnyvale has had my suitcase and two bags for I think three months now; I made the mistake of telling them at the start that I wasn’t in a rush, so they told me they would finish the repairs in two months. A little after the agreed-upon date, I contacted them, and they had clearly forgotten all about my luggage, but said they would do the work the following weekend. That was a month ago; ever since then, I’ve called them every week and every week they’ve told me that they would do the work the following weekend. Last week, I finally got tired of waiting, and lied to them that I was going on a trip starting tomorrow. (Well, it wasn’t entirely a lie, it was more an uncertainty. Kam and I were thinking of going on a brief road trip this week, but ended up postponing. I just didn’t tell the repair person when the trip was postponed.) So they called me this afternoon to say everything was ready, so I went to pick it up.

  Back when I dropped off the luggage, we talked about how they would do the repairs, and they said they would add a bit of leather. And I said can you do it without leather? and they said sure, and told me how they would do it without leather. So I said yes, do that, please don’t use leather in these repairs.

  But when I picked up the luggage today, they proudly showed me the leather they had added. I reminded them that they said they would do the repairs without leather. They said they tried but the cloth didn’t hold up, so they switched to leather. I said I wish you had told me, I would have said not to do the repair. They started explaining in detail why it had to be leather. They didn’t seem to understand that I would rather have not had the repair done than have it done in leather. (I had originally been thinking of just replacing the suitcase rather than repairing it; if they hadn’t told me they could repair it without leather, I would have replaced it.)

  I’ve gone to a fair bit of trouble over the years to get non-leather luggage, and I was pretty unhappy that they had made this change without asking me. I kinda suspect that what happened was they were making the change at the last minute—like maybe this morning—and didn’t want to reveal how late they were by asking me questions about it. (I have been in that situation myself, so I do have a certain amount of sympathy for it.)

  On the plus side, they gave me a discount on the repairs. This is a small one-person shop, so I would normally have offered more than once to pay the full amount; but after three months of waiting, followed by getting something that I had explicitly asked them not to do, I wasn’t in the mood to try harder after I asked once and they said they were sure about giving me the discount.

  As I left, they gestured to the piles of suitcases on their floor and said they were really busy because it’s travel season. I can understand that, but it seems to have been really busy for the past three months.

  Anyway. I now have my luggage back, and it seems to be in working order.

• I decided to give up on the idea of getting my old microwave repaired, and on the idea of replacing it with another built-in. So I went ahead and ordered the countertop model that Wirecutter recommends, for pickup from Target. (I could have just stopped in at Target and bought it in person, but I think Wirecutter gets a commission if I buy using their link.) But it was gonna take Target a while to have the order ready for pickup.
• So I went to the grocery store. I had gone grocery shopping the other day, but that day I ended up not getting there ’til shortly before the store closed, and they were out of a bunch of things that I usually get, and the orange juice machine had been put away. So I figured today while I was waiting for Target, I might as well go get some fresh-squeezed orange juice and various other things. That all went fine.
• Then I stopped and got ice cream, because it was a hot day and I was tired and I wanted a treat and the ice cream store was right there.
• Then I went back to Target, figuring I would wait in their parking lot for a bit, but my order turned out to be ready for pickup shortly after I arrived. So I went in and got it. The sales clerk was friendly and cheerful and fairly quick, and everything went smoothly.

…At various times during all that, I thought about running a couple of other errands while I was out and about, but decided against it. The ones that I did added up to about three hours of errands, and I think that was enough for one day.

It was very satisfying to check off a bunch of things from my to-do list. And now I have luggage! and a microwave! and orange juice!