Running Errands During a Sixty Minute Lunch Break

I'm not a person who lives life completely planned out. At least most of the time. Let me explain.

Since I work in radio, a lot of this business is about time and timing. Our shows have a specific start and end time, we watch the clock when talking over the beginning of a song to make sure we don't talk over the vocals. That would be bad. There are more that we depend on time, but that's a story for another time..or never.

In my personal life, I do tend to watch the clock more that I really need to. If I have somewhere to go to, I need to leave on time and get to the destination on time. If I'm waiting for someone (who is joining me) and that person is running late, I get a bit stressed. I'll (almost) never be late. More often than not, I will be early.

That leads me to a challenge I gave myself this week. My goal was to get to four errands in the Triple Cities done in sixty minutes during lunch break. It included a visit to a bank, a department store and two electronics stores (the last two are my favorite and can tend to slow me down.)

Fortunately, I got through the bank drive-in quickly, found and made a fast purchase at the department store, found what I needed and checked out in minutes at electronics store number one and number two.

From the time I left the radio station to the time I arrived back in my office? One hour and twenty minutes. Challenge busted. What do I blame it all on? Traffic lights. I traveled from Binghamton to Vestal to Johnson City and back to Binghamton, and I was delayed a lot because of traffic lights. Had I lucked out and had all green lights, I think the goal of sixty minutes would have been met.

Well, good effort anyway. I'll make up that extra time by staying at work twenty minutes longer one day. Yea, right.