The disorder of it all

This weekend I plan on going up and taking care of some things on the boat, weather permitting. I have more goodies coming in tomorrow that will help that process. Not the weather, but the working. And when looking over the list, my first thought was, wow, I sure do things in a sporadic nature. Certainly not how I watch other people do it. That's when I realized that since I'm not in the business of producing nice shiny videos for others to watch, it's not a big issue.

Now a normal person, for example, will look at a project and make a list of everything that's needed, purchase it all at once, and complete the project. Do I look normal to you? To be fair, there's a lot of little projects to be done. It's not as if I'm building a shed or something. This is why you'll see me talk about buying one piece here, then something completely unrelated the next week, and so on. See, it doesn't matter how one does a puzzle. Some ways might be more efficient, like doing the borders and corners first. But as long as the end result is still a completed picture, it matters little the process taken.

Another thing you might notice is that I'm a fan of Amazon. Partially because I have the Prime membership so shipping is quick and painless, and more than partially because the pricing on a lot of things is hard to beat. Don't get me wrong, I am a strong fan of Defender, and have used them for a lot in the past - and will do so again. But I also have found that for a lot of incidental things, the price is relatively close between the two, and shipping would be the same time frame. By the time you factor in paying the little extra shipping for Defender, it's mostly a wash on things anyway. And there's an added bonus.

Did you know that if you go to http://smile.amazon.com instead of the regular www link, you can pick a charity to have money donated to, because of your purchase? It doesn't cost you anything different, but Amazon donates a % of the purchase to them. They are small numbers to be sure, but if you look at the grand scheme of everyone? It really adds up, and is a really cool thing to have happen. For example, you might think you aren't having an impact. I've placed 25 qualifying orders through Amazon, and have managed a paltry $11 dollars of impact for the charity I had chosen (and which can be changed at any time). However, combined, this charity alone has seen just under 2 million dollars raised. That's million. And total charitable contributions through the Smile program have exceed seventy million dollars. All without any addition costs to us, the consumers. All without asking me to spare a dollar in a checkout line.

Go ahead, try it. I dare you.