For some unknown reason, I have started to develop a reputation as an excellent choice to housesit for people when they leave the country for extended amounts of time. I had my first housesitting experience a few weeks for two coworkers temporarily leaving to get married. On the surface, this sounded really promising: a zamazing house, DVD projection system, a ridiculous library of DVDs, warm showers with good water pressure, two adorable cats, a washer/dryer, and car privileges. Unfortunately, in only two weeks I experienced: (1) the panic of waking up at 1:30 a.m. in the morning to a faint beeping sound that lead me to a control panel which displayed a yellow dot next to the word 'trouble' (Nothing like waking up in a strange house and being informed by the wall that there is trouble....), (2) a mosquito net just randomly being broken when I came home from work one day, (3) discovering a random puddle of water in the middle of the bathroom that could not possibly come from the ceiling, toilet, or faucet, and (4) discovering a kitchen knife that I never used was now broken. It's a delicate balance, but I still think all of these hassles were worth getting to watch the first 3 seasons of Entourage and the entire series of Sports Night with their ridiculous projector.
So, after all of these disasters, I was pleasantly surprised when another co-worker asked me to housesit for him while he and his wife went back to the states for Christmas. Wahoo car privileges!!! Despite the fact that I'm a 25 year old adult male and I still have a small residual fear of dogs from my childhood(they have 2...including one big one), I keep on waking up at 5 am to the bangining of the front door due to the wind, and I may or may not have seen a rat run across the floor (maybe keeping the front door open for the dogs before I go to sleep was a bad idea?), this housesitting has gone well so far.
Anyways, that's all background information. So, today I have to drive to the post office to pick up a package (my Christmas present from my mom....wahoo Country Time Lemonade and a college basketball magazine, according to the customs declaration sticker on the envelope!!!!) and I get stuck at a stop light. Getting stopped at a stop light in Zambia is an exciting experience, mainly because there aren't many (maybe 5 that I can name off the top of my head in a city with 2 million people), no one really follows the stop lights, and there are TONS of doods approaching your car trying to sell random stuff. Normally, it's not very exciting stuff: newspapers, various fruits/vegetables, cell phone minutes, board games, dog chains, cell phone accessories, shirts/hats with the zambian flag, etc. Today, though, a guy was selling these mini axes (about the size of a hand). I'm not really sure the utility of a mini-axe, let alone if the blade worked. Regardless, I didn't buy it and I now have nonbuyer's remorse. If only Bill Xu had given me advice concerning mini axes in his e-mail "By the way don't buy mini tools off the street, I highly recommend you not doing it!"
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