Disaster Mode

The astronaut pen that I bought in the 1990s at a NSA gift shop is broken. You know the one featured on Seinfeld that writes upside down? The very same.

It was Sunday afternoon at 12:45 p.m. Boing! Little pen parts go flying across the room. In attempting to recover them all I spill coffee on my desktop. I return with a paper towel, sop up the coffee and go back to the business of getting my last minute fantasy football changes submitted before the 1:00 p.m. deadline. That didn't happen. Time has expired. Michael F. Bush becomes my running back. Now I return to the pen. I reassemble it and once again I let the spring flip parts here and there. The ink cartridge finds its way between two file cabinets. I need to get a long rod or stick and flick it forward. I have just the thing, but it's locked in my car. Now I can't find my keys. Oh yeah, in my pants pocket. While pulling the keys from the pants that I'm not wearing at the time, all my change spills on the floor. I gather up the change and get the stick from the car. A few minutes later I have the cartridge. I return the stick thing back to its proper place. I put my keys where they belong, put the change in the change tin and sit down for some NFL football.

Fast forward until tonight. I need to tally the league stats for the fantasy football leagues. There are the pen parts on my computer desk except the spring. I crawl around on all fours and miraculously find it. The pen goes together, but it appears that two of the parts were once bonded together. No problem. I go to the garage and get the modeling glue, but knock over a box of bases I use for mounting miniature soldiers. It takes five mintes to put the bases back in the box. Finally, a spot of glue. Pen clamped and hopefully fixed. Glue returned to proper place in modeling tool box.

Punch line: I find out that by not making the fantasy football substitution on time yesterday, I have lost my game by 1 point. Stupid fucking pen.

What is this glue cap doing on my desk?