I have a bad habit of putting nearly everything off until the last minute. I suppose there is something fundamental in my psyche that makes me thrive on pressure situations.

When I was still a student, I often waited until the day before a report was due to do most of the work, sometimes the night before. For some reason, the thrill and rush of finishing something in less time and still having a passable result was invigorating for me.

To this day, I find that I have to force myself to do things ahead of time, lest I continually put them off until the last moment.

This isn't a very bad trait to have in the newspaper business for the most part, since many of the things we do are, by necessity, done at the last minute on deadline. Such pressures aren't anything new to me, but those who must have work done in advance to feel comfortable seldom enjoy the thrill of a last-minute story or breaking news assignment. Anyway, I was trying to catch up on some of the many things I have been putting off on Saturday, realizing just how long some of the things have slipped.

I started off by returning the extra plumbing parts that I had from the really big hardware store after completing my most recent under-the-sink adventure of installing a new dishwasher. Since it is so far away these days, I try to buy everything I need here in Sparta.

However, there are a few items I just can't find here. As it turned out, I had purchased at least twice as much as I needed to do the job, which wasn't by accident. I always try to get twice as much stuff as I need so I won't have to go back to the store in the middle of the job. It seldom works, but when it does, it is definitely worthwhile.

While I was at the store, I picked up a porch board to fix the porch at one of my places, but opted against buying any cement for another job for fear it might rain and leave me with several hundred pounds paper-covered steps in the back of my truck.

After leaving the hardware store, I then travelled to one of my places on that side of the line, having been called to replace a porch board that had started to give way. So far, I have patched the porch about four times since it was built in 1995. The patches are now larger than the original construction by a little bit, but I don't suppose it really matters that much. The main thing is that no one is falling through anywhere. The dark brown stain that I have applied makes everything look about the same anyway. To start with, I figured I could put on a board or two here and there and save the expense of replacing the entire porch later. As it has turned out, putting in a board or two at a time is so much more work and aggravation, especially since I live 45 minutes away that I would actually prefer to just go ahead and do the whole thing. Perhaps I will add that to my long-term project list.

I'm starting to feel like the NCDOT with their seven-year plan. Anyway, the boards that had big knots or cracks in them seemed to go first, while the ones that were mostly smooth have held up well. I didn't exactly select all the boards individually. I remember the day I found the entire cart of lumber for the two porches at the hardware store, much of it damaged in one way or the other. I offered $50 and got it all, using the odd pieces to put the porches together in a horizontal patchwork. All of the boards were long enough for the job, they just weren't all the same width. Measurements varied from 12 inches to three inches in width, but everything was one inch thick. I used the best ones for the front porch and put the others on the back porch in sort of a pattern, with three small ones spaced out by one large one and so forth.

After finishing there, I decided to forego the stain work since it still looked like rain. I went on over to my other place, where I had a dog lot that was supposed to be removed earlier this year, but I just never got around to it. I took down the chain link sides that were nailed around a few small trees and loaded the wire on the truck. The whole process didn't take more than half an hour.

I always wonder why I haven't gotten something done, especially when I see how easy it was to do.

I also took the time to finally put the items that I have been hauling around in the back seat of my extended-cab pickup into storage. While it took only a few minutes, it will no doubt save me hours of future aggravation. Every time I needed to move people or things inside the truck, there was the old computer, CD player, and couple of boxes that were right in the way. That especially came into play on days when it was rainy and I needed a dry place to haul things. I had been carrying the items around in the truck for at least two months, but never got them unloaded.

Maybe the accomplishments of the day will make me more apt to get something done this week. We'll see.

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