I think this notion is pretty simple, so no setup is really need. But some of you are masochists and always want one, so I’ll spoiler-box it for them.
As part of Evil Inc’s annual campaign to ruin Christmas for everyone else, we have opted to eschew the usual subtleties in favor of a frontal attack on Santa’s workshop. The original plan was to simply nuke the North Pole from orbit (it’s the only way to be sure), but Kringle’s Star Wars-type shields prevented that. Instead we just sent orcs riding wooly mammoths and armed to the teeth.
Results were mixed. We were able to destroy all most of the stockpiled toys and murder all the male elves, but the Claus-beast himself managed to escape; and of course we released the elf-maids and youngsters alive and unmolested, as Rhymers do not harm women and children. (I’m sure this old-fashioned mercy will not come back to bite me.)
Anyway, the workshop is ours. Inventorying its contents I have discovered how Santa accomplishes his great feat each year. Bastard has a time-skipper, which in addition to allowing St. Nick to stretch Christmas Eve for a really, really long subjective time, allows the user to travel backwards in time, no more than one year into the past.
I know, I know, I should just trash it. But my dinner of reindeer venison and Noldo blood has left me feeling loggy and a little sentimental, so I’m opting instead to make the time-skipper available to Dopers between now and Boxing Day, at which time it goes into the volcano. You may use it to travel to any date between 26 December 2010 and 10 December 2011 and undo one bad choice you yourself– and nobody else–made.
What bad choice you made in the last year would you care to change, given the chance?
I would have listened to everyone else and my own gut feelings and not gotten married. I knew I didn’t love him, I knew we weren’t a good match but I felt it was the best for our daughter and thus went through with it. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to just ‘deal with it’ for her sake and five months later we were separated. If I had just not ignored my better sense, I’d have saved myself a lot of stress and anxiety and him a lot of money on top of it all.
I’ve made some bad decisions in the past year, but most of the problems they’ve caused were the results of lots of little bad decisions rather than of one big one so this is actually a tough question.
I suppose the best I can come up with is that I wouldn’t have put my transit subsidy vouchers “somewhere safe” and would have instead left them right out in the open like I usually do so I wouldn’t lose two months (about $360) worth of reimbursable on my train tickets to and from work. It’s more minor than the ones other have posted, but it’s the best I’ve got.
I thought of the same thing, but decided that counted as more than one bad decision (I decided on lots of days not to excercise rather than making the decision once not to excercise much this year) so I didn’t count it.
That reminds me of another candidate for mine: I wouldn’t have ordered my window shades from Home Depot. The shades are nice and pretty much exactly what I wanted, but the service was terrible and expensive and took forever. There were at least 4 occasions when I went into the store to do something related to my order when I waited nearly a half hour before getting to actually talk to somebody who worked there and on 2 or 3 of those occasions, the person I talked to could only say that there were no people who could help me working that day/shift and that I’d have to come back later. It just about drove me insane.
I can’t think of anything too monumental, so I’ll say I wish I didn’t wear my 5 Fingers shoes on the hike to Red Mountain back in May. I ended up with tendonitis in my right achilles tendon that bothered me for months. It really cramped my hiking choices and ability to scramble around.
June 11th. I don’t want to go over the details but I nearly ruined my life that day. That day has cost me a fortune and I’ll be feeling the consequences for several years.
I would have stayed down in my hometown for a few extra days when my mom was in the hospital. We knew it was only a matter of time before she was gone, but we didn’t know how long it would be. We had our cats boarded and I needed to get back to work, so we decided to head back home. Two days later she was gone. I wish I’d stayed those two days (and maybe one more after).
I would not have tried to move shit at the Habitat warehouse that I knew was heavier than I was capable of handling, and thus not sprained my back (or compressed a disk or whatever the fuck I did that has had me on limited movement for the past two months).
I would have pushed my designer harder on my remodel to use less expensive but just as or almost as good materials, and gone with a different cabinet maker. I probably could have saved at least $5K that way.
I know, I know, first world problems and all that. It’s the only major thing I can think of that I would re-do.
Roddy
I found exactly ONE shower door to replace the current one I have that would fit.
Goodby Kholer. Jesus. I had to return FIVE of them because of defects. Defects not found untill you put the damn thing together which takes pretty much all afternoon. It’s still not right. I had to wing it. They even stopped asking me to return the old ones and just sent me new ones. At one point I had 3 of the damn things.
These are $500 doors. It was FINALY pretty clear that they had screwed up royaly
