I’m just back from Dick’s Sporting Goods at the local shopping mall where I
was attempting to exchange one dartboard for another (dang, this makes it sound
like I’ve been en route for days, since my last blog entry even). Why the
exchange? We’d been stringing along on half-commitments, shamelessly doling out
one-of-these-dayses to Ph. as a way to defer the purchase of a dartboard
for the basement. Finally, yesterday, I splurged on the board. It’s
nothing extravagant, but for the price one would think it would come with
everything advertised on the box, including two sets of crappy darts. Got
the package home, however, and tacked up the board before learning that the
darts themselves had escaped the package. They were nowhere to be found.
You can imagine our disappointment; gloom overflowed. I’d even picked up
an open-patella knee sleeve at Dick’s to keep my loose and slippery left
knee-parts compacted while heaving the darts at the basement wall.

So back to Dick’s I went late this afternoon. They had one other
dartboard on the shelf like the one I bought yesterday. Perfect.
Until I opened it and found that it, too, was missing the small bag of dart
parts. No bag. No darts. No other boards like it (next
closest, a thirty-dollar upgrade). So I went ahead and picked up a set of
soft-tips, talked the asst. manager into giving me them at a significant
discount. Completed: a dartboard and darts for the basement.