amounts of time to kill, ranked

this is serious

One of the more annoying things about being an adult is that you have a lot of appointments that it is your responsibility to get to on time. Sometimes you’ll have more than one in a single day, which seems unfair. And sometimes the appointments will be spread out weird so you can’t run straight from one to the next. This is something I generally try to avoid. My perfect appointment schedule flows seamlessly from one to another to another and then I go back home where my television and pretzels are with no time to burn off between. 

It doesn’t usually work like this, though.  Usually, you have to kill some amount of time between your appointments and errands. I’ve had to do it a ton in the last couple of weeks, with various doctor and car things squeezed between visits with people I haven’t seen in too long. Which brings me to the topic of this week’s newsletter: Amounts of time to kill, ranked from best to worst.  

LESS THAN 10 MINUTES

Killing 10 minutes is so easy. You can just take the longer and more scenic way to the next place and listen to music. You can quick call a friend. You can check your email or scroll on your phone. You can get there a little early and give people the impression that you are a responsible individual who is good at managing time, which you are not. Hell, you can kill 10 minutes by doing nothing. You can just stare off into space for a little and think about whatever pops into your brain. You can be like “I wonder how styrofoam is made” and then look it up and get the answer and then, boom, it’s time for that next appointment. I killed 10 minutes just now writing this paragraph. You have options. That’s my point. 

OVER ONE HOUR

Anything over an hour opens up a lot of possibilities. You can be productive if you want and squeeze another errand in there that you were saving for another day. You can go home and chill for a while and head out again later. You can swing by a coffee shop and sit there and read a book for a while. You can watch a whole episode of a television show in the coffee shop if you don’t want to read a book and have your headphones with you. The key with this length of time is to look at it as a break to be enjoyed and not an extended lull to endure. 

30-40 MINUTES

There’s something here that’s all mental, just with the number 30. Like, 25 minutes does not feel like enough time to do something but 30 minutes does. It is admittedly madness to feel this way but it is also true. I feel like 30 minutes gives me enough time to get to a third location between the other two. Maybe sip an iced tea and check sports scores or play a game on my phone. It’s definitely not enough time to go home unless you’re in one of those awful panicky whirlwind situations where you’re dropping one thing off and picking up another thing you forgot. But it is enough time to chill and decompress. That’s good. You deserve that. Probably. 

20-30 MINUTES

This is the flip side of the 30-minute threshold. Not enough time to actually go do anything short of like a pharmacy drive-thru run or a quick stop to get gas and a soda. Too much time to show up early for the next appointment. Getting somewhere 10 minutes early looks responsible and mature. Getting there 25 minutes early makes you look like a crazy person. This will not do. 

40-50 MINUTES

This one is tough because it’s in the wasteland between 30 minutes and one hour and my brain has trouble processing that. Like, have you ever gotten a coffee and a pastry and sat down for a bit and then they’re both done and you look at the clock and you still have 25 MINUTES UNTIL YOU NEED TO LEAVE? Ugh. Unbearable. Sometimes I’ll be like “Should… should I get another coffee?” and then I realize that after I waited in line and got it I’ll only have 10 minutes to drink it and then I’ll show up at the next appointment absolutely tweaking on the double-dose of caffeine I funneled into my body in 40 minutes like a maniac. This is uncomfortable. I do not recommend it. 

10-20 MINUTES

This is:

• Too much time to drive around

• Too little time to stop anywhere

• Too early to just show up wherever you’re going

We call this the “why is that man just sitting in his car in the parking lot playing on his phone?” conundrum. It’s awful. It must be avoided at all costs. 

STUFF I TYPED

Okay, this is the second week in a row I have nothing to link to. And it might not be the last for a while, mainly because I’ve decided to pretty much take April off after that other thing happened. But it’s also the second week in a row I have an important update to a story I wrote about earlier. Last week, it was the bobblehead heist. This week, it is the golden toilet heist. I have a niche. 

Anyway, an arrest has been made and a man has admitted to stealing the golden toilet. 

A man has pleaded guilty to stealing a toilet made entirely from 18-carat gold and worth more than $6 million from the English stately home where wartime leader Winston Churchill was born.

Right, so three things worth noting here:

• To refresh your memory, the solid gold toilet was made as an art exhibit for a museum out there in England

• When the exhibit ended, the solid gold toilet was moved to — and installed in! — the childhood home of Winston Churchill for reasons that no one anywhere knows

• The owner of the estate gave a quote that is outrageously funny in hindsight

Here, look what he told a newspaper about it.

In August 2019, Edward Spencer-Churchill, the brother of the Duke of Marlborough who resides at Blenheim Palace, spoke to The Times, saying, “It’s not going to be the easiest thing to [steal]. Firstly, it’s plumbed in and secondly a potential thief will have no idea who last used the toilet or what they ate. So no, I don’t plan on guarding it.”

It was ripped out of the wall and stolen four days later. I love this story very much. 

Let’s learn a little more about the man who pleaded guilty to stealing the golden toilet. 

James Sheen, 39, pleaded guilty to burglary, converting or transferring criminal property and conspiracy to do the same at Oxford Crown Court on Tuesday, the UK’s PA Media news agency reported, citing the Crown Prosecution Service.

Which, sure, fine. But look at this next part. 

Sheen appeared at court via video link from Five Wells Prison, where he is serving a 17-year sentence for various thefts. Among others, he is serving time for stealing tractors and high-value trophies from the National Horse Racing Museum in Newmarket, worth a total of £400,000 ($503,000).

Three more things worth noting:

• I love that this man has dedicated his life to stealing the weirdest collection of golden knickknacks he can get his hands on

• I choose to believe he was just going to steal one trophy from the horse museum but he ended up with so many that he had to go steal the tractors to haul them all away

• If I ever go to prison in the United Kingdom (not my preference), I hope I end up as this man’s cellmate so I can ask him thousands of questions about silly thefts he has committed

This has been your update on the golden toilet heist. 

STUFF I CLICKED ON

— the best thing I read this week by far: Kelsey McKinney takes down Big Hot Dog for their lies and misrepresentations

— Alan Sepinwall interviewed Walton Goggins and got this sentence out of him, which I immediately heard in his voice: “I have the propensity, yeah, but the swagger that I have comes in spurts”

— I might start doing weekday lunch at Dave & Buster’s now, too

— Alan Siegel has a great thing about the Seinfeld finale and how Larry David might be planning to address it in this week’s Curb finale

— reading that made me remember this

— SEND ME SOME FLOWERS BEYONCE

— two stories that a bunch of people sent to me that both could be good plots of Fast & Furious movies: 1) thieves stole $30 million in cash from a California warehouse; 2) multimillion-dollar Corona heist

— good Spider-man post

— bricks of cocaine are washing up on the shores of Australia 

— the casting department at Hacks remains pretty much undefeated

— I don’t know who asked for an Air Supply movie but you’re getting one

— a dog that went missing in California nine months ago was found safe and healthy over 2000 miles away in Michigan

— free goats

— I hate the robot dogs

— freakin go birds baby

Okay, that’s all. I hope this helped you kill a little time yourself.