Horizon Road

So I’m sitting there watching North Carolina, or at least I thought it was North Carolina, getting trounced by Kansas in the Final Four match up last night, and decided a pizza might at least make the bad game I couldn’t not watch a little better.

Since I hate using my modern new-fangled mobile phone that does so many different things it makes it hard to do the one thing it was made for, talking to people, I decided to order my pizza online. I won’t have to adjust any volume, assuming I can find the volume adjuster when on the phone in time for it to matter; I wouldn’t have to ask the phone person from India fielding the incoming calls to repeat the question a few more times so I can figure out what it is they are trying to say through their accents, and I could continue focusing on the obvious conspiracy unfolding in front of my very eyes on the basketball court. I mean, how else could a team averaging almost 100 points a game only manage 27 in the entire first half of the most important game of the year for them?

Anyway, I finally finished ordering the pizza online and suddenly “The Pizza Tracker” appeared on my screen. It looked a bit like an over-sized downloading bar. The left end was glowing and pulsating, as though my pizza had just begun its download process.

And sure enough, that’s exactly what was going on. Above the glowing end was the header “Order Placed”. Looking right, above the over-sized download bar, I noticed the other headers, Prep, Bake, Box, and Delivery.

Below the bar, it told me that I had ordered my pizza at 8:55 PM.

I watched as my pizza was prepped and put in the oven at 8:57 PM by Kevin.

The second half of the game was under way and I could tell the real North Carolina team had finally made it to the arena and taken over for the replacements that had covered for them in the first half. But I was even more amazed at what was going on on my computer screen when my pizza was placed into a HeatWave™ bag at precisely 9:03 PM.

Then 2 minutes later, as I noticed North Carolina had somehow already turned a 28 point deficit into a 4 point barn-burner, the final third of the over-sized download bar started pulsating and told me that Thomas left the store with my pizza at 9:05 PM.

At 9:09 PM, I went upstairs and turned on the porch light…just as Thomas was pulling up in my driveway.

I went back downstairs missing less of what had turned into a great game while waiting upstairs for the pizza than I had while watching the Pizza Tracker sitting in front of the TV. Of course, now that I had my pizza and was paying attention to the game again, Kansas was pulling away again. But I had a very good pizza to make the lousy game a little more bearable.