No One Can Say I Wasted My Time

I just spent about two hours and fifteen minutes waiting to buy a poster online. There was a limited run of 320 and the posters, sold through Mondo Tees, typically sell out in a matter of minutes. The posters go on sale at a random time during a specified day. Most of the time, I sleep through it or forget to check in the morning. Today, I forced myself to wake up, and, of course, it didn't go on sale until long after I would've been up and active.

I've been having trouble with my wireless router (it might be on its last legs) and at one point, it failed on me. Panic ensued. I scrambled around the room to unplug (and replug) the router and rushed back to my computer. Crisis averted. No drop. But would it happen again?

An our or so later, after much refreshing and minor efforts to occupy my time (but not too occupied), the drop came. Panic really ensued. I refreshed the Mondo homepage repeatedly to know avail. Turns out, I should have been refreshing the "Shop" page. I clicked the Twitter link repeatedly and got nothing but the Pinwheel of Death. My computer and my anxiety were out to foil me. Three separate pages for the "Shop" page were trying to load. I eliminated all but one.

The page finally loaded and I was able to click "Add to cart," but the page was taking forever. Even though I know that traffic to the site at that moment was brutal, I still anxiously pressed "Add to cart" in an effort to speed things along. Finally, it was in my cart! But I didn't know if that meant it was reserved for me or if I finished checking out it would tell me the poster sold out. Fortunately, all of my information was in from a prior purchase, so the only thing I had to fill in was my credit card info. I was so close and terrified of making an error. Forgetting a required field. Typing my credit card number in wrong. Pure adrenaline was coursing through my veins. I hit submit...

It's mine.

Lonesome Ghosts is one of my favorite Disney shorts ever (if not the favorite) and this poster (hell, all of Tom Whalen's work) is amazing. Knowing how hard it can be to get poster's from Mondo, I'm lucky to have this one. It sold out in six minutes.

It's a little sad that my most exciting moment in terms of pure adrenaline in recent memory happened as a result of trying to buy a poster, but I earned it, dammit! I feel like a champion.