A Wild Hair

February 27, 2011

Sometimes I get a wild hair and it happened last November in Tanzania. 

We stayed at The Lutheran Centre, a motel like accommodation run by the Southern Diocese.  It is comfortable and welcoming.  When they handed us the key to our room, that’s what we got…a key with no fob.  It became a challenge for me to keep track of it.  Sometimes I didn’t have a pocket, if I put it in the backpack I was searching for it in the depths while holding other things, so I put it on a safety pin.

 In my head I thought….hey, how hard can this be?….I’ll get key fobs for The Lutheran Centre.  And now three months later and it is done…although it has been interesting. 

My first thought was to order some that had The Lutheran Centre on it…I went to my cousin’s business website (Premium Solutions) and found out that the minimum order is 250 so while the price per item was  reasonable the quantity was overkill for a Centre with 28 rooms!   I checked many other sources….and decided that plastic fobs from Walmart and a computer template would work.  I could print the text – which could now include room numbers and cut them to size.

 It is now the second week of December.  (My first deadline was early January when another group was traveling to Tz that could deliver them).  So I talked to the auto department (key fobs are in auto!) and they willingly ordered 25 (two per packet). 

And the fun begins and even the store manager gets involved.  The warehouse would cancel the order for 25 (apparently no Walmart auto dept. needs that many key fobs) and send 5 or 10 …and snow and trucks also meant delays. I checked about once a week.  Is it good if the auto dept recognizes you as the key fob lady? 

Last Friday I finally got the last 10 packets and printed the fillers, cut them to size, slipped them into the fob, attached a key ring  and finished this project!!  We have guests coming from Tz in June so hopefully there will be room in a suitcase for a sack of key fobs.