Temporary Measures

A full seventy-five percent of the sporting life consists of temporary measures - give or take sixty percent. Extreme cases on either end of the scale have been eliminated from the study. There was one angler, for example, who believed that if you can't do a thing right you shouldn't do it at all. A strict adherent to this philosophy, he hadn't been fishing once in the past thirty-seven years. I chastised the man for holding such a stupid belief - that there is a right way to fish - and told him I had a good mind to divest him of his title of angler. He told me he had a good mind to punch me in the nose. I replied that I'd like to see him try, but since I was three blocks away by then, he didn't hear me, and it's a darn good thing for him that he didn't. (From "Temporary Measures" in the book "Never Sniff a Gift Fish" by Patrick F. McManus)

I have several temporary measures in my everyday life. I'd like to get a good camping vehicle, a four wheel drive with enough seating for a family or Scout troop, and enough clearance to pass over minor waterways without getting my feet wet. Until then my Mercury Sable will get me by, despite bottoming out every time I go over a curb if the trunk is loaded out with camping gear.
I have a lamp next to my bed, temporarily standing in a temporary nightstand. The nightstand is actually a piece of one of those stackable plastic shelving units with the PVC pipe supports. The base of the lamp won't screw in anymore, so I just ran the wiring up through the leg of the shelf and let it be the support for the lamp. Eventually they will both be replaced, but until then they provide light and a place for my alarm clock to sit.
I have an electric lawnmower, requiring that I drag an extension cord around with me while I mow. Actually two extension cords to reach the side yard. The second time mowing I ran over the cord and cut it neatly in half. Had the severed section been close to one end or the other I would have removed the end of the plug and correctly spliced it into place. Not wanting to give up twenty feet of cord in either direction I applied the temporary measure of splicing it in the middle. I didn't have any electrical tape that day, so I used clean garage rags as insulation and duct tape to keep the whole thing together, just for that day. Later I would remove the unsightly duct tape and re-splice the cord correctly, and it's highly possible that I still will, later...
I'd like to install movable shelving in my garage to store all my tools and things, but I haven't had the time to do that yet. Until then the unused wheelbarrow and garbage can can store all my gardening tools, while the power tools sit dustily on the rest of the plastic shelving unit that my nightstand came from. Someday I will get around to taking care of all these things, but, as Pat McManus says "it is surprising how many better things there are to do than..." saving money for a new car, fixing a lamp, building a nightstand, re-splicing an extension cord, installing shelving...