I'm fairly convinced I must be losing my mind.

How could I possibly have forgotten that shopping malls are places to be avoided at all costs on weekends, particularly three weeks before Christmas?

My wife and I are still getting everything set up as part of our move to Georgia, and the cable from her computer tower to the monitor isn't quite long enough for her to have the monitor where she wants it on her desk. So I told her I would go to the Apple store and see about getting a longer cable.

Unlike when we were in Glendale and there was an Apple store six miles away at the Galleria, the nearest Apple store is nearly 50 miles away on the north side of Atlanta. So not only did I have to drive there, I had to fight the traffic to find a parking space and then battle foot traffic into the Apple store.

[caption id="attachment_660" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="December at the mall."]<a href="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/CrowdedMall.jpg"><img class="size-medium wp-image-660" title="CrowdedMall" src="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/CrowdedMall-300x198.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="198" /></a>[/caption]

Definitely a thrill.

It was even more thrilling to find that the Apple people couldn't help me at all. Apparently they make only one length of cable from the monitor to the tower, and they don't even know of any third-party manufacturers who could solve my problem.

Best Buy couldn't help me either, so it ended up as something of a lost afternoon.

I didn't even see Santa.