Queue-ups of screw-ups

[come_to_think]

Yesterday evening, mixing a manhattan, I noticed that I was low on dry vermouth.  I immediately turned to tick it off on the shopping list (a printed strip clipped to a 3x5 card), but it wasn't on the fridge where it belonged.  It was in my wallet, where I had left it the other day after shopping.  Pulling it out, I found that I had used both sides of the card, so it needed a new one.  Then the pen was recalcitrant, and I had to find a harmless place to scribble it back to life.  Such backups happen many times a day, but that one was special:  I noticed immediately that at no stage in it had I had to piss.