Procrastination as Art

I have a giant tray of change near the front door. It lives there quietly accumulating coins, and every once in a while I dump it into a plastic bag and start trying to find a way to divest myself of it. One week I took 99 cents at a time to the bagel shop downstairs every day. I was feeling pretty good about it until I realized that a) the cashiers in the bagel shop dreaded my appearance, and b) the coins were not disappearing fast enough.

Another time, back in Arizona, I took the coins to a Coinstar machine which said it would give me an Amazon gift certificate without taking a percentage of my cash. But it lied--the machine was equipped to provide an Amazon gift certificate, but did not have any of the actual certificates (a feeble excuse, since there is no physical place to give Amazon the gift certificate and therefore all it needs to do is print the gift certificate code on, say, a strip of adding machine tape) so it gave me cash and took a fee for counting my change (which it wasn't supposed to do if you took the gift certificate). Oh, Coinstar machine, you traitor.

Lately, I've been considering something like this:


But that seems a little active. Really, when it comes right down to it, I'm pretty lazy. So I thought to myself, what if I got a larger receptacle for my change? And what if it were disguised in some way? Which is how I found this, and this, and this:



(Freakish and scary and unwelcome in my home, but still weirdly fascinating.)

Just in time, before threw good money after bad by purchasing an expensive bank or a pair of cargo pants and a belt, I discovered that the bank around the corner will sort my change and give me bills without taking a percentage. Whew! Still, that Tamagotchi thing looks like fun--I'm hoping Target will carry a cheap knock-off, because an $80 bank is sort of an oxymoron.