Have you ever played the "Hunt Chain"?.
Stay with me here....
The concept goes something like this.

It works in four phases.

Phase 1
You start off spending a few days/weeks/months thinking about things you can't place and thinking "Umm.. I wonder where so and so is", but not actually bothering to look for them very hard because they're not that important.

Phase 2
You need to find something really badly so you go looking for it, instead of finding it you find everything that you were thinking about during phase 1.

Phase 3
You give up looking for the item you really needed in phase 2 and by this time you desparately need another item, so you hunt for it and guess what? You can't find it, but you do find that thing you thought you had lost during phase 2.

Phase 4
Repeat phases 1 thu 3 ad nauseum.

Rules
1.Time spent to find item during phase 3 is proportional to importance. i.e. the more important the item is, the longer it will take to find.
2.You won't find the item in phase 3 until you start from phase 1 again.

I played the hunt chain today. It wasn't amusing, but then, it never is.
*Sigh* Some days I think the universe is having a laugh at my expense.