Postal Going

Tuesday, Oct. 21, 2008 - 12:01 a.m.

Well, I got the counterfeit iPod mailed off on Monday afternoon.

It should have been Monday morning, but therein lies a tale.

I sleep with headphones on, because I have moderate tinnitus. That's the ringing in one's ears that sounds like a flyback transformer.

When I lived alone, and then when I lived with Kevin Standlee twenty years ago, I used to just put the radio on and the sound of it would effectively lull me to sleep.

This practice had to be discontinued when I married John McLaughlin because John is a light sleeper who needs full darkness and the sound of nothing but a fan for the first part of his sleep cycle. Once in a few generations, I can turn on my bedside light for a few moments if I come to bed when he's deeply asleep, but otherwise, those are the mandatory parameters.

So, I bought a small cheap pair of headphones, placed them on my head, found an extension cord I liked, plugged into the bedside radio, and learned to sleep with them on. I got my white noise, and John got his.

Today, I had set my alarm for 10:30 am.

I finally blargled awake around half past noon, and wondered what in the world had happened.

Then I saw where the headphones and the extension cord were disconnected.

Argh.

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Anyway, I finally noodled around and got to the Post Office and mailed the fake iPod. It will be there on Wednesday, with a signature upon arrival, which constitutes delivery of the product, and then I can show this to PayPal and to the seller and get my refund.

I also sent something in care of General Delivery for the first time in my life. The woman at the post office, whose smiling countenance I have been aware of there for more than a decade, in a patently obvious combination of confusion and curiosity, questioned the address format. "You can send to General Delivery there without the street address?" she said. I had addressed the box as follows:

Person's Name c/o
General Delivery
Citiname ST XXX01-9999 (the X represents a disguised numeral.)

And I explained to the lady that yes, this should reach the recipient just fine. If a Zip Code ends in "01", that means it's a regional sorting center, to which all letters in the 'XXX' prefix are sent to be sorted. The Plus Four suffix of '9999' is an indicator that it's for general delivery.

For safety's sake, I got a tracking number and some insurance, though.

I will be watching my parcels to see what goes where and how fast.

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When I got back from the post office on Monday afternoon, I turned on the television and caught a few minutes of the new series of Unsolved Mysteries. The new host is an actor whose work I have really come to enjoy -- Dennis Farina.

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In this story, courtesy of FARK, we see that the Mormon Church kicked somebody out because they weren't making enough money from him.

Gee, that's funny. A tax-exempt organization like the enormously-moneyed LDS Church seems to be requiring a cash contribution in exchange for acknowledgement of church membership.

Can you say ILLEGAL, dear readers?... sure, I knew you could.

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That's it. Have a good Tuesday.

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