Stamp Act
I did something I haven't done in quite some time this weekend: I mailed letters. A whole bunch of them.
Most of them were bills. Okay, all of them were bills. One of the bits of fallout from STBEW's shopping spree at my expense was getting a new bank account. This wiped out all of the 'direct pay' options that I had set up on my old account. I love direct pay. Put in the info, hit the 'complete transaction' button, and get back to viewing porn--er--reading up on my blogging buddies. The only problem I have is it takes several weeks to get that first payment through the system. After that, it goes pretty quickly, but since I was already late, I was scratching out amounts on my new checks, stuffing them in envelopes, and slapping them into mailboxes.
Which meant I had to find my stamps and envelopes. Which brought me to the realization that I don't much use the mail.
Want to know how little I use the mail? I found a booklet of first-class stamps with the Statue of Liberty and the words "First Class" on them, but nothing else--like the value of the stamp. And I had no freaking clue how much they were worth.
Why in the hell did the Post Office make stamps without a visible value to them? And why in the hell did I buy them? Furthermore, what does it cost to mail a letter these days?
And finally, am I the only person around who's this clueless about postal rates?
Fortunately, I also found a sheet of stamps with a listed value amount of 39 cents, and I found out that the aforementioned stamp, known as the 'Lady Liberty,' is only worth 37 cents. I found this out on the internets, which are more or less free, and will, I'm assuming, continue to eat into the profits of the United States Postal Service.
True USPS story: an aquaintence of mine from some years back was a postal worker. When I met him, he had been in that job for some time, but he told me about his first day on the job:
"I was taken to the back room at the office, and my supervisor introduced me to another guy, who was supposed to show me how to sort letters. 'The first thing you do is you put your left hand here,' the guy said, and placed his hand on the top of the cabinet, right at eye level. Since I just got out of the Army, I did exactly as I was told. The guy showed me how to sort the letters one-handed. It didn't make sense to me why I couldn't do it two-handed, so after a couple of hours I asked the guy why I had to put my left hand on the cabinet like that. 'Because if you put your hand up like this, you won't hit your head on the metal when you fall asleep.'"
And some other things:
yeharr
Most of them were bills. Okay, all of them were bills. One of the bits of fallout from STBEW's shopping spree at my expense was getting a new bank account. This wiped out all of the 'direct pay' options that I had set up on my old account. I love direct pay. Put in the info, hit the 'complete transaction' button, and get back to viewing porn--er--reading up on my blogging buddies. The only problem I have is it takes several weeks to get that first payment through the system. After that, it goes pretty quickly, but since I was already late, I was scratching out amounts on my new checks, stuffing them in envelopes, and slapping them into mailboxes.
Which meant I had to find my stamps and envelopes. Which brought me to the realization that I don't much use the mail.
Want to know how little I use the mail? I found a booklet of first-class stamps with the Statue of Liberty and the words "First Class" on them, but nothing else--like the value of the stamp. And I had no freaking clue how much they were worth.
Why in the hell did the Post Office make stamps without a visible value to them? And why in the hell did I buy them? Furthermore, what does it cost to mail a letter these days?
And finally, am I the only person around who's this clueless about postal rates?
Fortunately, I also found a sheet of stamps with a listed value amount of 39 cents, and I found out that the aforementioned stamp, known as the 'Lady Liberty,' is only worth 37 cents. I found this out on the internets, which are more or less free, and will, I'm assuming, continue to eat into the profits of the United States Postal Service.
True USPS story: an aquaintence of mine from some years back was a postal worker. When I met him, he had been in that job for some time, but he told me about his first day on the job:
"I was taken to the back room at the office, and my supervisor introduced me to another guy, who was supposed to show me how to sort letters. 'The first thing you do is you put your left hand here,' the guy said, and placed his hand on the top of the cabinet, right at eye level. Since I just got out of the Army, I did exactly as I was told. The guy showed me how to sort the letters one-handed. It didn't make sense to me why I couldn't do it two-handed, so after a couple of hours I asked the guy why I had to put my left hand on the cabinet like that. 'Because if you put your hand up like this, you won't hit your head on the metal when you fall asleep.'"
And some other things:
- Thanks, everyone for your encouraging words regarding my situation with STBEW. I spoke to two lawyers last week about divorce proceedings. The first was an arrogant ass who wanted to plug me into his system and didn't want to hear squat about my situation. The second guy actually listened to me, gave me confidence in his abilities, and I'm hiring him. I'm suing for sole custody.
- There's a new post over at Celery of Humanity. Go get some snark.
yeharr
posted by Balloon Pirate at 11:07 PM
4 Comments:
I heard today that they are about to raise the price of stamps again.
I think they print stamps without the price because when they do that first printing, they don't know for sure how much they will be allowed to charge for the stamps. They know the price will be higher, but they don't know by how much.
Sole custody. That's a big step. I'm hoping you get it.
omigod... i had the same issue with those same damned lady liberty stamps a few months ago! and i, too, had to look up the current value of a first-class stamp. i thought it was just me.
glad you found a better lawyer. seems like your case is a no-brainer, but what do i know?
You wouldn't believe how few businesses we use here that can't be found in the phone book (even in the white pages, where I thought that was free). Phone books have really gone downhill lately.
I got burned on the last stamp price increase. I bought a couple books of stamps when I found out the price was going up the next week. What a huge pain in the ass!
Good luck with the divorce proceedings. You've pretty much had sole custody for a while now anyway. I would think that would help you win.
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