going postal

every day, monday through saturday, i go to the post office to get the mail. the post master in this town is named Lee and he is a really nice guy. AND he totally knows his usps shit and can answer all sorts of stupid and weird questions from me. and by stupid and weird i mean "how much will it cost to mail this" and "can you tell me when this will arrive". unfortunately Lee is taking vacations and days off during the summer months (what the hell?) so what is left is his helper monkey. she is really really sweet and super nice. however.

and this is a big however.

she doesn't really know much about the postal industry. when i asked today, if i could send a package COD she looked at me and said "you could...but i don't know how to do that. i've never done that before." and then stared blankly at me. um.... k. so. i'm thinking - gee, what do we do now? do i suggest that you start researching that? she actually pulled out a giant book and started leafing through it but couldn't figure it out. i just paid for it. i figure $5 US is worth it just to keep my sanity. a couple of days ago i had to send two packages to asia. one to china and one to hong kong. now, the trick here is that i had to ensure they would reach the kids over there within one week. now of course she had NO idea how to figure this one out. the book that she had to go through (which was about 4 inches thick) actually was completely useless (in her defense). so i pulled out my laptop and right there in the post office had to research what service would be best. then she spent about 15 minutes deciding which envelope would be appropriate with which mailing label....... i just wanted to throw money at her and walk away.

and is that so wrong?

there are times when i am tired of being in rural vermont. i think this morning was one of them. and then there are times when i love the slowness. times when it is so relaxing. maybe i only love the slowness when i am not trying to get anything done. a couple of days ago, while shopping in manchester (for shoes!) i had to run a couple errands for the school. trying to actually get normal day to day stuff done in that town is impossible. totally impossible. no one knows where things are located, things like barber shops and radio shacks. however they all know where the armani outlet is. this is a good test of my patience. a warm up to what is coming next. st john's will be markedly slower than vancouver, of that i'm sure. hopefully though - it is faster than weston vermont. faster as in "light speed".....