I Went Postal Today

I have become accustomed to a certain level of convenience when it comes to my big monthly expenditures. My rent, my utilities, and my cable are all due at the same time each month. This means that by remembering to pay even one of them I remember to pay all of them. Their due date is in the next few days so today I took it upon myself to get everything all paid up.

I would say that I am fairly meticulous and compulsive when it comes to managing my finances. I find that consistency in how I do it keeps me from making silly mistakes or being forgetful.

I started by ensuring there was money in my account. (This is essential to paying bills)

I then gathered up the bills. (You have to have bills to pay them)

I wrote out checks for all my bills and matched them up in return envelopes with their respective bills making sure to balance my check ledger.

Here is where my system has a bit of a flaw.

The day of the week is not constant from month to month with respect to the numerical day of the month. Last month the third was a Thursday and this month it is a Saturday. As such, I cannot always pay my bills in person; but sometimes I can.

Because I can pay bills in person, I don’t take the time initially to return address or stamp the envelopes.

I went out and dropped the cable bill off. (No need to mail it)

I was off to a good start. A big smile was spread across my face. I was driving around with the windows down enjoying this oddly warm December afternoon. (It was in the 60’s [Farenheit] today)

I could not pay the utility bill in person. That’s no problem. I had a pen and a booklet of stamps ready.

I pulled up to one of those blue post office drop boxes.

I pulled out the bill.

Made sure the check was correct.

Licked and sealed the envelope.

I picked up the pen and stamps and got ready to write my address.

I zoned out.

I promptly turned and tossed the sealed envelope into the bin without a thought and drove away full of self-satisfaction at successfully functioning as an adult for yet another month.

I proceeded to correctly pay my rent without any issue. As I pulled out of the property management lot, it suddenly dawned upon me what I had done.

Did I really just throw an unstamped letter into a bin with no return address?

Yes…Yes I did.

Well, I thought to myself, I think I’d get in trouble if I broke into the bin and got my letter back to correct my error. I know, I’ll go to the post office and explain to them my plight. I’ll flash a warm smile, explain what happened, and they will fix it.

So I did.

They were closed.

So I went to the other post office in town.

They were open…for another 6 minutes. (Who closes at noon?)

So I got in the obscenely long line to wait and ask my question.

I don’t know if this is a universal truth to post offices, but I found that all the patrons 

with whom I waited were strange people.

Physical appearance aside, they were some odd characters.

After 3 minutes, the woman in front of me became very insistent that I had arrived at the post office before her. (I hadn’t.)

She also let the woman behind me in front of her because she “looked like she was with me.”

The woman behind me was an odd obese, unhealthy-looking, middle-aged woman whose posture had suffered over the years of supporting excess weight.

She came in alone and spent the time in line saying (to nobody in particular) that she just needed to get her envelope stamped.

I made the assumption that she wasn’t entirely aware.

I was wrong.

I had spaced out once again. (Today was not a particularly cognizant day for me)

I was planning in my head wondering if it would frighten a postal worker if I stalked the postage drop waiting for their pickup time to ask them if I could have my letter back to stamp and address it.

Anyway, apparently the line had moved up a person amidst my musings. I was shaken from my pensive state by the feeling of a very pudgy finger breaking my personal space and squishing into my side.

After a series of these incidents I would come to understand that she would not be satiated unless I actively encroached into the personal space of the person in front of me as much as she had into mine.

I finally got to the front and they told me that it would be delivered anyway and they would bill the recipient for the postage I forgot…and that the recipient would pass it to on to me.

Now the waiting game starts. If I get a shutoff notice from the utility company, then my letter never arrived and I’ll have to cut another check. Otherwise it’s safe to assume that everything worked out.

How I Ended Up On The BOLO List In My Hometown

I never really pegged myself as a runner. I am 6'2" and 160 lbs., so everybody just assumes that I would be good at things like basketball and running. To be honest, I am quite horrid at basketball, but running is great.

It had never occurred to me to try running. I was originally talked into running by a friend. It kind of sucked. He was like "hey man, wanna go run a five with me tonight?" Being unfamiliar with running, I didn't know that with no experience and no training, five miles in hilly terrain would be stupid. I said yes.

It was horrible and fantastic all at once. Needless to say, I kept running.

I talked the roommate into running with me. He's slowly but surely becoming a lover of running. While visiting family over the summer, we happen to be in the same city. He was hanging out with me at my parents' one night recently and we decided to go for a run in the morning. When we were about to leave, my family was indisposed.

My car was blocked in in the drive, so I grabbed the keys to the car in back and left my keys behind in their place. We went to a trail and ran 4 miles. We returned to the house without thinking anything of it.

Now, when you come out of the shower, and you find this:

Your house is in order.

Your college age son is gone.

His car keys aren't gone.

Your car is gone.

His car is here.

We live down the street from a police officer and the sheriff's father.

In the time we've lived here, to my knowledge, there have been no break-ins or car thefts in our neighborhood.

What is your first reaction? Mine is "Oh, he must have gone somewhere and borrowed the car because I blocked his in the driveway."

As it happens, that is not the conclusion to which he came.

My father's greeting to me upon returning home was, "I called the cops and reported the car as stolen...You explain this to them."

Everything turned out alright.

I can hear the radio chatter now, "Be on the lookout for a small SUV, it is most likely being driven by two college men drenched in sweat wearing nothing but shorts and running shoes.

Maine Coon Is Better Than Raccoon

About a week ago, I was stepping out the door to pick up a few odds and ends at the store. It was about 11:30 in the evening. When I opened the front door, I was greeted by the sound of frantic clawing against sheet metal. I turned to my left to see a raccoon clamoring up the drain pipe on the side of the house. The pipe makes a turn and sits relatively flat for a foot before connecting to the gutter. The raccoon reached this section and was hanging by only its two front paws.  It was about three feet away from my face.

As a side note, I’m not a raccoonologist. In fact, I’m not even sure there is such a profession. Regardless of how little I know of raccoons, I was at this point aware that “it” was a she.

She paused her frantic scrambling for a moment and looked at me. She cocked her head to the side and opened her mouth. She sat for that moment just looking at me like that. I started laughing at the face she made, and she scrambled up to the roof and disappeared. I didn’t think too heavily on the matter.

Four days later, I was out in the yard enjoying the sunshine and talking with a few friends and I happened to look up. There on the apex of the roof sat the raccoon. She was sitting up on her haunches just watching us. I pointed her out. She leaned forward and slipped into the attic vent. My roommates and I were less than amused.

We called pest control, and they sent an employee out to look into the problem. He went up into the attic in a fresh pressed white button-up shirt, khakis, and shined shoes. When he emerged from the attic he was covered in shit. By “shit” I mean feces, insulation, and who knows what else. He informed us that our attic houses raccoons, rats, mice, squirrels, ants and lots of birds. Our house is a health hazard apparently.

The next night I went to sleep early. I was preparing to take the Fundamentals of Engineering exam in the morning. I awoke in the middle of the night to the sound of the raccoon either in heat or having very loud sex. It went a little like this:

“Eek eek eek eek eek eek eek eek eek eek eek eek eek eek eek eek eek eek eek eek…”

This was repeated with short pauses interspersed which must have been when she was catching her breath. I thought to myself, “It’s ok. She’ll be gone in a few days.”

It is certainly less than ok.

Last night, I was working on some equations by myself in the office/study room. I heard a dripping noise coming from the kitchen. I went to investigate. What ensued can be best described by sharing the thoughts as they came to my mind.

Something’s dripping into the sink.

Is a pipe leaking? No, the pipes are in the crawlspace not the attic.

It’s a kind of yellowish-brown color.

It smells bad.

It smells like pee.

IT’S RAINING PEE IN THE KITCHEN!!!

@&$^ &*#$ #&@% @&$% !*@^ (!^# !#*!^#  #$@^###$@ @@^!$#@!!## RACCOON!!!!!!!!

I called up the roommate to help me clean the urine.  I bleached the pee. I wiped up the bleach and thought it would be good to just soak the entire kitchen in cleanser. It was. There is a window over the sink and the pee had run down the blinds into the sink. We took the blinds out to the dumpster. I looked up and the raccoon was poking her head out of the attic vent watching us.

I like to think that the reason she was poking her head out was to get some fresh air. It is my deepest hope that even she could not stand the stench of her own vile urine. In all honesty though, she was probably just laughing at us.

This just served to piss off the roommate. He grabbed a combat knife and a flashlight and went up into the attic. He was in there for a while, but the raccoon evaded him.