Payday

The past week has been a real grind at the Post Office. I got a lot more hours than I wanted. Thanks to that, I did get a nice paycheck this payday. The money will come in handy with the scooter, laptop and optional excursions I plan to do this summer with Globus. Still, the money was hard earned. I will definitely feel I earned this summer's tours as well as the scooter and laptop. Hopefully, after next week, things will slacken some and, I'll get some free time. We'll see. For now, I'll enjoy the fact it's payday and, I've got my hard earned cash. Cheers all!

Reminder - Postage Increase

A reminder to my readers out there, the cost of mailing a letter First Class goes up 2 cents today. Also, if you mail a letter that isn't machinable, the surcharge for that has gone up 3 cents i.e. it now costs an extra 20 cents to mail such items. Lastly, the cost of mailing a regular postcard has gone up 1 cent. Please make sure you use the right postage. I have seen the Postal Service send stuff back for a lousy 2 cents. Or, they've had the carrier try to collect the 2 cents postage due.

The Mall In Columbia

I finally got to visit The Mall In Columbia today. I've been wanting to go there for a while but, after a hard day's work at the Post Office, the last thing I'd feel like doing was drive down there. I decided today would be the day. I'd drive there after church which is what I did. The Mall In Columbia is a nice mall. It isn't as enormous as Arundel Mills Mall but, it has a nice feel to it. It's anchored by Sears, Macy's, Penney's and Nordstrom's. My favorite shop there is Today's Pet. Every time I go there, I check out the puppies they have. I always look to see if they have a Pug puppy. I still dream of getting one some day. I didn't see any Pug puppies. They did have a nice dachshund and some cute kittens.

I saw a few new stores though none grabbed my fancy. I'm still holding off spending the money barring ordering my new laptop. I still plan to pick up my new scooter sometime the end of this month. I did treat myself to a smoothie at American Cookie. The smoothie wasn't as good as it usually is there. I held off buying anything to eat as I planned to stop by Casey's Crab Co which I did afterwards. I'll blog about another time.

Overall, I enjoyed checking the mall out though I didn't buy anything. It was nice to see it again after not having been there in months. If you live some where close to Columbia, Maryland, you might want to check it out. Note: if you have kids, there have a carousel kids can ride on though they do charge for it.

New Laptop

I ordered a new laptop yesterday from Dell. I held off initially because it looked like they weren't offering the 12 months interest free credit. I emailed their financial services folks and, they assured me they were offering that. Once I knew I'd have 12 months to pay the new laptop off, I set about figuring out what I wanted in the thing. My first requirement was a big screen. The M1730 comes with a screen that is 17 inches across diagonally. Second, I wanted a super big hard drive as I'm saving lots of music and photo files on my laptop. My new laptop will have an incredible 500 gigabyte hard drive. When I ordered my current laptop 5 years ago, the best I was able to do was an 87 gigabyte hard drive. Prices on RAM have apparently gone down since I ordered my last laptop as I'll be getting 8 gig of RAM vice the 1.1 I received on my current laptop. I'll also get a 1 gig video card and lojack service with my on site warranty program. An extended warranty was an absolute must. I should be able to extend the warranty on the new laptop another year so I'll be good for 5 years like I have been on my current laptop. Interestingly, with all the dramatically improved bangs and whistles, my new laptop will cost over $500 less than my current one. The amount would be more but, I opted for the service where they come in and transfer all my files and programs from my current laptop to the new laptop. This is especially important with my Sprint PCS card software and card.

I should actually receive my new laptop sometime close to the end of the month. Dell will keep me informed when it actually ships. I'll be excited to get my toy and, I'm curious to see how much better it performs vice my current laptop. To be honest, I think my current one is fast enough. As I stated previously, the main reason I'm replacing it is my fear my current one would go on the fritz. Without a warranty, that could be very expensive to fix and there wouldn't be any guarantee I'd recover all my files. It's taken me some time transferring my music files to my laptop. Also, it would be a royal pain to have to reload my photo files. I do plan on getting an external hard drive so I can move photo files that I don't look much at but want to save electronically. Sam's Club and Costco have good prices on those.

So, that is the latest update on my future laptop. It should be a cool machine. I'll let my readers know when it actually arrives. Cheers all!

Glass Pen

I forget when I bought my glass pen from Nostalgic Impressions. I know it's been sitting on my living room table for at least 5 months. I'd previously tried some wooden pens with metal nibs and, the nibs proved to be of poor quality. They didn't hold hardly any ink and one actually splayed. I forget how I heard about glass pens but, I decided to try one so I bought one from Nostalgic Impressions. After buying it, as I said, it sat on my table unused until today. I saw it and remembered I'd never tried it to see if it wrote well or not. I decided to try it. To my surprise, the pen writes very well. The nib on it manages to hold enough ink to write at least 6 or seven words before you have to dip it again in the inkwell. The pen itself looks very nice. The only fault I can find with it is it seems fragile. I held the pen carefully as I didn't want to accidentally break it. Barring that, I was very pleased with it and, I plan to use again sometime when I want to knock out a fancy letter to a friend. It would be neat to write a letter that way. Cheers all!

Quiet

It's been quiet at my end of the woods. I haven't been doing anything exciting because I've been trying to save the money so I can pay off the scooter I'm in the process of buying. I paid $1,100 on that this past Tuesday. I still owe $1,070. I should have that paid off later this month. I'll be glad to finally get the thing and see what it's like to ride it. I found out that scooters can depreciate just like cars can. If I do decide to trade the thing in down the line for a bigger better scooter, I can expect to lose around $550 in depreciation in the first year (about a 1/4 of its initial value). Crap! Also, to my surprise, there is a value book put out on scooters by NADA. I found out about that from a friend at the Post Office. I didn't know there was such a thing. Scooters are sublisted under motorcycles in the book.

The Post Office continues to be filled with drama. For some reason, upper management has repeatedly visited the Post Office where I work. They seem to be looking for every little possible error. This is annoying as I have enough to worry about with trying to deliver the mail correctly and in time. It's anybody's guess what is going to happen to the Postal Service itself. The upper management folks keep saying we're going to run out of money. They say we're not bringing in enough. That's possible. I have definitely seen a drop in mail volume. Part of it is technology and part of it is the piss poor economy. I repeatedly receive notices from my credit union asking wouldn't I like to go to paperless statements. They even offer to put in for a drawing for a cash prize. I decline in part because of my job at the Post Office and in part because I like receiving a hard copy from them. I'm especially leery of going paperless with bills as it is very easy to forget an email notifying me of an upcoming payment. It's harder for me if I have something in paper I can see reminding me. The bad economy makes me leery of spending the money I earn. Especially, when I'm sure what is going to happen with my job at the Post Office.

I continue to slog away at my stories about my Egypt trip for the Globus exchange travel stories website. To my surprise, my last story which was about the day excursion to Alexandria received a superior rating. I liked that. I suspect I got that because I did some research which I included in the story like when Alexandria was created by Alexander the Great and some of the gods that had been worshipped at the Serapeum (temple complex) in Alexandria. I'm working on my next one about our visit to Saqqara and Old Memphis.

I finally finished off the boneless wings I bought from Cluck-U. I found them good. I'm pretty certain they weren't wings at all but, breasts coated like buffalo wings. While they were more expensive then the regular wings, you do get a LOT more meat with them. I thought the honey hickory flavor was good. I'd like to try the Caribbean jerk flavor and see if that is any good. We'll see on that.

Lastly, I've decided I'm going risk it (see previous comment about job insecurity) and order a new laptop at the end of this month from Dell. My current one is running fine but, it is getting old and the warranty is going to expire on this month. That scares me. I don't want any computer problems which I'd have to pay for. While I haven't had any major ones with my current Dell laptop, I'd like to play it safe and have a computer that is something goes wrong with it, they HAVE to fix it and pick up the tab. I haven't forgotten how expensive ($400) it was to replace the motherboard on my first laptop (a Sager). I plan to go with Dell again as the laptop I bought from them has had so few problems and their tech support has been great when there were glitches. I feel they're reliable. Also, Dell is offering a nice deal on certain models where I can get 12 months interest free credit. I'm certain I can pay the new laptop off in 12 months. I'll be excited to get the new laptop as it'll be a neat new toy I can play with. One thing I have found true is that as I've gotten older, my toys have gotten more expensive. Oh well.

That's all from my end of the woods. I think you can see why I'm not posting much. There isn't anything terribly exciting to blog about. I will have some neat future adventures to blog about in mid-summer. That's when I go on back-to-back tours with Globus. I can't wait to do that. I'm counting the days. I hope all is well with you reader of my blog. Take care and God bless.

Shades of Summer

We got our first hot spell here in Maryland. Yesterday, it got up into the 80's and today it hit 91 degrees fahrenheit (32.7 C). I'm not thrilled with the heat. It meant I had to turn on the air conditioning in my apartment and, I know that won't be cheap. However, I can't sleep in a hot apartment so I had to. Also, it isn't a lot of fun delivering the mail in the heat. It saps me and, I have to be careful I don't dehydrate too much. Thankfully, the humidity hasn't started YET. That'll hit sometime in July. The humidity makes it really bad here in Maryland as it's like being out in a sauna during the summer. I wish spring would last a bit longer as I like the cooler temperatures and the rain (barring delivering mail in it). Oh well. The weatherman is forecasting it'll get cooler in a couple days but, summer is definitely on its way. Cheers all!

Royal Lotus

I thought I'd post something a little interesting. Above is a picture of the ship I got to cruise the Nile on for 2 days. It was the first river cruise ship I'd been on. As you can tell, it is vastly smaller than the ships that cruise the Caribbean. I think it could handle a maximum of 124 passengers. The ship was very nice. My cabin was superbly kept by whoever cleaned it daily. The food at the dining room was good and plentiful. I wasn't impressed with the swimming pool or fitness center. I very much enjoyed the top lounge deck where you could sit, enjoy a drink and watch the scenery roll by as we made our way to Aswan. Another nice thing the ship did was various activities during the evening. The most fun one was the galibyah party where everyone had to wear a galibyah (traditional Egyptian dress). It was something to see the various tour members in their galibyah.

Overall, I very much enjoyed cruising on this ship and would gladly do so again. Movenpick does a fine job of running it. Cheers all!

2 Down 1 To Go

I paid off the credit card I charged my future Globus U.S. and Canada tours on. I was relieved to have that paid off. I would've had to start paying interest on the card on 1 May. Plus, I hate debt. All the overtime I got at the Post Office paid off though it took its toll. The last place I want to see is the Post Office right now i.e. I'm burned out on the place. Now, I have 1 more thing to pay off - the scooter. I can't wait to get that so I can see what'll be like to ride it. I'd like to get it now but, common sense tells me I need to wait till I have it paid down more and can easily pay the credit card charge off when I do get it. I think it'll be fun to ride. Hopefully, I can keep my impatience in check and wait. We'll see.

Saving Money

Before I leave on one of my serious trips, I always turn down the thermostat in my apartment. There isn't any point in running the heat in the place if I'll be gone. Normally when I return, I turn it back up again. This past heating cycle I decided not to. I decided to try to save some money by keeping the thermostat set at 62 degrees. I felt that was comfortable enough. If necessary, I could put a jacket on to stay warm. A couple days ago, I received my Baltimore Gas & Electric (BGE) bill. It turned out leaving the thermostat at 62 degrees was worth it. My bill was nearly cut in half. It went from $59 to $35. I was delighted. I plan to leave the thermostat where it is and hold off switching over to air conditioning (ac) as long as I can. Eventually, when summer fully hits, I'll have to turn the ac on as I can't sleep in my apartment if it gets too hot. Opening the windows doesn't make a noticable difference. Still, the lower BGE bills will be nice while they last. I don't like giving them any more of my money then I have to. Cheers all!

Dave & Busters

I had my first day off at the Post Office in 3 weeks (barring Sundays) today. To my annoyance, the weather was crappy. It was cold and rainy all day. I wanted to get out and do something. I decided to go to the Arundel Mills Dave & Busters Arcade and Restaurant. I haven't been there in probably 4 months. Today was a particularly good day to go as it was half price Wednesday. What that means is that all games cost half their normal price. As the game I like to play (Spin & Win) is expensive to play (8.9 coins with a Gold card), Wednesday is the day to play it. I splurged and bought $100 worth of coins. To my delight, I hit the 1,000 ticket light 16 times. All totaled, I won 18,680 tickets. My new total is now 129,574. I checked out the prizes they had at the prize booth but nothing really wiped me out. They have a nice small portable Sony Digicam but, I don't need one of those right now. They also had a cheap rice cooker but, I'm managing all right with regular pots. So, I kept my tickets for another day. It was fun winning them and, it was fun having people ooo and ahh at all the tickets I won. I just wish Spin & Win wasn't so hard to hit the 1,000 light. It can be really frustrating when you repeatedly come within 1 or 2 lights of hitting the 1,000. Oh well. It made for a nice day off. Cheers all!

Hard Week

It's been another hard week at the Post Office where I work. I managed to get something like 18 and 1/2 hours of overtime. I'll be delighted to get the money next week but earning it was a royal pain. The last 3 days, I was certain my alarm clock had it in for me. I've never seen 5:30 a.m. roll around so fast. Today was the short day of the week with just 8 and 1/2 hours. Monday, I worked over 12 hours. Next week, I'm supposed to actually have a day off. I'll believe it when I see it. I know I should be glad to get the work because once the route adjustments come out, my hours will drop but right now, I'm big time tired. Still, next week's paycheck should be sweet. I just wish it wasn't spent already. (sigh) Cheers all!

Cobras

One of the neat things I got to see in Egypt were two live cobra snakes in the open. The picture above shows what I got to see. I don't know if this man was what you would call a snake charmer. But, it was something to see him and his snakes. We encountered him when our group arrived in Kom Ombo, Egypt. Kom Ombo is interesting in that it has the only temple dedicated to an evil god side by side with a temple dedicated to a good god. The evil god was Sekhmet who had the head of a crocodile. The good god was Greater Horus which was different from the Horus the rest of Egypt worshipped. Another interesting aspect of the Horus temple is that there was a secret passageway at one time where a priest could remain hidden and yet speak. This passageway was next to the holy of holies where the high priest and Pharoah would worship the god. It was possible that the priest could trick Pharoah into believing that it was the god speaking to him in the holy of holies. Kom Ombo ended up being a neat port of call and was our last before we reached Aswan.

Hard Week

I had a hard week at the Post Office where I work. My shortest day was 9 hours. My longest was nearly 12 hours. I had 3 days in a row where I worked 11 and 1/2 hours each. I racked up around 23 hours of overtime. I doubt upper management was happy about that but, my boss didn't have anyone else to carry the route I did Monday through Wednesday. Thursday was really crazy. I had to train on one route, deliver 9 Express Mails and after I finished my training, I had to deliver an entire auxiliary route we have. I ended up working 10 hours that day. Normally, I wouldn't be thrilled to get so many hours but, I know I better count my blessings now. Once the route adjustments go through, my hours at the Post Office are going to drop. I'm hoping I'll be able to pay off all the big expenses I have before that happens. Today, I mailed my Federal and State income tax payments. In 2 weeks, I hope to have made enough this week and next to pay off the U.S. and Canada tours I want to take this summer. After that, all I'll have left to pay off is the scooter I plan to get. Once the scooter is paid off, I plan to cool my spending. I don't know what is going to happen with the Postal Service. The Postmaster General keeps talking about going to a 5 day week. That would be disaster for me as a sub. The Postal Service wouldn't be able to guarantee me any work then. And, they would want me to stand by the phone every morning just in case someone called out. It would be ridiculous. So, for now, I'll count my blessings and try to get as much work as I can at the Post Office where I work.

The Coin

Yesterday, I received the Spanish silver coin I gave my mom (step-mom) Kay. The coin brought back memories. After my trip to Scandanavia in which I offered to give her a Hard Rock Cafe t-shirt for a present and got a very chilly no thanks, I was determined to get her something nice during my cruise in the Caribbean. I looked in the gift shops on board the ship. I checked out various shops in Aruba and Curacao. I wasn't able to check out the shops in St. Maarten. The last stop on the cruise was St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands. I kept trying to think of what to get her. I didn't want to get her perfume as I figured she had enough of that. T-shirts were definitely out. Other items looked kitschy. Finally, I came up with the idea of getting her some kind of Spanish silver coin. It never occurred to me that the coin could be a tad expensive. I found a shop that sold such things. I looked at what they had and then innocently asked how much. I got one heck of a shock. Still, I was in dire straights. I couldn't think of anything else to get my mom. I didn't want to get ragged on when I got back to the states. So, I spent $300! and bought her a legitimate Spanish silver coin that was recovered from the Nuestra de Atocha by Mel Fisher's company. It was seriously cool. So cool in fact that I wanted to get myself one when I could afford it. I thought it would be neat to own a bit of real Spanish treasure. I checked out Fisher's website and got another price shock. Apparently, I did get a very good deal at the shop in St. Thomas. The cheap coins on Fisher's website were going for twice what I paid in St. Thomas. So, I held off buying one.

My mom thoroughly enjoyed the coin and, I earned a gold star from her for it. She was so chuffed with the coin, she framed it and hung it up on the wall at her home. That was where they found it after she died. I was glad I'd bought the coin for her and, she enjoyed it. I still regret that she didn't get to enjoy the china plate I bought for her at Chateau Chenonceau. After her death, I remembered the coin I'd given her and asked about it. I was willing to pay whatever the market value was of the coin. To my surprise, I was given it back for nothing. So, I have a double memento now. The coin reminds me of my visit to St. Thomas and my mom Kay. Those are the things I'll remember whenever I look at the coin.

So Much For Training

As any readers I have out there know, yesterday I was supposed to train on another new route. The route is shorter than the one I did for the first time by myself Monday so I went in a little later. I started casing some fliers we had to deliver that day on the route mail case. Then, the rural route supervisor informed me the sub that was supposed to cover the route I did Monday hadn't shown up. The sub was from another post office. As I've mentioned previously, subs from other post offices can be unreliable because they can get called in at the last minute by their post office. If that happens, my post office is SOL (shit out of luck). We have to unexpectedly scramble to cover the route. That's just what happened yesterday. The sub got called by his post office and, he wasn't able to do the route we assigned to him yesterday or today. I ended up having to do the route yesterday and will do it again today. My training got moved. The plan now is that I'll get to train 1 day with the regular carrier Thursday on the route I was supposed to learn. 1 day of training is standard procedure after you've learned 3 routes. That bites as it helps to have more training but, that's the way it is. You just have suck it up and do the best you can on the route. You'll learn it quickly enough when you have to do it. I'm improving considerably on the route I learned last week. We'll see how I do on the route I'll get to learn Thursday. Cheers all!

Tired

I found out today why I haven't been keen on learning anymore routes at the Post Office. I had to do the route I was trained on last week by myself. I got seriously kicked. Monday is the worst day to have someone who is new to a route to do it. You have 2 days of mail. I walked in and I had 5 full tubs of mail waiting to be cased as well as fliers. It got worse from there. It took me so long to case the mail for the route that I didn't start delivering it till around 2:45 p.m. One nice thing about the route I did today was that it was virtually all mounted. What that means is that I was able to drive up to each box and put their mail right in it vice having to get out of the mail truck and do a second sorting at a multi-box. The route did have 9 or so multi-boxes but, the carrier had single slotted the boxes so when I hit the street, the mail was already broken down to each individual address in the multi-boxes. No second sorting and no bad mail to bring back to the Post Office.

In time, I know I'll get better at the route I did today. The hardest part of this particular route is casing the mail since it is all single slotted i.e. broken down to each individual address. Some of the streets on the route jumped around the case and there were some addresses that were off by themselves making them hard to find. This makes it hard to case/sort but, it also makes it very easy to deliver which I like. Once I hit the street, I'm on easy street as far as delivering the mail on the route. It's all stick and stuff.

Tomorrow, I'll get to train on another route. That should go easier as Tuesdays are typically the lightest mail volume wise as far as the week goes. Still, I know I'll be going around in circles looking for various addresses. It'll be a pain but, the money will be nice and by knowing the route, I'll be able to get more hours down the line. Cheers all!

Craziness on the Nile

Above is a picture of men trying to sell stuff to people on the river cruise ship I was on. It was so ridiculous that I had to take a picture of it. The picture below show just how many of these guys there were. There must have been at least 35 boats. They would literally surround the ship in their attempt to sell their various good. It was crazy.

Enroute to Aswan, all the cruise ships had to come to a stop and wait their turn outside the Esna Locks. This is where these guys were waiting. They would then oar out to each ship. When they arrived, they displayed their various wares. If a customer wasn't sure about the item, they'd put it in a plastic bag and throw it up to them so they could take it out of the bag and look the item over. If the person liked the item, the haggling began. If they didn't, they put it back in the bag and threw it back to the seller. Hopefully, the item landed back in their boat though in a number of cases, the seller had to fish their wares out of the river. Things got more interesting if the seller and buyer agreed on a price. The buyer would then put their money in the bag and throw it down to the seller. In some cases, the seller had to fish their money out of the river. In one case, a would be seller threw his item too high and it landed on the roof of our ship. Luckily for him, I'm a decent bloke. I managed to get the item off the roof and, I threw it back to him. This whole experience was the craziest thing that happened on my tour of Egypt. It said just how hard these folks would try to sell you something. It was unreal.

Training

I got to train the last 2 days on a new route. My supervisor wants me to do the route next Monday and, I can't reasonably do it unless I've been trained on it. I hate learning new routes as it makes me feel like a new hire all over again. You have to hunt all over the case for the various addresses. Also, you feel like you're moving so slow compared to the normal speed you can case the mail on a route you know. It can be very frustrating. Lastly, you're more likely to make mistakes out on the street delivering the mail. It can be very easy to forget to check your accountables, your small parcels or your large parcels while you're trying to deliver the letters and flats (magazines, newspapers, fliers). I wish I had more time to learn the route but, there isn't time. We'll see how I do when I have to deliver it next Monday. Cheers all!

Easy Day at the Post Office

It is known that Tuesdays are the easiest day to deliver mail at the Post Office. The mail is caught up from the weekend and, there seems to be a little gap between it picks back up on Wednesday. Today, the mail seemed especially light. My Postmaster called all the First Class mail up at 9:30 a.m. to my astonishment. Once the Postmaster calls all First Class mail up, you can empty your mail holds one last time and then, you can start packing up the mail for your assigned route. By 10:30 a.m., I'd packed up all my mail including packages and loaded up my mail truck. 10 minutes later, I departed my Post Office to deliver my mail. 3 hours later, I was done. I arrived back at my Post Office at 2 p.m. I could scarcely believe it. This was the earliest I'd ever finished. Also, I'd beat the assessed time on the route. Something, I rarely do. It was nice to have an easy day at the Post Office. I don't get many of those. Cheers all!