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With a big effort (and some minor arguing), my wife and I managed to complete our Christmas cards over the weekend so they could be mailed today. Our printers are now getting a well-deserved break after printing over 100 copies each of our card, the letter that will be inserted and a wallet size picture of our daughters. The Christmas card thing is always stressful, but this year it was complicated by the loss of our mailing list. We upgraded to a new computer earlier this year, but hadn't taken the time to transfer all the data from the hard drive in the old computer. About three weeks ago, the old computer refused to boot up, giving us a "hard drive not found failure" message. We verified that the BIOS was properly set, and then went in search of someone with a set of Windows95 (yes, the old computer was OLD) recovery disks. Finally, one of my wife's friends (who understands the inner workings of computers way better than I do) took a look at the machine. Apparently, our hard drive is DOA, and there is no cheap or easy way to recover the data therefrom. So, yesterday afternoon was spend digging through old records and making phone calls trying to determine what everyone's current mailing address was. Great fun! Somewhere around 9:30 last night, I finally sealed the final envelope. My wife will be taking them to the post office to mail today.
Except for one. All but one of our Christmas cards are being mailed within the US, and my wife can buy the stamps from a vending machine, thus avoiding the LINE at the service window. Unfortunately, my youngest brother and his wife live overseas, so that their card needs to be sent AirMail. The vending machines at the nearby post offices don't sell individual stamps in AirMail denominations, so I had to stand in line (after all it is MY brother!) this morning to mail one Christmas card. I went early, but the line was still out to the door. I waited 30 minutes to buy my 80ยข stamp. I'm just glad I didn't wait until lunch hour, because the lines will be longer then. Next year, I really have to try to remember to buy the stamp early, so I have it when the Christmas cards are done (of course with my luck, the US Postal Service will increase the rates after I buy the stamp, but before I can use it!).
So one more item to cross of my list. Now if I could just figure out what to buy everyone, I might be able to go shopping...
Except for one. All but one of our Christmas cards are being mailed within the US, and my wife can buy the stamps from a vending machine, thus avoiding the LINE at the service window. Unfortunately, my youngest brother and his wife live overseas, so that their card needs to be sent AirMail. The vending machines at the nearby post offices don't sell individual stamps in AirMail denominations, so I had to stand in line (after all it is MY brother!) this morning to mail one Christmas card. I went early, but the line was still out to the door. I waited 30 minutes to buy my 80ยข stamp. I'm just glad I didn't wait until lunch hour, because the lines will be longer then. Next year, I really have to try to remember to buy the stamp early, so I have it when the Christmas cards are done (of course with my luck, the US Postal Service will increase the rates after I buy the stamp, but before I can use it!).
So one more item to cross of my list. Now if I could just figure out what to buy everyone, I might be able to go shopping...
