Goo Goo Dolls "Come to Me"

Jennifer, I love you!

Basketball to Merry-Go-Gounds

So I'm showing the boy some moves on the basketball court this Thanksgiving afternoon at the local elementary school in Cottage Grove, Or where the inlaws live during a break from the football games.  Ok so he is wearing me out.  He's kind of a pest, small, fast, and he can shoot.  I did beat him in "tip" 21-17 the first game and then let him win 21-16 the second game you know to build his confidence!!     OK Ok, he wore me out and outran and outshot me.  This is quite troubling since he is still a foot shorter than me.  I should still be able to beat him easily.  Really it was my shoulder.  It's still not back to 100 percent.  Also the court was small and I just couldn't get my shot.  There was a local dog barking at just the wrong time.  My left knee was a bit sore.  If only I had basketball shoes.  If I keep going I'm going to run out of excuses for all the future games so I guess I better stop.

 

I gotta say though we were on our way back checking out the equipment on the playground at the school and the boy comments that he's never seen a merry-go-round when I notice that again there isn't one here.  What the heck!  Are we so worried about protecting ourselves from our bad decisions that we cannot have any fun anymore.  I know there was the occasional broken arm from those things, but the "big toys" that they have now are no different.  Kids can fall off anything and get hurt.  The merry-go-round was fun and taught physics. 

 

Its going to be our mission this weekend to find one somewhere....  Might have to build one hmmmm

 

 

USPS Conclusion!!!

Only 30 days after the box was shipped, my boys box showed up!  Indiana to Idaho in 30 days.  At 4 mph if I walked it I could have made it there without being in a rush.  Thank God for the USPS.  And according to the representative who finally did call me back after 8 days, the shipper must have put on a bad or unreadable label.  Now I should have taken a picture of the label but you are going to have to believe me that the label was a USPS printed label self stick and in perfect condition except for the tear in the return address section. 

In the real world wouldn't you go out of business if your customer service was so poor.  No wonder we keep having to put tax dollars into that organization.  Just think, in every town in America we already have potential homeless shelters that are heated and have bathrooms.  The mail might even arrived more reliably and quicker if we paid the shelter inhabitants half as much as the current ones.

Every day more confirmation comes

Just when you think the ineptitude can't possibly get any worse, I tracked the boy's package and my heroes at the USPS have sent it from Boise to Denver.  When I travel from IN to North Idaho, I think Boise - Denver - Sandpoint.  Its only a 1900 mile trip.  WTH.  Tomorrow it is 10 days late and heading in the wrong direction. 

I can't wait to have the feds, without background checks, in charge of my health care and personal information!  What happens when they send my Viagra to Pennsylvania enroute Standpoint.  Oh well, Canada is only 60 miles away.

11/13/13

WHY?????

Why should we save the PO.  Just an update here.  So now it is the 12th and shocker, we have progress with my son's box that is in transit.  On Sunday night it arrived in Boise, 450 miles too far South but I guess the USPS thinks that since it is in Idaho, it must be close.  Maybe someone should buy them a globe. 

The last time I had a package coming and it went to Boise it took another week since it went to Salt Lake City, then Spokane, then up here to Sandpoint.  You know, the direct route.  If I gave that box to a hitchhiker in Indiana on Oct 29th and asked him to bring it here, it would have been here last week.  Instead, the seller gave it to the USPS and here we are two weeks later with the box still 450 miles away with no estimated delivery date.  Remember, the USPS itself estimated delivery of this package Nov 4th.  Huh, a little late.  Maybe we'll get a refund.........   No really, with any other company wouldn't you be able to request a refund?

If we saved billions of dollars and cut the USPS to 3 delivery days a week who would miss it?  For that matter if the IRS cut billions of dollars and went to a flat rate or sales tax, who would care?  I guess the only ones would be the employees.  Imagine how much more productive we would be if they became private sector employees!!!  Our GNP would surge....  No seriously if they had productivity standards to meet like most other private sector employees then they might get more done!!   Our bureaucratic system just kills productivity and takes away the incentive to be efficient.

OK, Off my soapbox!!   Come on, just get the damn box here so my kid can have a chance to enjoy his new toy.......      I guess I probably ought to shut up before one of them goes postal on me, oh damn, did I just say that...

USPS.....Saturdays, of course. Be sure to spend more tax dollars on ads convincing me we need you!!!!

OCTOBER 28, 2013,  That is the day that my son's airsoft gun was shipped from Indiana.  The "company" that we are constantly asked to bail out, the United States Postal Service, took 6 days to get the package to the sorting facility in Illinois.  Six days.  I could walk it to the sort facility in a day or two, but the folks who work six days a week for us took six.

As of Friday, November 8th, the package was still enroute from the sort center bound for only God knows where.  Being the good Dad that I try to be and doing my best to look online and try to figure out how to track or send a request about it, I gave up in frustration.  Lucky me later that day I had to go to our local post office where the 12 year old behind the counter when asked to track the package by me gave me a serious deer in the headlights look.  He had to go find his manager in a back office and ask for help.  His manager, "the post mistress?", came back to me to let me know that they had probably screwed it up and it was going back and forth between different sorting facilities.  Logically I asked if we could contact the sorting facility and try to solve the problem when she laughed and told me...... guess what......  no    . 

Now every other shipping organization in the world that I know of has tracking numbers so they can oh,  say,  TRACK a package.  Apparently not the USPS.  With them it is just so that we can know that something went wrong for sure.  The ability to solve the problem, well that just seems to be way too much to ask for.

JUST KEEP IN MIND THAT THE USPS IS BROUGHT TO US BY THE SAME PEOPLE WHO ARE PLANNING ON TRYING TO MANAGE YOUR HEALTH CARE.  WHAT COULD POSSIBLE GO WRONG THERE?  I FEEL SO REASSURED THAT THE HEALTH OF MY FAMILY AND MYSELF IS GOING TO BE MANAGED BY US GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEES......