Postal Shenanigans

I'm back in Seattle--got in yesterday evening. Today, I walked to the post office to check my PO box and happily found two large boxes of PZ Kut waiting for me. =) There was a bit of Speedy Stamp in them too, but mostly PZ Kut--50 blocks of it to be exact! I feel like I could carve a thousand stamps and single-handedly populate the whole western hemisphere with letterboxes. Thanks Diana, a.k.a. Webfoot, of Spampeaz.com fame.

Now that I'm flush with PZ Kut, I've started working on filling all those orders made on Atlas Quest last month. Most of the orders are still in the waiting queue since I have yet to receive the calendars and most people had those in their orders. I'm expecting those to arrive on the 16th at the earliest. But in the meantime, there were about a dozen orders for carving blocks that did not have a calendar in the order, and I've spent most of the afternoon and evening preparing them for shipment tomorrow.

Well, okay, I've also been getting my ducks in a row so I'm set to go when the calendars do arrive. Printed out all of the orders which took the better part of an hour to do. Nice little stack of papers. Spent another hour sorting through them all separating the non-calendar orders from the calendar orders type of them. And another half hour just stamping my green turtle stamp on all those orders. Sorry if I don't write you all a personal message, but there's just too many orders to do that with them all! I did read all of the letters and notes that were sent with the personal checks, though, and thank you for that. They were entertaining to read. =)

Another couple of hours I spent updating the administrative part of AQ to update the order statuses, print shipping labels from AQ, and display useful information like contact information. Little did you know--until now, I hadn't really done much work on the administrative part of the shopping cart. ;o)

Late this evening I walked back to the post office to pick up a bunch of Priority Mail envelopes and packed up the non-calendar orders. I also tried using their website for the first time to print shipping labels and postage. There was a worried moment where I thought I lost one of the shipping labels (with postage!). Turns out, I packaged it inside the order. Oops. =) I tore open the Priority Mail envelope to retrieve the label and postage, but now I'm short one Priority Mail envelope. I'll have to get another one, but it can wait until tomorrow morning. It's already 11:20 tonight, and it's way too late for another trip to the post office tonight. *yawn* When I drop them off at the post office, I can pack up that last package properly.

So those of you with non-calendar orders--your orders will be in the mail tomorrow (Wednesday). Those of you with calendars in your orders--I still don't know exactly when those will ship, but I'm crossing my fingers for the 17th. I do know they're in the mail and on their way to me! That's the good news. =) The bad news was I had them shipped to Amanda's place and did not realize that Amanda was going to put her mail on HOLD until the 16th since she was going to be out of town. (And she did not realize I'd be back in town to pick up mail a week before that.) So it's entirely possible the calendars are already at the post office, here in Seattle, perhaps a mile away from me. Completely and totally inaccessible to me until Amanda gets back on the 16th. Argh!

But then again, when I tried to order ONE calendar to make sure it looked good, it took three WEEKS for the calendar to arrive from the time I placed the order! The estimated shipping time said 2-6 days, but from the time it shipped, it still took over two weeks to arrive. If that happens again, the calendars probably won't arrive here in Seattle until the 24th or so. I'm hoping it's a bit faster this time around--I can't imagine it could be slower--but I will ship those calendars as soon as I can get my hands on them. And I've already printed out the orders, sorted them, and stamped them. Tomorrow and the rest of the week, I intend to get all of the shipping materials ready so when the calendars do arrive, I can shove them in the envelopes/boxes/whatever and take them to the post office within 24 hours. Umm, and I'll try not to include the postage *inside* of the packages. =)

Yes, I'm babbling, and that's my cue to say goodbye. Goodbye, folks!