I won't bore you with more details about my preparation to leave. Suffice it
to say, I had a productive day. I should be able to ALMOST wrap things up
tomorrow so that is good. Goal (mostly) met!

My day started by being woken up by the air duct cleaning guys. That isn't
so crazy but what is crazy is that at some undetermined time they opted to
drive their van into my back yard, across my sod and down the hill that is
my yard for some undisclosed reason. And then, guess what? They couldn't get
back up again! It turns out an old rusty van and wet grass plus a steep hill
don't really go together. Who'd have thunk it? But it also turns out that
they completely tore up my back yard before realizing as much. Also - does
it seem odd to anyone but me that DUCT CLEANING GUYS would drive on
someone's lawn to begin with? And shouldn't they have ASKED first??? And
then, I'm not really sure how they ended up getting out of there. Maybe a
tow truck, I'm not sure. I just know that it took forever and the damage to
my lawn is significant so SOMEONE is paying, come spring when the ground is
not frozen. Meanwhile I am oddly extremely upset, probably out of proportion
to the necessary reality.

Fast forward to a completely opposite, yet still very weird, experience I
had this evening. I had to go drop my absentee ballot off at the post
office. It requires a $.63 stamp so I had to take it in and buy postage.
There were about 3 people in front of me in line. But no sooner did I stand
at the back of the line than some post office employee calls over to me from
behind his desk asking if I needed to only purchase postage for this one
envelope. Yes, I say, but I also need to buy stamps. Cash or charge, he
asks. Charge. Oh well, he says, come with me. He takes me into the lobby and
shows me the handy dandy automated machine (of which I am intimately
familiar but didn't want to be rude so I let him do his thing). So I buy my
stamps and he takes my envelope back into the post office to weigh it for
me. I didn't want to be rude (did I mention that?) so I didn't point out
that you can use the hand-dandy automated machine to also weigh the envelope
and pay for the postage in one fell swoop, rendering his efforts
unnecessary. A minute later he returns and verifies that, yes, it does in
fact require $.63 postage. And then he tells me to go ahead and affix a
regular stamp on the envelope and, as a thank you for using the handy-dandy
automated machine, he'll take my envelope back and throw in the rest of the
postage for free.

Ok - this is only $.26 or something but still, since when does the USPS give
away from postage as a courtesy???? Am I a bad person for having
reservations about letting go of my envelope? I admit to having fleeting
conspiracy theories dash through my head involving my ballot being stolen
and trashed. I was already a little uneasy about mailing it in (but I
couldn't find our city clerk's office! Haha). But all this good deeding was
starting to make me paranoid. Ultimately of course I let him have it
because....yes...I didn't want to be rude. But it was both the sweetest and
oddest USPS exchange I've ever had. And if the wrong party wins the
mid-terms, I bet it will be all my fault.