Happy New Year!  My 2009 is off to a slow start (e.g., just ate two cookies, have not gotten my Achilles’ MRI follow up news yet, and don’t get me started on my to do list) resolution wise, and we had some annoying family health issues for a few days each, but otherwise things are just fine,.  My time off of blogging (which was planned, and though it coincided with a vacation, was really designed to be a rest) has led me to a decently long list of topics to cover in the coming months, and I’m looking forward to it.  In other words, my plan is working!

Today’s nominal topic: The Post Office Box

As a younger man, I was always intrigued when someone’s personal address was “Name, POB X, Zip code.”  I read it as, “None of your business where I live.  I’m too important for you to know my home address.”  Note that for a business address I believe this is precisely the opposite, but we’re talking about home addresses right now.

One of the things I decided to do when we knew we were going to move "south" was to get a post office box.  Reason one in spirit but not importance was the above.  I feel like there’s too much public information right now.  I don’t like it when I get in the cab with the family and six suitcases and the driver says super-friendly, “Where you going?  How long you gonna be there?”  It’s of course innocuous and simply well-mannered; until the one time it isn’t.  I hate stopping the mail and the newspaper.  “You’ll be gone until exactly when from your home address?”  Getting a pob didn’t end or change any of these, and some mail still comes to the house.  But it does allow for an immediate mailing address to catalogs, magazines, bills, etc. outside of the home.

Reason two was the knowledge of a forthcoming second move.  This is a much better reason, as it will postpone the need for immediate address changing, and either eliminate or postpone, depending on the next destination, the need for mail forwarding.

The cost is usually under $100/year, and I recommend it.  For more, you can find a UPS store equivalent which will also sign and accept your packages, call you when something comes in, or even mail you your mail to your Italian villa when you take a few months off between gigs.  I have such an arrangement with a local guy for our business mail, which I negotiated for $150 for the first year.  He even has a (small, grimy, convenient) bathroom; he once told me it was his biggest selling point.

LRock is not as big a fan for one simple reason: She like the “rhythm of getting the mail every day.”  I understand this completely, as I used to care about the daily mail, too.  While there are certainly people who pick up from their pob daily, I am unequivocally not one of them.  I find the mail to consist solely of magazines (which I enjoy, but won’t read for a few weeks or months anyway), junk mail, and bills.  There is almost literally nothing in the mail that has any value, and certainly not any timing value.  There are few exceptions, checks being the most prominent, but if I miss a week’s interest, I just don’t care enough.  It probably amounts to a few hundred dollars a year, so perhaps I should, but the value of not dealing with the mail is worth it.

So now I get the mail when I get it, sometimes twice a week, sometimes once a month.  If alone, I prefer to sort right there in the post office on their long, too-low table, throwing out the obvious junk mail, and separating the magazines.  This leaves a much smaller pile of bills and detritus that must be dealt with at home.

One downside to this process is that the P.O. does not have a paper recycling box, which is borderline obscene.  When I go through the mail at home, we can recycle nearly every envelope and piece of junk, which adds up enormously.  Of course, recycling commodity prices have been trashed worldwide, so who knows what the local sorting station is doing with all this stuff.  ZRock’s kindergarten class collects from parents cans on Fridays, brings them to a neighboring business’s recycling spot in the parking lot and puts the money into a field trip fund.  So they get all our seltzer cans now, but we still generate and recycle a good amount of newspapers (Thurs-Sun), food containers and mail each Tuesday pickup.  I estimate that we have an average of 3x by volume more recycling than trash, and 2x by weight on normal weeks, and far more beyond that during the weeks we are trying to declutter, when the recycling bin barely closes.

With my mindset about the value of getting and opening mail now hopefully clear to you, share with me the surprise and wonder I enjoyed yesterday when I went through a giant pile of mail received during the past five weeks.  With it all splashed on to the low table, my eye and hand immediately went towards a small package, really a square manila envelope, which turned out to be from Amazon.  Addressed to JRock!

It looked like it must be a CD, but from whom?  I felt like Encyclopedia Brown (for the first time in some time, as for a while I was sure I was him).  First, I knew it was not from me, whom is by far the most prevalent sender of things from Amazon to me.  Second, the address meant it had to be from someone who a) knows me at least at some personal level (while I give out the pob address freely, as that’s the point, it’s not published, per se), and, most important, b) reads this blog.

Point b) ruled out some highly likely candidates, namely my wife and entire family.  This led me to quite a short list.  E.B. would have made some calls and asked some pointed questions, concluding his investigation and determining the sender before actually opening the package.  But about 20 seconds had already elapsed, and I couldn’t wait any further.  So I opened it, and found…my number one Hanukkah request, mentioned in passing ONLY VIA A LINK some time ago in my blog, and…NOT actually received during Hanukkah!

Well, this is just great, and after reading the fine print of Amazon’s tiny freight slip (how is that printed, it looks worse than an inkjet; thermal?) I am unsurprised, but quite grateful, to find to whom I owe thanks.  I won’t embarrass them, but they know who they are.

Thus, to my first readers that I know of, and for sure my first RSS subscribers, thank you very very much for my lovely present.  I am considering it as much a blogging present as a holiday one, and I bet that’s exactly how you meant it to be.  As you are such digerati, in your joint honor, please consider the following links as your thank you note:

Great Not Good Song of the Day:

Hold That Train (really clever mashup video by someone; harder than it looks to get it right)
by
Lil Ed & the Blues Imperials (I love that they joined myspace 6 months ago)

(two specific notes on this song: 1) as of this writing, you can download this particular mp3 for free from Amazon’s monthly list of over 500 free songs, and 2) you two from above are to pay no attention whatsoever to the lyrics in this dedication, it’s just a great song from a great band that has obvious meaning).

Great Not Good Science Podcast Site of the Day:

Distinctive Voices at the Beckman

Thanks again!