So last month I signed up to participate in Margaret’s (Nannygoatsinpanties) White Elephant Gift Exchange because it sounded like a great idea at the time.
I know better now.
I have not received my White Elephant Gift yet. I’m feeling a little sorry for myself about that but I really don’t have reason to because I just sent out the gift I was supposed to send weeks ago on Wednesday (Joanna, you should get it today). I have no excuse, Margaret has been sending ‘gentle’ reminders for the past month. This whole gift thing was weighing heavily on my mind but I also knew that Nicky and Cardiogirl had not sent theirs and neither had whoever was supposed to be sending my gift. I was going to send it on Tuesday but was unable to print the shipping label from USPS online because their site had a ‘glitch’ according the very helpful (not) woman who kept me on hold for 30 minutes at the post office. Since they had already taken the money out of my Paypal account I was not going to run down to the post office and pay for shipping again. I have principles that way. And it’s really cold here so if I don’t have to go outside I’m not going to. I tried to explain to the woman on the phone that Margaret was not going to be so gentle when she found out I hadn’t sent my gift yet again. The post office lady didn’t care and told me that it would be resolved in 48 hours.
And it was. Two days later, and one day after I hauled my ass down to the post office and stood in line while some dumbass paid for postage to Romania with pennies, I got an email from the post office saying that the ‘glitch’ had been fixed and I should try again. They didn’t refund the money they took from me so I still have to resolve that but at least the gift has been shipped.
I would have linked up to Margaret’s Mr. Linky but she is a stickler for rules and would not allow me to link up until I got my gift. I think I might have called Margaret a Mr Linky Nazi.
Anyway, yesterday the mailman came and left this at my door.
I was so excited that I had finally gotten my gift I could hardly contain myself.
Sadly it was not to be. The box was not from the White Elephant Gift giver but from the company that sold the little doohicky for my microwave. 00dozo had found the part number and even gave me a link to the part so I could order it. So even though it wasn’t my White Elephant Gift it was still great because I could use my microwave again. Thank you 00dozo for all your help!
As most of you know I am a Republican and don’t really get into the whole green movement and stuff that is usually reserved for Liberals. However, it would have been nice if the microwave parts company hadn’t cut down an entire forest to send me a part that could have fit into a small recycled envelope.
Not that I care all that much, we will use the box again.
In addition to the small part in the big box I got one other piece of mail. Actually it was addressed to my son but was something I had been expecting for a while. Or at least hoping would come.
I love that there is no mystery to these letters anymore. They put it out there on the front for the parents so they don’t have to break all kinds of federal laws by opening mail that is not addressed to them.
Yep, my boy was accepted to the school of engineering. This was his first choice so he doesn’t even care what the other letters say. The fact that such a good school is only a few miles away from us, because it is so much cheaper for residents, makes it my first choice too. He can even keep his room for the next four years if he wants to. While I make light of this, and especially the cost, I am extremely proud of my son.
Congrats to your son.
On a related note, I have a degree in Engineering.
Now is the part where you become very afraid for your son.
Are you kidding? Please tell me you are kidding.
It’s widely known and acknowledged that engineers are total whack jobs, right Moog? They’re worse than lawyers and chemists.
Yes but they usually keep to themselves. What is wrong with chemists? I hadn’t heard they were like lawyers.
I’m with you on the packaging issue. My tighty whities don’t get in a bunch too often over the hyperbole of the greenies; however, packaging of food and packaging for shipment are often senselessly wasteful. That microwave part is ridiculous!
Don’t you love it when you open a box of some dried food substance like cereal and it only half full? Who do they think they are fooling. What a waste.
I hope your microwave works now. It’s tough to live without a microwave.
Do you mean to tell me the cereal thing is because of settling while
shipping? I bought that one. Damn, fooled again.
Yes, my microwave works perfectly now and we can once again have popcorn and
warmed up coffee.
Some may be the result of settling during shipping but many food products are put in packages that are over-sized by 30-50%. That’s what I’m talking about; it’s a waste of packaging.
You know what I think? Let them “settle” the contents at the freaking production plant. All they’d have to do is dump cereal in a box half way, then run it over a conveyor belt that shakes ’em down. Then they roll on to another dumping place and more cereal goes in. Next stop… shakedown. More. Then seal it. I know, I know, they’ll charge us 3x more, but the boxes won’t be half empty.
Jen, maybe your son’s first order of business in engineering school is to design the above mentioned machinery. Congrats to him! No small achievement!!!!
I read that Walmart makes companies reduce their box package size, they don’t care that the box is the billboard for the product, they just want the shelf space. But it does reduce a little bit of a footprint, and that I can appreciate.
I’ve never considered it from the store’s perspective, but that makes economic sense. If the package is smaller, they can display/stock more inventory per square foot.
I can appreciate that too. Kudos to Walmart. I still don’t want to shop
there.
I don’t want to shop there because the help is never helpful and they have 40 check stands but only 5 are open at any given time and the parking lot is always like shopping the day before Christmas. Happy day when the WinCo recently opened less than a mile from my house. But they don’t accept credit, only debit, and I use my card for points. Apparently, I just can’t be happy. Wow, need to change my attitude.
My Walmart is in the ‘hood so I it’s like going through a war zone. Target
is across the street and it’s completely different. I go to Target.
Mine, too, Jen. I fear for my life whenever my wife drags me to Wal-Mart.
OMG! That little part came in that huge box?!?!? Mind you, we have had small items similarly shipped – it is wasteful, but we try to reuse boxes as much as we can. Glad you’re back up and ‘popping’! (And thanks for the shout-out.)
And good luck to your son in his studies!
I know, they could have used a little padded envelope and saved a lot on shipping. Thanks for alerting me to this parts place I was very pleased with the whole thing.
“This whole gift thing was weighing heavily on my mind but I also knew that Nicky and Cardiogirl had not sent theirs…”
First off, thanks for the shout out and second, maybe CG’s the one who got your name?
Congratulations to your son, and to you for raising such a smart kid!
No, CG didn’t get me, I already asked. Sorry for outing you but I was getting afraid of Margaret.
Congratulations, Jen! Not because your son got accepted into a good school, but because you’re pretty much one kid down and one to go. Don’t it feel great?
P.S. — I generally avoid anything that has anything to do with the Post Office because I hate going there so much that I’ll put it off for months. I’d never have success in a White Elephant party like Margaret threw.
I’m not one kid down, the school is just across the river and room and board is more expensive than living at home so I have a couple more years at least.
I didn’t think of the post office when I signed up for Margaret’s party. I know better now.
Congrats to you on getting #1 Son into engineering school! WooHoo! I had the exact same experience when I tried to print my mailing label online. Here I thought I’d be all smart and save a trip to the post office. But alas, it was not meant to be. So I got a friend to drive me to the PO so I could shlep my package down there. (Just so you know, I was not the one with your name in the white elephant gift exchange. )
So… if you DON’T get accepted, I wonder if the envelope says “YOU HAVE BROUGHT SHAME UPON YOUR FAMILY, SEPPUKU KNIFE NOT INCLUDED IN ENVELOPE” or what…?
Congrats to your son for getting into a good school (and the one he wanted)!
Congratulations to you and your son! Hey, I see I’m your 200th follower – do I win a White Elephant prize??
🙂
Woo hoo! How awesome for your son, congrats to him! And I hope you receive your long awaited for White Elephant Gift.
With Love,
The Linky Nazi.
Wait! It’s in the Republican rule book that you can’t be concerned with “Green” issues? Does that mean you don’t have any interest in reducing dependence on foreign oil, or finding ways to reduce the material being hauled into landfills?
I honestly don’t understand Republican opposition to the idea of Global Warming. It’s pretty much a fact, given the data that’s been collected. While the cause is not certain, reducing those emissions that theoretically could contribute doesn’t seem all that unreasonable to me. But I’m funny that way.
I recycle, I turn my heat down, I have a compost, I don’t use the car if I
can walk, I put the 3M window plastic on my windows each year even though it
looks like crap and I have to live in a fishbowl for 6 months because I
can’t pull my shades down (it was up or down with a commitment and I need
the sunlight in the winter), I bring reusable grocery bags to the store, I
think we should pump the oil that is in our land rather than buy it from
people who don’t like us, I check my tires to make sure I get the best
mileage I can. However, I can’t afford an electric or hybrid car and I
refuse to take the bus because there are dumbasses on the bus who scare the
living crap out of me. I do a lot of things to try to reduce my carbon
footprint but no, I don’t let it keep me up at night because honestly I have
bigger things to worry about. Short of those things mentioned above, I can’t
really do much to change the world and right now it’s -7 so global warming
doesn’t scare me that much.
Maybe I’ll get in on that next year. Congratulations to you and your son on his acceptance to the school of his choice. Y’all done good.
I agree. That box is crazy, but I’ve seen similar situations with things I’ve received in the mail, although I can’t think of what they were…but I know it happened. Really, it did. I’m not making it up just to have a comment. 🙂
I remember back in the day when I got letters for college, they were just in plain white envelopes — and we liked it that way! It all was so mysterious. The suspense, and then opening it to find out that I’d been accepted to Harvard – ha, I wish.
Speak for yourself. I got a letter from Brown and broke out in a sweat thinking about what was inside of it. I went to the U of M.
Enjoyed a first-time visit to your blog, recommended by Joanna Jenkins of the Fifty Factor. How could I resist a rant from a fellow redhead? 🙂 Thanks for the smiles!
Aw! Yay! Congrats to your son! That is WONDERFUL news!!
Firstly, congratulations to your son!
Secondly. You are just a tad late for the white elephant gift thingy. I’d almost forgotten it, being as it was so long ago now 😉