The Family Letter

Bludgeoned
You know, that's a really neat word. I realized this tonight when I used it while chatting with Rev Ref, who commented that bludgeoned "has a very festive ring to it."

Indeed. Bludgeoned. There you have it, today's word of the day.

The package was delivered. Ironically, this one came before another that has been on island for two days now. I'm sure they'll come on two trucks. Not the most efficient, but because one was ground and the other express (yes, the one that went all over the country was express), they won't go to the same delivery vehicle.

To give them credit, the package was delivered and in less than five minutes the online status changed.

Oddly, it has teleported back to California. Could it be the report of its arrival in Memphis was a glitch?

Check it out.

Of course it is also entirely possible that it made it back to Oakland from Memphis in that time. With a good tailwind (unlikely in that direction, but it has happened).

My glitch theory, on the other hand, is backed up by the fact that it never departed Oakland. Nor Memphis, for that matter. Up until those entries, there's a "departed" for every "arrival."

…nobody knows!

Recently I ordered a product from the Apple Store online. It shipped directly from China.

I've done this once before¹, so I rather anticipated part of how the package would be routed. It left China and stopped in Anchorage, Alaska. If they wanted to be really clever they could have sent it right to Hawaii and impressed me with their speed. But, alas, Alaska must be a FedEx hub.

It left Alaska and headed noth south and west to Hawaii, not south and east to California, but way southeast to Indianapolis, Indiana. I expected as much. It goes through some sort of international release process there. That must be the only place in the country they release international shipments, so no getting around that.

Then, at last, it began heading my way. It stopped in Los Angeles, California. This makes sense. I've had to stop there a few times myself on the way back here. It scooted over to Oakland, CA, for some reason, probably in preparation for getting on a plane.

To Memphis. Yes, you read that right, it left California and went back east to Memphis, Tennessee.

There are 464 miles between Indy and Memphis. There are 2,079 between Oakland and Memphis. If the package absolutely had no choice but to stop in Memphis for routing, approval, or for someone to make the sign of the cross over it, why on earth didn't it go straight there from Indy? Why did they have to stop in two cities in California first? Even if you don't consider things like customer satisfaction, which must go up a bit when a package arrives ahead of time, what about fuel consumption? They just paid to drag this package from the midwest to the Pacific coast and back to the midwest.²

The only thing I can think is that since they said it'd be here by the 29th they had to stall, because it was making too good time and might have come early.

I've had FedEx do some strange things in the past, but this one takes the cake. I can't wait to see where it goes from Memphis.

By the way, I am not making this up.

1. An iPod Shuffle at this time last year. The Shuffle has vanished, hence the new order. [back]
2. Okay, it doesn't weigh much, but still… The space that box occupied could have been used for a box actually wanting to go east. [back]

When last we joined St. George's, there was a leaky urinal in the men's room and wires chewed through and a broken dishwasher in the vicarage.

We've had an awful time with professionals. We call, they never call back. We call, they do call back, but never come out to give quotes. We call, they call back, come out, then never send a quote. It is very frustrating.

I'm happy to report, though, that we now have both a plumber and an electrician that follow through.

The urnial was repaired this morning. Even though it looks awful (the thing is ancient) it works and no longer leaks.

The wires behind my dishwasher were spliced, and there are two new electrical boxes in place protecting them. Both access points from the attic to the space under the dishwasher have steel wool stuffed into them now, too. That, supposedly, should keep the rats from getting under there and destroying more wires and/or the dishwasher again¹.

The dishwasher repairman comes back tomorrow to fix that, and everything will be back to normal–indeed better than normal with the rat proofing!

I look forward to using my microwave tonight (the wires included all counter plugs), and being able to use the dishwasher again this weekend. Amazing how dependent I've become on such things. I had to heat a can of chili on the stove the other evening, and it seemed like such an odd thing to do… I was having flashbacks to my childhood, when that was the only way to reheat leftovers!

1. The last dishwasher, replaced around this time in 2006, had been chewed through from underneath. This one had all of its hoses gnawed to pieces. I really hope that steel wool works! [back]