Letters to Holly

Friday, January 4

The Day After

The office ordered a new Adobe software package the week before Christmas vacation. FedEx delivered it two days later to the wrong address. We realized this yesterday, and I spent hours trying to figure out where it went and if it can be retrieved. FedEx sent it to a similar address: the Sears down the road.

Sears signed for it and apparently never looked at the recipient address when they realized it wasn't theirs. This happened three years back, and we lost an entire shipment of magazines. Neither Sears nor FedEx would recoup our loss. I called FedEx's national claims line (there are no local or regional numbers) and received apologies and assurances.

I called Sears and was told the package is not to be found, probably wasn't thrown away, but there is no idea when it will emerge. In other words, they threw it away. Just like our magazines. Adobe sent us another bundle when I called them, but as they are sending it through FedEx again, the same scenario might unfold. Also, Adobe uses India operators for order-service calls, and the folks I talked to understand me about as well as Your Mom.

Four hours to clean up this mess, and it might all happen again.

Your Sis and I are giddy that it's Friday already. We have a wide-open weekend that hopefully will include a movie and fresh doughnuts. I broke in the new Starbucks near the office for my new favorite: caramel apple spice. I think it's just apple juice and hot milk, but it tastes good and is half the price of my usual frappuccinos.

Picture of the Day
Spruce up your freighter with nifty noodle slurpers.



The "Wow, How Long Has It Been" News of the Day
We watched caucus coverage on C-Span last night. The Dems and Repubs had distinct methods. The Dems would gather in small circles for their choices and count the number of people in that meeting space. Any candidate with less than 15 percent representation would be disqualified, and his voters would have to join one of the larger groups. Those in the room would have 30 minutes to make their sales pitches to those choosing again. The GOP simply wrote one name on slips of paper and counted up the totals.

I, the independent, preferred the GOP method. Your Sis, the registered Republican, likes the Democrat method. And we talked about that for a while.

In the end, we got Obama, Edwards, Hillary, and Richardson for the Dems, and Huckabee, Romney, Thompson, and McCain for the GOP.

Edwards was the surprise winner for the left. Hillary represents the Clinton/Bush 20-year dynasty, and folks want a fresh face.

Huckabee got lots of religious support, which might help in South Carolina. Paul and Giuliani came in behind McCain, who ignored Iowa for New Hampshire.

It's still incredibly early to divvy up the national ballots and only those who came in fourth or worse should panic.

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