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nor dark of night

I just realized that I think its fun to send stuff through the mail. When I ordered stuff from private carriers, I used to sit in my office and obsessively check the tracking page to see where UPS is routing my package. I used to sell computer books through half.com and get a slight thrill from packing up a book on SONET configuration to exotic locales like Buffalo and Reno, knowing that the recipient was footing the bill. When I was an undergrad, I told a used car salesman I knew that I was an English major, and he replied, "So you'll be working in the mail room." At the time, I took that as an insult, but know I think I might have enjoyed that career path.

I also realized that my fascination with shipping services is a pretty geeky interest. (I'm suddenly reminded of The Crying of Lot 49, which has a preoccupation with postal systems.) A lot of my interests are pretty geeky: public transportation and FCC policy come to mind. I should find some non-geeky things to do.

Posted by McChris at June 11, 2004 12:00 AM
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Comments

you can work in the mail room and i'll be the mail carrier! i'm so jealous of my mailman. She just walks around all day in the sunshine, getting exercize, fresh air, and listening to her headphones the whole time. I want to do that too! But i guess it wouldn't be as fun in madison with all the snow and stuff.

Posted by: cayce at June 11, 2004 02:09 PM

I always thought it would be nice to be a letter carrier. A good healthy job, and everybody likes to get mail. But I'm told that before making their rounds, letter carriers have to clock in at 5:00 AM and do a bunch of mail-sorting on a high-stress quota system. And can it be all that healthy? I see too many overweight letter carriers for it to be good cardio.

And then there's Charles Bukowski's Post Office which is for postal workers what Shakes the Clown is for clowns.

Posted by: Prentiss Riddle at June 11, 2004 05:17 PM