Postal Blues

No wonder people freak out and "go postal." I've been having my share of problems getting my books shipped out, but it isn't entirely the fault of the local post office. Somewhere in the area there was a major blunder by a construction crew that has caused all kinds of problems with electrical and phone lines. This happened a few days before I started shipping my books last Saturday. There was a brief time when things worked properly and my first shipment went out okay. It's slow (media mail), but the deliveries are happening. In fact, to my great surprise, a couple of books that were shipped on Saturday arrived here in Dayton on Monday. The rare exception, unfortunately. I sent 25 on Saturday, 28 on Monday and about the same on Tuesday and Wednesday. Because of the outage, I can't get any information from delivery confirmation that they've been sent. I finally learned that they must go from Centerville (Dayton) to Cincinnati before they can come back to Dayton or go anywhere else in the country. I checked online and nothing was scanned in for three days in Cincinnati. I don't know whether the books were sitting around in the post office or on their way. It has been very frustrating. The people at my post office are so helpful that I don't complain, because it isn't their fault. But I sure felt sorry for them when I went in today with a few more packages and found that the air conditioning in the post office had been off all day--a very hot and humid one, at that. I asked Mary how she could keep smiling in that stifling heat, and she said, "Well, it's better than crying." Tomorrow morning I'll ship 20 books and on Monday I'll deliver the last 10 to my students. I'm still taking orders, but I'll be just as happy if folks buy from Amazon.com or their local book store!