I put the items in a handy box, but didn’t seal it, because I couldn’t find my packing tape. I figured that I could just use the tape at the post office. I addressed a label to Joanna, but didn’t include her zip code, because I didn’t have it. I wasn’t worried, since I’ve always gotten them from the post office in the past.

I made it to the post office and spent a couple of minutes using the free tape to eliminate any possibility that the package would open in transit. I took it to the counter and asked the gentleman for the zip code I needed. He told me that they no longer did that, and I’d have to get it on my own. He wrote down a freaking 800 number, as if I would devote that much effort to it. I just looked it up on my phone in about the time it would have taken to dial the number.

So I went back up to the counter with my newly zip-coded package. He looked at it and told me that they couldn’t accept packages sealed with Scotch tape. So why do they provide it???? He suggested that I use the Priority tape, which was on another table. I went to the other table and covered every bit of Scotch tape with the Priority tape.

Once I was finished, I took it to the counter for a third time. Thankfully, there were no more holdups. The guy scanned the package and then told me that I owed $5 for the postage. $5??? For a package to South Jersey?? At first I was confused as to why it cost so much; the contents are small pieces of fabric and couldn’t possibly cost that much to send 100 miles away. And then I realized that with the Priority tape came the Priority price. Devious! I guess that’s why the post office has done away with the plain packing tape they used to carry.

Now that I know the post office is an agent of evil, I will adjust my dealings with it accordingly.

You try to look sexy in maternity undies.

So the only reasonable way she could have lost 10 pounds so quickly would be if she gave birth. Mazel tov, pregnant lady from the ad!

A Massachusetts sporting club is donating $10,000 to children’s charities as part of a deal settling criminal charges in the death of an 8-year-old boy who accidentally shot himself in the head with an Uzi during a gun fair.

There were so many points of failure in this story (the organizers’, the former police chief’s, the gun club’s, the father’s, and the poor 15 year old boy who was supervising Christopher) that it’s hard to know where to begin casting the blame. Christopher Bizilj deserved so much better than what happened to him. Mistakes and lapses in judgment happen all the time, but I honestly don’t know how his mother, Suzanne Bizilj can stand the knowledge that when their child was handed a loaded Uzi, her husband was preparing to take pictures, rather than to help his son hold the firearm.