Small town kindness

 Today while I was waiting for the dishwasher repairman to come oh, I finally finished up my Christmas cards. After he left, I drove down to the post office to toss the completed cards into the drive-thru big blue mailbox. I happened to be talking to Laila on the phone at the time I was tossing my envelopes into the box when I realized the ones in my hand had NO stamps. It was closing time at the post office, so I drove home, called there and the clerk was willing to run out to that outdoor receptacle and grab my envelopes to see if any were missing stamps. She came back with a report that yes, there were quite a few there with no stamps. Since they were closing, she said they would be willing to hang on to those and I can come down tomorrow and put stamps on them. 

Had I not noticed, those letters would have gone to where they were intended and then been Returned to Sender. Probably the olden days of the mailman writing you a note and asking you to leave $0.50 in the mailbox are long gone. Anyway, I was impressed that this small town post office clerk was willing to go the extra mile for me and I will be sure to thank Anna when I go to the Post Office tomorrow.

Serenity

I did get busy this morning and complete my assignment to read and judge 9 essays based on Kurt Vonnegut's book The Cat's Cradle. These essays were written by high schoolers who are participating in the regional Academic Decathlon competition. All of the essays were good. There were two or three that really stood out in terms of the writing ability of the student but all covered the topic and presented interesting viewpoints about the theme of the book. It was the first time that I've been an essay judge and the first time that this has been done virtually. I would certainly do it again. And now, I think I would like to read that book again because it was many years ago when I read Kurt Vonnegut books.

With regard to dishwasher repairs, my repairman came today and started troubleshooting the dishwasher when he noticed that the electronic ticket that he was going to charge his time to, had been set up wrong by whoever helped me make the appointment. Instead of being a repeat repair on my warranty plan it was set up to charge me the full amount of the repair. He called into headquarters and they said that they would have to ask me to call in and request another appointment but that they could not make the change to the existing ticket while he was here at my house. 

So guess what, he's coming back on January 11th. And, through our conversation today, he indicated that he think it it thinks it is a bad pump, which means he will have to order that the next time he's here and then he will have to come back two weeks after that to do the installation. 

I am going to be happy if I am not hand washing dishes on Valentine's Day❤.

This dishwasher experience is certainly teaching me patience. And in this pandemic oh, you must have patience, as we all do the best we can.