Maybe a post every two days is more realistic? I dunno. I hate making up rules like that, especially when this ole' blog is just for fun.

Anyhoo.....

Power outage. We had a 30-minute one today.

Here's a pic:

                                              


Can't see anything? That's the point. Apparently we have no windows inside our facility, something I haven't noticed till today.

You see, there was a MASSIVE thunderstorm the other day, something I will chat bout later, which probably caused much electrical problems as an after-effect. Though the weather was calm this morning--and VERY humid--I guess a surge must've happened around the post office's side of town. Apparently stop lights were out, too.

So what did we do? Well, we still did our job, just inefficiently. I had my cell phone shining light on my case to put up my vacation mail-holds. All of us then took our parcels outside to our trucks because that was actually something we could do at the time.

Things got lit up again, but sheesh, it put us behind a good deal. Plus I had to case up ANOTHER route, split it into seven sections, and prepare it for other carriers to take. Then I had to case up my own route, pull it down, and deliver that as well. Almost got done in 10 hours, ended up finishing at around 10.4 hours. Still, pretty insane considering the amount of mail-oriented work I had to do, plus that stupid blackout.

Not gonna lie, that blackout was pretty neat though :D

So yeah, that rain. Had a huge rainstorm yesterday. Fortunate thing though--I was doing my mounted (driving) mail delivery section when it happened. I swear, delivering mail in a thunderstorm while encased in a tin box with wheels is not the most comforting thing, Still, I was pretty safe. And dry. Comfortably dry. Somewhere in the back of my mind though, I knew that I would be soaked at the end of the day.

Finished my route, and of course, I had to go help someone else. Met up with Clint to find I had to take three walking sections. Positive note was that there was very little mail to carry--that meant I could just carry it by hand and not worry bout carrying my satchel. Bad news was that, well, thunderstorm of the day was preparing its second assault. Once I started, well, the rain was torrential. After my first section, I was soaked. After my second section, I thought I was gonna get struck by lightning. During my third section, I didn't care anymore and jumped in puddles for the fun of it.

It twas quite comical actually--my mail journey from house to house went like this: run to house, deliver mail, clutch mail to my chest for maximum dryness, jump as lightning flashes nearby, run to porch and take refuge there for 5-10 seconds, deliver mail again, rinse and repeat. All the while I was cussing and constantly yelling, "Man, this is INSANE!" Despite this, I must say the experience as a whole was pretty intense and awesome. Haha!

Not much else. Oh, some awesome lady gave my a Mountain Dew when I picked up her packages from her porch on Tuesday. Given the super-hot weather, it was like heaven in a can.

                                      

Oh, and if I had a nickel for every deer I could get up real close to, I'd have like $.50. OK, bad analogy but still, dem deer around these parts are so DOCILE! I got within about 15 feet of this one. Would've tried to get closer, but the old lady looking at me through her screen door probably thought I was acting a little screwy.

                                       

Postal Nightmares.

Those are the worst. Remember falling asleep when you were younger while stressing out about an upcoming math test? If you are unlucky, sometimes you'd have dreams about how you didn't study enough or hundreds of numbers and equations in your head, driving you crazy.

That's what happens sometimes with me--it's just mail delivery. For instance, Mondays are usually pretty crazy so I try to mentally prepare myself for them the day prior. However, I then fall asleep and fall into this half-asleep, half-awake funk where I believe I am delivering mail and am either doing it all wrong or am not able to meet my deadline.

Of course I eventually "wake up", get out of bed, and try to get the other half of my brain to realize that it was all a dream and that I was sleeping, not delivering mail. Not only is this frustrating, you definitely lose out on a good deal of solid sleep. Plus, you know you're gonna be delivering mail in a couple of hours anyways so dreaming about it just feels, well, redundant.

Argh.

Well at least today is Tuesday. Monday was pretty slow yesterday--the temps are still high though. Ugh.

BEEEES!!!! You see, bees enjoy nesting inside mailboxes, especially the central mail units you see at apartment complexes and such. You see, in these boxes, there is a little slot always open for outgoing mail. The bees have figured out that they can crawl into said slot and make their nest in there. From a bee's standpoint, it is quite an excellent place to nest. Nobody ever opens up said door to reveal said nest. Well, somebody does--me.

This ain't the first time I've stumbled upon a bee's nest in a mailbox. I've seen em' before and often knocked em down--they have been quite small in the past with one-two momma bees/wasps care-taking it. Today's nest was a yellow-jacket nest, with about 5-6 bees on it. Being the smart dude I am, I decided to treat the nest like any other nest and take it out with a plastic mail divider I had.

Instant fail.

The nest was too big to knock down in one fell swoop. Plus the bees then swarmed the mailbox and thus my truck parked next to the mailbox. And since the box was already open, I couldn't hop in the truck and leave, due to to liability's sake. Anyways, got a hold of my supervisor, she sent me out some Raid, and I blasted that bees nest into chemical oblivion.


                                     



This is the nest after I sprayed it good and dead. It's at least an inch long/wide, which is quite large for a bee's nest. Yuck. Good thing I didn't get stung. Plus it's a good thing I got rid of it anyways--it was a hazard for both other mail carriers and customers using said mailbox.

Anyways, on Friday, I had a rough day with the heat. Yowch. I've also discovered throughout the week that opening metal mail slots in doors that have been facing the afternoon sun for a couple of hours is not a pleasant experience. So hot!

Well, made it back to the office only to realize that route adjustments were tomorrow (Saturday) and we had to re-do our mail cases with new labels. You see, a while ago some people came and monitored the carriers and their routes in order to make adjustments to said routes to make them more efficient. Though they succeeded in some places, they also made some really wacky adjustments.

For example, instead of taking a usual path you were used to--i.e. take a right on street A to street B--it's now take a right on street A, do a few boxes, take an instant left down sketchy alley, loop around the block, make a u-turn, then continue down street B. Most of this negativity is me having to re-learn a route and me not being used to the new design--the route isn't that bad and after a few days of it, things should go swimmingly.

I'm being put on a different, new route for me next week, so no more C48 route, the one I've been doing all this past week. By the way, that's how we name our routes--the "C" stands for "city" and the number is the, well, route number. Pretty straightforward actually.

As for other occurrences the past few days, I knocked off a mailbox lid.

                              


Actually, the thing was rusty beyond belief and was only hanging on by one hinge. As I opened up the box, it literally just fell to the ground. I picked it up and placed it next to said mailbox--all I could do really.

Other than that, learning to deal with the heat was my most notable experience. It's funny--at first it's miserable but once you get all sweaty and nasty, then you feel quite comfortable. Sure your back of your shirt is soaked with sweat and droplets of sweat are always forming on your face, but it's just the body's way of adapting to the environment. Once you've adapted, well, you still ain't the most comfortable person in the world, but it's better.

As I said to a guy I met out on the route though, I'd much rather be relaxing at home on the couch with the air conditioning on. Ha!

Yawn.... I know I've mentioned it before, but the mail never ends--it's like a never-ending battle day after day after day. Sometimes it just gets tiresome. But wait.... you get that same feeling with every job! I guess it's just taken awhile to catch up to me. It's probably been this week--being all hot and all, and especially doing a super-long route.

I feel as if I'm complaining a lot in this blog as well. Man, everyday I got through a bunch of stuff in terms of heat, stress, exhaustion, dehydration, etc. so I suppose it's expected that I vent a good deal about that kind of stuff. Knowing this, hopefully this blog won't turn into a personal rant page. I really want to stick to doing plain old silly happenings throughout my day.

I did stumble upon a dad making water balloons for his two kids--the little kids offered me a water balloon. I was almost tempted to have them throw one at me due to me being so hot. That idea seemed a little weird though so I opted not to ask them. Nice to see a dad having fun with his kids though.

Oh, and no cookies today, either. Remember that one lady who had baked cookies in her post box for me, Saturday I think it was? Every day I drive past that mailbox, I check to see if there are any cookies in it. It's like I'm primed ever since she left cookies in that box that one day. I mean, I can't expect her to be baking EVERYDAY but man, not gonna lie, I am a little downtrodden when there are no cookies in the box. Knowing my luck, I'll be doing a different route tomorrow and that'll be the day she bakes cookies.

But yeah, it's little things like that which make my day. Otherwise, even though every day is different in some regards, it's still the same old hum-drum that is daily work.

The mail never ends!

Some days just feel silly, knowing that despite your best efforts, there will continue to be a load of mail to deliver the next!

I neglected an entry yesterday because I got off early--something that never happens. I therefore rejoiced in an unusual amount of free-time.



Also, while I was casing up my route, I got a random message from my supervisor who is currently stationed somewhere in Indy. Since he used to be a city carrier, he has to go back and carry mail for a month after about four months of supervising or something--I'm not sure about the logistics of it. Still, he was dreading having to go back and carry mail in this heat--it's gotta be a tough transition going from being inside working to being outside. Anyways, he taped this message to a pile of flats that were being shipped down from the Indy station to us--I was randomly the one to discover said message as well, since it was a bundle of my flats that the message was taped to. I passed it around the office and we all got a good laugh, especially the supervisors working that day.

                                  

Tuesday was a fine day--decent weather, a decent walking route, and of course, getting off early--by early I mean having an 8-hour day. Ha!

Today on the other hand, whew. Delivering inside that mail-truck is exhausting on hot days--it dehydrates you so badly. Sure the fan makes a nice, warm breeze, but compared to walking outside in the fresh air and breeze, whew.

I got a nice surprise from a pre-school, though. They left an envelope for the mailman--which just so happened to be me that day--a bag of Jolly Ranchers and a drawing, shown below:
           
                                

What a welcome surprise that was. I also had a couple of kids, ages 10-11 or so, run up to a set of cluster boxes when I was delivering. They were yelling, "The mail's here, the mail's here!" I commented to them on how they were the most enthusiastic people I've ever seen when it comes to getting the mail. Too bad there wasn't anything good in there for them--only ads. They didn't seem to mind, though.

Monday.

Monday's are not the best days of the week. Having double the ordinary volume of mail never is fun. Especially when it is so humid outside that you begin sweating after three minutes out there. Yet the show must go on!

You get used to the heat/humidity eventually, but it's never too fun. I wish I could give an idea to how many flats I had to case up for my route. Definitely the most I've had to case so far here in Bloomington. I would say, imagine a magazine. Then imagine said magazine as a stack of magazines 3-4 feet tall. That's about the amount of mail volume I had--keep in mind that was just flats, though.

Ya gotta keep your cool though--good thing my supervisor sent me a good deal of help today. I still ended up working 11.75 hours--a new record for me I think.

Things eventually were alright though, especially when I started my driving delivery section. I thought being inside a postal truck would be a sauna--it really isn't! Just need the windows down and the fan rolling at full-blast. You definitely feel much cooler inside than out doing walking delivery.

Anyways, a funny phenomenon has been known to happen to me during the heat of the summer while I am delivering mail by foot. I hold my mail in an efficient manner--my flats, magazines, etc., tucked into my left arm while my left hand is free to hold the letters for my current walking loop. Funny thing is, since I sweat like mad and the flats are tucked into my arm, the ink and designs on said adverts and magazines I carry transfer to my skin. Kind of like Silly Putty when you press it against newspaper and peel it away.

These "temp tattoos" usually stay for a good couple of days, but I always find it funny when it does happen. Here is today's temp tattoo I acquired:

                                 

These are usually unplanned, but it would be cool if someday an actual, legible image would transfer to my arm. Getting inked while delivering mail, what a silly experience!

So sue me. I forgot to post yesterday. Big whoop. Life happens. I enjoy having a social life. Nough said.

Ya didn't miss out on much anyways. I had to deliver mail from the auxiliary post office on the west side of town--it's basically the post office that covers the western half of Bloomington. Anyways, I got to cover a street--S. Rogers St. to be exact--that is under road construction. Yikes. Oh, it's a one-way now as well due to said road construction. Therefore I had to split up the route in a variety of sections and do pieces I'd normally do near the end near the beginning. Ugh.

Anyways, got to do a new route today! New route days are always a pain--not knowing the case, not knowing where you are exactly going, all melds into one stressful, confusing mess. However, once you make it through it, you feel pretty good knowing that you are now familiar with a new route. Plus seeing new parts of Bloomington is always swell.

Today also marked a new milestone in my postal career--my first animal attack! I reached out to pet a cat laying on a porch and it swiped at me, scratching my hand.

                                     

As you can see, that little scrape at the top of my hand is the handiwork of that dastardly cat. Yeah, it's very anti-climatic, but it was the first time an animal drew my blood. Yeah it'[s not really significant. Still, that cat's got an attitude problem.

I also got some free chocolate chip cookies! Heck yeah! A kind lady was watering her plants and told me she left some fresh-baked cookies int he mailbox for the mailman today, a.k.a. me. Score! Especially since I didn't pack a lunch for today either. Hehe!