Whew, I just finished a pretty grueling work marathon, with the final lap being particularly brutal. It’s my fault for taking so many afternoons off to go exploring! I usually don’t work like this, taking half days off, preferring to get my work out of the way and then going to have fun, but I’ve been working around the fickle weather. It wasn’t particularly nice out yesterday and it rained all night, but it’s finally cleared a bit.

Today was a taking care of business sort of day. I needed to send something out for warranty replacement, so John’s Printing and Mailing Service dropped off a label I asked him to print, packing material, a box, scissors, and tape. I had my own Magic Marker at least. 😀

John vetoed my choice of post office since it’s just a counter and sent me to a proper one that he promised would have parking. I got there and there were about 15 people ahead of me in line and nearly as many ended up behind me since there was only one guy working the counter. It took almost 15 minutes before someone else showed up to at least process the people just picking up parcels, and then another service counter opened.

Even though I was only returning a small hard drive (barely bigger than a credit card), the box was pretty big to accommodate all the packing material they told me to use. So I was shocked that the cost to mail it was just $7.05. A similar box would have cost $30 to $40 to send a comparable distance within Canada. The clerk actually apologized for it costing so much! WHAT?! I mean, it’s going ‘priority’, which means it should be in Riverside in by Friday and I got a tracking number. What a good deal! I’m glad I didn’t go with UPS, which would  have been $$$. Western Digital gave me a discount for UPS, but it would have still been more than $7.05.

The post office wound up being a very good location since it was very near a mall that had everything else I needed for today, an ATM, a grocery store, and a sushi restaurant. 🙂

After lunch, I was thinking of going downtown to walk around, but the sky looked threatening. I was tired and still have a project left to do for tonight, so I just got my groceries and came home. BTW, I bought beer, assembling a really nice mix of six beers I’ve never tried, and did not get asked for ID for my first time ever buying booze in the States! Smart of me to let the grey hair at my temples grow, huh?!

Tomorrow should be a nice day and I have an excursion planned, thanks to advice from my local guide!