Posted by Baron Greenback [216.145.229.74 - PC-B8] on 26 February 2003 at 00.26.51 ZuluTime:

In Reply to: I was just saying that the other day.... posted by Gremlin on 24 February 2003 at 04.30.39 ZuluTime:

I actually went back today.

Today is the day I'm supposed to be packing. However, as I grew up in an environment where packing everything I own into a handful of bags and preparing to call a new place "home" was a survival trait, I was done long before everyone else, and didn't stick around for the nine billion questions everyone else had about how airports are supposed to work. Less than half of the answers I heard were anything but extremely vague anyway; I guess the navy gets a kick out of watching people learn firsthand how much these places suck. I know I do, anyway.

At any rate, tommorow I'll be in Virginia.

Int. RADIO SHACK, AFTERNOON
      (Kenny G is killing a small animal and making us listen to it on the mall's radio)

So I walk into radio shack. There's John, flaming his way from male customer to male customer. I don't hate him because of that. I hate everyone in general, but I hate individual people for better reasons than that. In this case, I hate John because I don't have a laptop. But, John knows this. So, instead of the multi hour conversation I normally get, I get "Do you have your phone on you? Okay, the battery's dead. Here, use mine. If it's in tonight, I'll give you a call. The UPS guy should be here by sev-1900". John likes everyone to know that HE was in the NAVY! At least, when the customer is in the navy anyway. Fine, at least I still leave the store before I retire.

Except, it seems a little strange. When I say strange, I mean "you know damn well the thing's not coming in tonight, and want me to stay in the mall buying stuff with that pretend money uncle sam decided not to spend on a toilet seat this month". I dunno, maybe it's just me. Anyway, here I am, with a five dollar coffee, at the internet cafe. And, I have to leave you all with a cliffhanger. If (he, he he, heh, I said if) it's not here tonight, I'm having it mailed to Grem and Hunter.

On that note... I talked a while ago to Hunter about a package the apartment complex wouldn't let her take a while ago. I'll get into details on that in a sec, but I needed to let Hunter know that it did not, in fact, get returned to here. It's in the void. Maybe you can fetch a theist and pay him to return it from never never land or candy land or whatever silliness they've come up with for being immobilized, enbalmed, buried, and left with a slew of legal problems eating away at whatever measly amount of money you've managed to scrape together while you were still able to do something about it.

About the package: When people end up going into the navy, they're informed that they aren't allowed to take several items into basic training with them. They have everyone put all their clothing, the contents of their pockets sans wallet, and anything else they've packed (note to anyone dumb enough to end up where I am: your wallet is, well, the best place in the world to put all those wonderful cigarettes that won't last you past your second week, and that's only because you forgot matches and spent a week figuring out how to light the things) into a box. They then have everyone mail this box... somewhere. Why they can't just, I dunno, keep it for eight weeks is beyond me. At any rate, this is where the epic of the box begins.

So, the box arrives home. I was rooming with Grem and Hunter. Except that, home's address changed just a couple days before I made "the mistake" (a mistake). So, I put home's old address down on the box. Which shouldn't have been a problem, since Hunter's name was on the box, and all the mail with Gremlin's, Hunter's, or my name on it was supposed to be forwarded to us anyway. This, however, was special. See, because it was a box. And boxes have to go into the office. That was the apparent policy they made up on the spot when Hunter tried to get the box, anyway. In other bullshit policies, the complex is allowed to sign for it's tennant's boxes, thus preventing the box from being automatically returned to the place from whence it came. Finally, it's allowed to keep its tennant's mail for a solid week before deciding to mail it to... well, that's the question, isn't it. To guam, I suspect. Because they didn't mail it here. Or via Fed Ex, I might add, as Fed Ex doesn't have a tracking number on it.