Certified Bonafied Mail

Well, I was planning on taking some sweet pictures today down by the Lincoln Monument, but Mother Nature, in her infinite fickleness, decided to dump some freaking cold rain down upon the area. So, instead of majestic, sweeping vistas of independence and four-scorery, you get a little thing I like to call certified mail.

Ingrained in my grey matter since the age of 6 is that when something takes a long time to reach you in the mail, that thing is gooooood. The ratio of time waiting for the package is directly proportionate to the goodness of the package itself. Cereal makers have been utilizing this theorem for ages -- 6-8 weeks is the maximum goodness a package can recieve before slipping down the other side of the bell curve. I call this Jake's theory of fruity-pebblocity.*

Thus, when I recieved a notice in my mailbox the other day informing me that I had "certified" mail waiting for me, my mind ran wild. Certified? This is no normal mail! What could it be? Do I owe anyone money? No... Perhaps it's something good, like a prize I won or something?

This is actually what I thought. Despite the fact that I have entered no significant contests in the past few months, my brain immediately decided I had won the Publisher's Clearing House Sweepstakes and that Ed McFreakingMahn was waiting at the Lincolnia USPS office to hand me a big ass check. The fact that I had not immediately recieved this piece of mail meant it had to be good. (see theory of fruity-pebblocity).

But since the USPS is a government agency, the only time you can pick up certified mail is between the hours of 12 and 12:15 weekdays and before the sun rises on weekends. Seriously, that's the way they print it on their letterhead. So I dragged myself out of bed early Saturday morning because, sadly, waiting another day would have killed me.

So, in the pouring rain I arrive at the post office at 8 am. Silly me, the post office opens at 8:30! Wonderful, wonderful, I'll just sit in my car and listen to...NPR...talking about politics..ugh...talking about politics in Indonesia...double ugh..talking about how the economical benefactors of multi-cultural unilateralism relates to the politics of Indonesia in the 21st century...oh god I can't take it anymore!

I rush up to the door of the office and point, through the window, to the stamp with the small puppy that says "I love you." Then I point at the teller and make large puppy dog eyes. Had this been a sympathetic female postal worker, maybe my plan would have worked. However, this employee, Alexandria's own Barney Fife, looked at me sadly, checked his watch, and then wrote a letter to his congressmen about the decline of youth in america.

So, long story short, when I recieved the mail - it was full of:

a. Gold Dubloons
b. Darth Vader (with real lightsaber action)
c. Legal Notification of Health Benefits for the month of August

Ah, adulthood, you saucy minx. You win again.