Day: March 28, 2022

TMP — Lost in the Mail

Fandango37 Comments

Every Monday, Paula Light, with her The Monday Peeve prompt, gives us an opportunity to vent or rant about something that pisses us off. My peeve today is about the United States Postal Service, or USPS.

The motto of the USPS is “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.” That’s all well and good, but what about mismanagement and incompetence?

Donald Trump appointed Louis DeJoy, a major political donor and fundraiser for the Republican Party, as Postmaster General. DeJoy is the first postmaster in two decades without prior experience in the USPS, and his mission since taking over the USPS seems to be geared towards dismantling it, maybe in the hope of taking it private.

Mail service has been abysmal since DeJoy took over, but due to some arcane procedural rules, Joe Biden, who promised to remove DeJoy, has as yet been unable to do so.

My specific peeve with the USPS started shortly after my wife and I adopted a rescue dog on March 20th. She is allegedly a Labrador Retriever mix, but the more I look at her, I think she’s got some Boxer in her. Maybe more Boxer than Lab. That would make her a “Boxador.”

So I purchased on of those doggy DNA kits in order to find out what her make up is. I swabbed her mouth, packed up the materials in the designated envelope, took it to the post office, and handed it the postal worker behind the counter just after noon on the 16th.

According USPS tracking, six hours later the package left my local post office and arrived at the Regional Distribution Center at 11:30 that night. The last tracking notation from the USPS, dated March 19, said, “Your package will arrive later than expected, but is still on its way. It is currently in transit to the next facility.”

That was nine days ago! Where is it now? What happened to it?

This morning I called the USPS to try to determine the status of the delivery. I was advised to fill out an online tracking service request, which I did. The response I got said, “Your inquiry has been forwarded to the appropriate management team for research and response. You can expect initial contact within one-business day.”

I’m not holding my breath.

Share Your World — 03/28/2022

Fandango18 Comments

Melanie is back with a new edition of Share Your World. So let’s not waste time with idle chitchat. Let’s just get right to it.

What fictional family would you like to be part of? (Think TV shows, cartoon, or books or some fictional family that you admire.)

I think it would have fun to have been a member of The Addams Family. Creepy, but fun.

Which band or artist would you like to play at your funeral or memorial service? (The artist can have passed on too.)

I think that having The Grateful Dead perform at my passing-on soirée would seem appropriate, given the band’s name.

Preference: Popcorn, M&Ms, or other. Choose something you love snacking on.

I can’t eat popcorn because I’ve had too many bouts with diverticulitis, so on doctor’s orders, I stay away from popcorn, nuts, and seeds. I like M&Ms, but only in small doses, like the fun-sized bags you give out to trick or treaters at Halloween. But give me a family-sized bag of potato chips and I might just finish off the whole thing by myself.

If you could be any supernatural (fantasy) character, what would you be? (Think Elves, fairies, dragons or whatever.)

Any supernatural fantasy character? Okay, how about God. Why not aim high, right?

GRATITUDE SECTION

Please share the best advice you’ve ever gotten which you feel ought to be shared with everyone.

There’s no such thing as a hole only in your end of the boat.

Don’t Be a Wannabe

Fandango9 Comments

Some say I have a reputation for being irascible. But what makes me seem to be so irritable is my wonderment at those who have the skills to achieve an unexpected milestone and my frustration that they have the potential for greatness, yet lack the impetus to even try to emanate accomplishments like those who went before them.

It’s such a waste, but that’s the choice they made as they hurl themselves into the dusty heap of lazy, high potential, low achieving wannabes.

Written for these daily prompts from yesterday: The Daily Spur (reputation), Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (irascible), Word of the Day Challenge (wonderment), E.M.’s Random Word Prompt (milestone), Ragtag Daily Prompt (impetus), Your Daily Word Prompt (emanate), and My Vivid Blog (dusty).

Blogging Insights — Window Dressing

Fandango11 Comments

For her weekly Blogging Insights prompts, Dr. Tanya provides us with a quote about blogging or writing and asks us to express our opinion about said quote.

This week’s quote is from Gary Vaynerchuk, a Belarusian-American entrepreneur, author, speaker, and internet personality.

“What you do after you create your content is what truly counts.”

I agree with Tanya when she says that the relevance of this quote depends on the kind of blog you have and what your blogging goals are.

For me, personally, I love writing and I love publishing what I write on my blog. That said, I don’t actively or aggressively promote my blog, and that, I believe, is what Gary Vaynerchuk is referring to when he talks about what you do after you create your content.

My blog has become relatively popular among a small group of people and I’m extraordinarily thankful for that. But it happened organically, not out of any definitive efforts on my part to promote it. I’m not on Facebook or Twitter, so I don’t share my WordPress posts to either of those social media platforms. I don’t try to incorporate Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, by posting in such a way that would make Google like my posts. I’m not sure I would know how to do that even if I wanted to.

On the other hand, maybe what the quote is referring to is reading other bloggers’ posts, liking and commenting on them, and reading and responding to comments other bloggers make on your own posts. If that is what he meant, then yes, that is important.

But is that truly more important than the content you create? I don’t think so. You can promote your blog on other social media platforms all you want. You can use SEO tricks until the cows come home. You can read, like, and comment on other blog posts morning moon and night. But if your content sucks, by any measure, your blog won’t succeed.

My bottom line is that content is what truly counts. All the rest is window dressing.

Fandango’s Flash Fiction Challenge #162

Fandango14 Comments

Welcome to Fandango’s Flash Fiction Challenge. Each week I will be posting a photo I grab off the internet and challenging bloggers to write a flash fiction piece or a poem inspired by the photo. There are no style or word limits.

The photograph below is from Anita Creations at DeviantArt.com.

For the visually challenged writer, the photo is of a woman with a pensive expression on her face as she sits upon a large, mossy rock deep inside a forest.

If this week’s image inspires you and you wish to participate, please write your post, use the tag #FFFC, and link back to this post. I hope it will generate some great posts.

Please create a pingback to this post or manually add your link in the comments.