I went to a seminar and dinner last weekend that was put on by my company last weekend.  They hyped it all up as educational for planning retirement strategies, and that it was at a fancy restaurant and we were going to have a gourmet meal.  Well, the fancy restaurant stuck us in the basement which wasn’t fancy at all, and the “gourmet meal” was a piece of chicken cordon bleu that is exactly the same as the Barber brand frozen chicken cordon bleu that I buy for $2.00 at the grocery store.  I swear it was the exact same thing!  I was quite annoyed that they tried to pass that off as a special “gourmet meal.”   Not to say it didn’t taste good, it was terrific - the Barber chicken cordon bleu is one of my favorite “whip up fast and cheap and easy meals” at home.  But that is the point - I know how fast and cheap and easy it is and was annoyed that they tried to convince us that it was a big fancy deal.

I was out on the road and it was lunch time; I was hungry so I pulled into a McDonald’s restaurant.  I saw that they have a new country-fried chicken sandwich at a reasonable price, so I decided to order it.  I ordered it as a value meal, with fries and a drink.  I was surprised when I got it that the were no condiments on the sandwich at all, just a hunk of fried chicken and a slice of pickle on a bun. 

There were no packets of mayonnaise “out” for the customers to grab a packet, and there were no salt packets out, either.  No salt or pepper shakers on the tables, either.  That was a little bit annoying because I had to get back in line to ask for mayo and salt!  The sandwich was “ok” but nothing special.  I could see that they were trying to compete with the chik-filet chicken sandwich, and I have to admit that it seemed to be just about the same in taste, although I think the piece of chicken was smaller.

I have been helping a friend of mine look for a new job over the past couple of weeks.  It seems that for all of the “hype” that job search companies “put out” that for the area in which she lives, there really is no great job search engine.  She apparently lives in a “black hole” because whenever you type in the name of the nearest “town” where she lives, all of the results that come back are at least thirty miles away from where that town is.  That’s really a shame because the town is a faily large one, with a lot of businesses in it.  I would not have thought that those local businesses would not be participating in the large search engines that are available on the Internet, but the proof is in the pudding.  If she wants a job in that area she needs to KNOW what businesses are there and go to them directly, which is a pain in the neck to have to do!

Well, I didn’t have time this week to go to the Post Office about that postage due request until today.  I was running some errands and was driving past the Post Office so I swung into the office and went in.  Fortunately for me, the same clerk that waited on me when I brought the letters in to be weighed was the clerk working there today!  So I asked her to please explain how it could happen that they wanted twenty cents extra for the one letter.  She remembered me, and explained that the scales in her office are “light” and that some offices are “heavy” and one of the letters must have gone to a “light” office and one to a “heavy” office.  She took the postage due notice from me and told me not to worry about it.

I have to wonder just how efficient the post office is, for them to weigh the letters more than once!

Well I was quite annoyed today when I got home and discovered a note in my mailbox that I owed the Post office twenty cents for a letter.  Why was I annoyed?  Because I had taken that letter to the Post Office to have them weigh it and paid them with cash the exact amount of money for THEM to put postage on the envelope!

By the time I got home the post office was closed for today, so I will have to go to the Post Office some day next week to ask them why I got this request for more money.  What was so very strange was that I also mailed a 2nd letter at the same time, weighing the exact same amount, but they didn’t request extra money for THAT letter!  The two letters were going to two separate towns, twenty miles apart from each other, in the same state.  Is that weird or what?