it came! it came!

Yesterday was an exciting day for a few reasons. One of those reasons was the arrival of a letter I had sent to Nogeeshik from Berlin a few months ago (March 4th t be exact). Well, I guess it wasn't a letter in the conventional sense as it was a stick that I found on a street and wrote a message on. I superglued the postage stamps to secure them and even placed an extra 1 euro worth of postage in hopes that the postman, or Briefträger, would treat it with care. Despite being courteous and a bit enthused by my abnormal request, they couldn't accept the stick at the post office due to its irregular dimensions, so I addressed it, stamped it, and dropped it in the post box on our way out of town hoping it would find its way across the globe.

Upon returning to the states, other postcards and letters I sent arrived, but no stick. In the past I have mailed sugar cubes and winter gourds through the post and they all arrived safely, so I had told Nogeeshik to keep an eye out for something unique coming in the mail. She could not handle the suspense. Over the past few months she has continually asked me what it was that I sent from Berlin. "It's never going to come... just tell me what it was!" I nearly cracked the other week and told her, but I felt maybe the stick was still on its journey. Sure enough, yesterday the driftwood showed up on our doorstep further inspiring my respect of the postal service.


I was thinking for a future mailing project it may be fun to mail 5 letters all the same shape and weight, but put different amounts of postage on each and perhaps different envelope styles as well. One letter could be really fancy with an extra dollar worth of postage, one letter could be a conventional letter and one letter could be wrapped in newswrap and be a few cents short on the required postage (Perhaps try all sorts of different combinations of postage and fanciness.) Then mail all the letters from the same town, or neighboring towns and then see if they all arrive at the same time, or if some are quicker and others never arrive at all. Next time I am in a faraway town without much to do, I may give this a shot.