Catching up…

Thursday was pretty run-of-the-mill.

Friday: On Wednesday, I volunteered to work at one of the downtown malls and do special cancelations for the Olympics. Translation: I volunteered to hand-stamp/hand-cancel mailpieces for collectors and souvenir hunters who wanted to get one/some/all of the 24 official 2002 Winter Games postmarks; today was the first day that they were offered… as the games started today.

I didn’t have much of an opinion about the games being in SLC… other than the fact that I knew that I wanted to be out of town for the first week of them; I’m leaving Sunday. I figured that I’d let the locals and visitors hash it out and find out how to get along and get around. Also, while it’s cool that the Games are being held here, they didn’t hold a lot of allure for me. This seemed to change Wednesday, after I was asked if I could replace someone at on the cancelations assignment…

When they originally asked for volunteers, I wasn’t interested in doing it. After I agreed to do it on Wednesday, I starting thinking about it… I came to the realization that it was a cool – and very rare – opportunity. It was made even more cool, on a personal level, because I did the first Olympic cancelation for our outlet.

I would not have believed how obsessive some people were about getting these postmarks if I had not seen it. We were kept busy today, not so much by the number of customers as by the number of items that they wanted postmarked. As I mentioned earlier, there are twenty-four (24) postmarks. There were people who wanted one of EACH of the postmarks. And there were some who wanted multiple sets of all of the postmarks. And some who wanted multiple cancelations on a single envelope or post card. The permutations were seemingly endless. And that’s still leaving out those who came in with stacks of postcards and/or envelopes, had them cancelled, left… and returned a short while later, ready to make a family trip out of it. But we took care of them all. Confession: I bought postcards so that I could have a complete set of the cancelations, too. BUT, I also got “first date of issue” and date stamps for the parental units.

All-in-all, it was a good experience. It was pleasant enough that I offered to cover for someone else after my vacation.

After work, I went to Borders and met Julia and m3lody. Julia introduced me to the “game” of “What can you make of this squiggle?” Basically, one person draws random lines on a sheet of paper and the other/another person has to draw something that incorporates those lines. It’s was not always “easy,” but it was fun.

I’m tapped, so I am going to call it a night… morning… SOMETHING!!! Aw, screw it, “it’s bedtime!” (That works!)

Peace.