The Case of the Lopsided Post Card

A funny thing happened today that made my Monday morning.

 

On the weekend we created and printed out Christmas Cards to send to the people we met up with on our Around the World Tour. I had some L-size photo paper, so printed the cards in high-quality mode. Of course it uses a lot of ink, but I think it was worth it. I flipped them over, wrote a message, and the addresses on the back and put them in my bag to post today.

 

This morning I zipped over to the post office to mail them. The person at the window looked at what I gave him, then suddenly disappeared for a minute or two, and came back with a ruler. He carefully measured the size of the cards. Twice. Then he looked up at me and told me that they couldn't be sent as postcards (or anything else, as is, for that matter) because they were too small!

 

There is apparently a fixed size for postcards, and this is what they say on the Japan Post website about that:

Long side:14〜23.5cm

Short side: 9〜12cm

Long side should be 1.4 times longer than short side.

 

The L-size photo papers are 9cm X 13cm!

 

I blinked a few times. And then a grin spread across my face. I went back to the office laughing.

 

But laughing doesn't get the Christmas cards shipped, so, what to do, right?

 

I guess I could reprint everything on actual printer-ready postcards and that would be that. But I would then have used twice as much ink. I would also have to buy the inkjet printer postcards which have a premium price attached to them.

 

"Is there a better option," I asked myself?

 

Well, I could put them all in individual envelopes and send them as letters. If I did that, it would be a simple matter of buying a pack of envelopes (100 yen shop), writing the addresses over again and visiting the post office once more. That's no trouble. But, doing that would make the postcards become letters which are sent at a different rate: JPY 110 for letters as opposed to JPY 70 for postcards.

 

Hmmm….

 

What to do… what to do…?

 

"Are there any other options", I asked myself again? There has to be something other than just two options!

 

And then it dawned on me: "Eureka!"

 

I'll take them all home, and cut 1cm strips of printer paper, and tape those strips to the postcards, making them 9X14cm; the perfect size. And then I will take them back to the post office and send them out to our friends. Sometimes I amaze myself with my ingenuity.

 

That satisfies my sense of … whatever my satisfied sense may be, and makes me laugh at the same time.

 

And I like to laugh. Or grin a cheesy grin (or a bacony grin?) at the very least.

No sense getting pissed off over stuff like this. Life is too much fun to NOT see everything as another adventure!

 

It's all in the perspective; nothing is fixed in stone. Not even stone!

If you change the way you see things, the Universe steps in and the world changes to meet your perspective.

It really works. But it all has to start from within.

 

I love you!

Cam