Fed ... Ex ...

 I practiced last night, long tones on the shakuhachi then played Amida's Shrine a bit, that one's got some swing to it... then up and down the scale on the glass flute and some Danny Boy. 

I'd been up for hours and hours packing stuff; packing all the small things I could to bang out a lot of orders and in case I didn't have much time to pack more today. 

This was true, as I woke up at 4 in the afternoon. I packed some more small things and took off. The trouble is, at the post office, I only caught one package that was actually for FedEx because it was too long to fit in the chute. And even then  I was halfway to the counter with it in my hand. I don't know if I've put in another package or two that are FedEx ones, and will see if they'll let me check somehow, tomorrow at the P.O. 

Next was FedEx for that one lonely package, and I asked them if they had some stickers or tape or something I could have to put on my packages to make sure I can tell them from the post office ones. They could not. 

I picked up various boxes and bubble wrap and stuff on my way back, put things away, and got out some yellow sign vinyl I've had around for a few years, found some things to use for measuring off rectangles of about the size of a Priority Mail or FedEx sticker, marked and cut and lettered in blue and red ink, and now have 115 little FedEx stickers that I can stick on next to the shipping label. They're not necessary for the big boxes, since those are almost always FedEx and a big box that's postal service because it's going overseas, will have one of those pockets installed, holding the required 4 copies of the Customs form. 

But the intermediately-sized ones, those are the problem. First Class mail isn't really a thing any more, it's now all Ground Saver or something like that, and what's worse, the packages have a G on them like FedEx does on FedEx Ground packages. And the Ground Saver service is a huge overlap with FedEx and generally cheaper so I've been using it a lot. 

It's a good thing I can be very systematic about things, because it took being very systematic to cut out and letter 115 of the little things. First writing "Fed" in blue on all of them then "Ex" following in red. 

I used to use Ebay logo tape to designate the FedEx packages and might go to that when these stickers I've made run out. Easy to apply and even smells nice.