sTaMpS

The price of stamps went up today. Just a couple of cents, but still … they went up. Since the Postal Service provided plenty of warning, I bought a lot of Forever Stamps. A lot. I’m old fashioned (and old), and so I send cards and letters. Sure, I use email, but I like using ink and paper. I buy cards at Dollar General, which means they’re cheap, which means I can send a lot of them. And I buy stamps, a lot of them.

If only I had paid close attention when I drained my PayPal account on my stamp purchase the previous week. I bought Star Wars droid stamps, flowers, Western Wear, Santa Claus, dogs, musicians, more Star Wars droid stamps, battleships, etc, etc., and barns. I put a Dutch Knuckle barn in my most recent Piper Blackwell book, The Dead of Autumn, and I’d read up on barns. So I wanted the roll of barn stamps. One hundred of them! After I paid for them and viewed my receipt, I realized that the roll of one hundred cost $40. Forty cents a stamp, not the fifty-eight cents of the other Forever Stamps.

Turns out I bought Forever Postcard Stamps.

Arrrrgh.

So to fix my problem, I went to Amazon and discovered they sell boxes of postcards. I found 100 dog postcards (artist renderings, very nifty, and they look all different) for a whopping $15.

Score!

Now when I send out a Thank You note, it will be a dog postcard. When I send a “how’s things with you” missive, it will be a dog postcard. I’ll use the other Forever Stamps on birthday and Christmas and whatnot cards. But my friends will be getting a lot of postcards for a while.

I hope there is a Dutch Knuckle stamp in the mix.