Box up, now; a semblance of OCD; and another ning-a-ding-ning…

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I walked down to the post office this morning to mail Jeanie-baby’s final taxes to her daughter, Phyllis, in Boca Raton. Two things to note; call them post officecapades if you want to:

  1. The first thing I noticed is this sign hanging on the door through which you enter the post office:


    Box Up
    at 11:00


    This entrance takes you into the lobby, which pretty much just contains hundreds of post office boxes, and two tables on which to fill out and stamp envelopes, forms, and labels. This same sign is posted up above just about every section of post office boxes.

    I’m quite sure this means something to the people who work there. And it seems sort of important, if its frequency is any indicator. This is what’s known in “the biz” (the technical communications biz, that is) as an AUDIENCE ANALYSIS FAIL.

  2. I pass through the lobby and its ubiquitous signage and into the service desk area. I have in my possession two 8.5×11 manila envelopes—one stuffed with income tax forms and the other stuffed with forms from businesses used to fill out the income tax forms. I need a bigger envelope into which to consolidate them.

    Along the wall, there is a rack full of said items—different envelopes of varying sizes and thicknesses—and I pull out one that is all white, except for a little square of blue on the right edge that “bends around” the envelope, if you will, onto the back. I try to put my two manila envelopes into them and they won’t fit.

    As I put it back, intending to try the next biggest one next, the clerk at the counter says, very politely, to me, “Sir, would you do me a favor and turn that envelope (the one I was putting back) around?”

    “This way?” I asked, turning it.

    “No, one more turn.”

    “Ah, this way,” I said noting that it now lined up with all the others with the little blue square facing out and same side up.

    “O-kay,” I thought. The customers don’t know what you’re talking about in the lobby with those signs, but we’ve got all the envelopes lined up.

My workday was uneventful today; that is to say, I had no meetings, and that’s a good thing.

I spent the majority of my evening creating yet another Ning. That’s four Nings I’m in now, three of which I created.

At the end of our last Study Circle meeting on Monday, we had to list a couple of things that we wanted to do in the immediate future upon completing the program. One of the things I wrote down was to look at creating a social networking place for us to replace what’s currently being used, which is a listserv.

Listservs are so 20th-century, and what I think of as “flat,” which is a polite way of saying one-dimensional and mostly-uninteresting.

My four Nings:

  1. Salon Entelechy (creator)
  2. NCSU Study Circles (creator)
  3. UNC System Communicators (creator)
  4. NCSU Web Developers (member)

I got so wrapped up in creating it that I forgot all about getting to the grocery store to get whipped cream, which I promised to bring in to work tomorrow for our ice cream social that we’re having from 1:00-2:00. I’ll have to make a run in the morning.

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