Blathr Wayne Lorentz

For reasons of anal-retentiveness, I keep a record of the number of Christmas cards we send and receive each year. This year felt particularly bleak, so I put the numbers into a spreadsheet to see if that was true. It was not.

While this was a record year for the number of Christmas cards we sent, and the fewest weʼve ever received, the number received isnʼt all that far off the yearly average. Considering how many of our regular Christmas card penpals have died in recent years, thatʼs not too bad.

However, the numbers also show that weʼre putting more effort into Christmas cards than ever. These days we have to send eight Christmas cards for every one card received. It used to be closer to four; and some years less than three. But maybe the mailman will deliver some stragglers this week, and things will balance out.

I just got a Christmas card in the mail from the Cathedral-Basilica of the Immaculate Conception. It was postmarked December 23. I guess Christmas just kind of snuck up on the Archdiocese of Denver!

Based on the junk mail that comes in, the lady who used to live in this apartment was some kind of interior designer. She must have been a pretty high-end one because sheʼs constantly getting solicitations from companies trying to get her business. Last week, UPS delivered three boxes of candy from a lighting company trying to score her business.

I donʼt know if the lights are any good, but the candy was excellent.

When I want to get things off my chest, I bang the words into an old TRS-80 I keep in the closet. I do it in story form.

I’ve found that writing stories is a good way to expend excess mental energy. I’ve written hundreds of stories on that machine. Every month or so, after they’re perfected, I pull out the batteries and the stories disappear forever.

It’s like in the old days when people would write their confessions in letters and throw them in the fireplace, or deliberately mail them to undeliverable addresses.

You used to be able to buy bundles of these letters from the Post Office’s sorting facility’s Dead Letter Office. I don’t think you can anymore. Now they’re probably auctioned off in palettes with other undeliverable to big companies that throw away the letters and sell the wayward packages on Amazon.

Two mistakes on the same iOS Mail screen.

If only Apple had a trillion or so dollars to put into quality control.