Everyone else is getting their first snow, and Las Vegas is getting its first rain in a long time. This wasn't a mere sprinkle, it was really coming down and the gutters were running strong.

We went to the post office twice today. The first time was at a satellite facility in a super market. There was a guy there with about 8 big packages in two shopping carts. He decided they were too bulky to stand in line with, so pushed them to the side and would get them when his turn came at the counter. Imagine the surprise of the folks behind him, thinking he was just going to buy stamps or something, and he wheels out that big piece of work.

We opted for the self-service machine to mail a small package, and there are a lot of screens to go through. I could hear the older (than me) woman behind me bitching to the guy behind her that we must be idiots to be taking so long, and how hard could it be. So finally she gets up there and starts muttering about 'this is harder than it looked' and I said 'yeah, you were making fun of us for being stupid and now how do you feel?' She was struggling to figure out the slot for her credit card so I showed her where to stick it.

We have a problem with our mail delivery - we stopped getting any mail at all last Friday. No mail Saturday, and no mail today. This is probably because I had decided my mail was not getting forwarded from Colorado so I sent in a change of address card last week. It is possible, just possible, that I filled it out backwards, so instead of changing the address to here in Las Vegas, I changed it back to Colorado. I honestly can't remember. Should have made a photo copy of that card before I mailed it, but I didn't.

So when there was no mail today, not even junk mail, and no Netflix, we jumped into the car and drove over to the post office. It was dark already, and raining hard so seemed especially adventurous. The line was halfway across the lobby and not moving at any speed. There were only three clerks out of a possible 7 helping people, and one was on overtime. There were people mailing huge numbers of parcels, probably Ebay sellers, so each one would be at the counter for what seemed like forever.

A woman was at the self-service machine weighing a small package, and then she started asking people 'where is the stamp machine?' I told her she just stepped away from the stamp machine.

She said 'Doesn't anyone care that my husband is in the hospital?' and I said 'no, they probably don't. I care, but that doesn't make the line any shorter.'

She showed no inclination to get back into the self-service line or the end of the long line waiting for the clerks, just stood there next to me, so I told her that we could mail her package for her so she could get back to the hospital across the street.

She was going to give me $7.50 to cover the postage on top of the $4 she already had on it, but I told her surely it wouldn't be that much - I didn't want to end up owing her money because it'd feel like I'd taken advantage of her - so I had her give me $2.50. She said she didn't know why the machine refused her package, maybe it was the address, so she wrote out a neater address label and I stuck it on there, and off she went after telling me it contained underwear her daughter from Washington state had forgotten at her house in the dryer, and it would probably be cheaper to just go buy new underwear, but too bad, she's mailing it. She had really scrawly writing and before she wrote out a new label, the return address said "From me to you." Then, when she wrote out the new one, she left off the name of the people it was going to, but miraculously, the new label split into two parts so I could use their name written on the box with the new label stuck below it.

I still couldn't read her name from the label, so when I got home used the Clark County Assessor website to use the address to find out their name so I can send her a Christmas card and tell her the package went out no problem, and I hope her husband is going to be okay. If it'd been me, I'd would have forgotten to ask the name of the good samaritan like she did, and would have regretted it later, dying to know if I'd given them enough to cover the postage. Some people might say it was overly snoopy of me to figure out her name using the Internet, but after holding her package for 45 minutes, I decided it was no secret where she lived, I just couldn't read her last name.

The lady behind me was from India, and a very nice lady, and of course she took in all the goings-on about the package I was going to mail. An old guy was grousing because all he wanted was stamps, and I told him the self-service station sells stamps, so after he had lurked around there for a bit and determined he could get Christmas stamps there, he came back and thanked the Indian woman for telling him that, so she and I had a good laugh because we realized he forgot it was me who told him.

So, 45 minutes later we finally get to the clerk, and she barely speaks English. Eventually she seemed to comprehend what we were telling her and disappeared into the back for about 5 minutes that felt more like 15 or 20 minutes, came back and showed us an old forwarding order that expired in September, and according to her we should be getting our mail. But we aren't getting our mail, and we have prescriptions coming that are going to end up God knows where, probably returned to sender.

Mr. Troutbend said if we don't get any mail tomorrow he is going back to try to talk to someone else.

About the postage on that package: it was $3.10 in addition to what she had on there, so Mr. Troutbend had to shell out some, but he didn't say a word, bless his heart. I know he thought it was silly of me to get involved helping a stranger, but that man knows how to pick his battles.

Caesar's Palace Front Lobby, Las Vegas.