A post about postal service...

I had a very interesting conversation with a friend today. A conversation that made me wonder, am I crazy? We were talking about Netflix, which if you haven't heard about it, is basically movie-rental via mail. Very cool right? So we're discussing it because Ozayr and I are thinking about signing up for it. My friend says to me, it's so convenient, when you're done you just put it in the pre-addressed envelope and put it in your mailbox and then the postman will just take it away - done! The conversation continued somewhat like this:

Jen: so the postman will... what?
Shelly: well, when he picks up your mail, he'll take the movie too and...
Jen: *weird look*
Shelly: *weird look*
Jen: so your mail is picked up at your house?
Shelly: uh, yeah...
Jen: so my outgoing mail is picked up HERE... *confused look*
Shelly: yeah... doesn't this happen in... Canada??? *confused look*
Jen: No way!!
Shelly: so where do you post your mail?
Jen: you walk to the postbox!!
Shelly: weird!
Jen: weird!

The postal worker is at your house anyway, why not pick up your stamped letters or whatever and take them back for you? It does make perfect sense, which is why I began to doubt myself -- does this happen in Canada? and I never knew about it?

Well, I did what a girl always does when in doubt - I called my mom. She's never heard of mail being picked up at the house and she's been mailing all her bills forever and still does (no internet banking happening over there). Then I asked Ozayr, does the mailman pick up your mail in your mailbox and send it off for you? "Nooooo," he said, "that would be weird..."

I even went so far as to check the Canada Post website and that's when I remembered why this never would have happened to us when we lived in the suburbs anyway: because we didn't get door-to-door post delivery. We were unlucky enough to live in one of the areas with the postboxes on the corner, so you had to drive by or walk over and get the mail from there. That's why I would never remember to check the mail when we first moved to Minneapolis. Ozayr would come home and ask if there was any mail and I would have totally forgotten that there it was sitting in a little box right outside my door.

Anyhoo, this is a long post about just MAIL, but trust me, if you've ever received a letter from me, I walked that thing to the post box a good 10 or 15 minutes away or drove it to the post office. In fact there are letters upstairs right now just waiting for me to post them!! Well, NO MORE! Tomorrow I will leave my first letter IN MY MAILBOX and see if it gets picked up... :)