(if you are here for the knitting, please feel free to skip the next few paragraphs)
It was one of those days. The kind which are both good and bad. Bad because I woke early with a migraine. Good because it responded properly to some meds. Bad in that I got on the road about three hours later than planned which meant I arrived at Croughton right at the beginning on lunch hour.
I can’t say enough good about the Post Office crew at Croughton. With the construction on the mailroom not yet complete, all the post boxes are in a separate trailer. I can get open my box and take package pickup slips to the main building without problem. What I can’t do is access the boxes of the others in my mail pick-up pool. For months now whomever of the Airmen or Sergeants is on the window cheerfully tramps over to the trailer, pull slips, digs out packages, and double checks to make sure I have everything. That kind of service rarely happened in Heidelberg, and certainly not at Landstuhl (both of which had severely limited hours for package pickup).
The library offers the same kind of service and small town feel of community. I can hardly imagine the PHV library letting me stay on a computer for a couple of hours in order to complete an on-line course that could only be accessed from a US IP or .mil computer. Or giving me access to a DSN phone so that I could call through the system to a state side 1-800 number to straighten out a billing problem.
Oh, the bad? I would up with duplicate airline reservations for later this month due to a web page freeze and lack of email confirmation of the reservation. The good? I actually reached a wonderful lady on the US Air France help desk. She finally tracked down the reservation, gave me all the information and explained the workings behind the fine print.
(Non refundable plane tickets. Read the fine print. If you cancel prior to the flight, you are out the cost of the ticket. Not the taxes and fees, just the ticket. It turned out to be cheaper to cancel than to to pay a change fee and rebook). Of course, I could also spend the next six months on a letter writing donnybrook in an attempt to convince them it is all their fault in an effort to recoop that last 10%.
I would rather spend the same time knitting.
Oragami is progressing. By the end of this evening, I completed the back to the arm holes. The patterning is obviously narrower than the front, but I don’t think it is going to bother me. No eyes in the back of my head and I doubt that anyone else is going to see both the front and back at the same time.
complete to armholes
The final episode of Captain’s Share by Nathan Lowell was just released and I am plugged in and ready to listen. Good story and some fantastic dialog.
