duck-shaped pain

It's a strange post office, which may be one of the reasons it is closing. It's located in the mall, across from Orange Julius and a make-your-own-wacky-fake-magazine-cover-starring-YOU kiosk. It doesn't have an official US Postal Service look and feel, since the inside is designed to have an quaint, Kountry Kute appearance, with an aged wood counter, rustic signs for obsolete products, and farm implements attached to the walls, where farm implements shouldn't be. It also acts as an art gallery, specializing in the most tragic local art. There's a rotating selection of glistening pink roses painted on black velvet, ballpoint-pen drawings of horse heads and majestic eagles, and those scary handmade dolls that are supposed to look like they're sulking in the corner of your room. [1]

These things have nothing to do with why this is my favorite post office, although they do provide a diversion while I'm waiting in line. There are many reasons why I like going to this one. The woman who works there (the only employee) is fast, efficient, and does not care about what I try to send via Media Mail. No inquisitions, no harassment, nothing like what I (and others) have experienced at other post offices. She'll also tell me if it would be cheaper to ship something using a different class of mail, which occasionally happens. None of the other postal employees around here will volunteer such information -- you have to pry it out of them. And it's the only post office on my way to work. I will miss it greatly.

Yesterday sucked. I don't even know what to say about it, other than I came out of it with a serious sleep deficit, a very sore leg, and a deep-down feeling of doom. I had a quiz which I don't think I did well on (thus, the doom), and I had to go on a hike with 40 other geology students, some of whom, at one point, ceased to learn about the rocks and started to just throw them at other students. During the death march back to the vans, I stepped on a rock wrong and lost my balance. I didn't fall, but I had to land very hard on my right leg to do so. Which is the one I broke two years ago, the one that is still not completely healed. It doesn't bother me, unless I do something dumb to mess with it. And now it hurts. The best thing that I can say about today is that it was not yesterday.

[1] I see these things around here all the time -- what is their appeal? Why is displaying a small, stuffed replica of a child being punished in your living room popular?

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