Short answer is, if Mojo were a heart surgeon who operated out of her house (don't ask why, you troublemaker, just go along with it) and she was expecting a LIVE BEATING HEART to arrive via an overnight delivery service, she might as well give it up and go into the tombstone business instead. Because it just AIN'T gonna happen.

I should have KNOWN I was in trouble when I was filling out my order form to have my über-cool wireless broadband card delivered to my house. One of the CHARMS of living on a tiny road way out in the sticks with only two other houses on it is, for many, many years my road wasn't even showing up in any of the databases. When I went to MapQuest, for example, I had to plug in the main road going through town, because MY road just flat-out didn't exist until about a year or two ago.

It doesn't bother me that much--I figure it cuts down on the stalkers, and the bears will get the rest--and most of the regular delivery people, like "K", the very nice UPS lady, KNOW these little geographic vagaries and can deliver things regardless of how they are addressed. But ONCE IN A WHILE you get some company, like Verizon, who--in addition to claiming they don't recognize our phone number as a Verizon number even though they've been freakin' BILLING US for the past ten years or so--will likewise claim that our address must be a bogus address, since it doesn't match anything in their dinosaur delivery database. Which for all I know is the VERY GLITCH that keeps us from getting DSL. But I digress.

So anyway. I try to order this expensive tiny thing. Verizon keeps claiming I am entering an invalid address. So I start thinking, how did I get my old new phone delivered? And then I remembered, I had it delivered to the library. So I put in the library's address instead of my own.

Allow me to point out that I've never had this problem with UPS. You could address a UPS package with just Mojo's name and the town on it, and "K" will first drive by the library to see if my car's there and if it's not, she'll check my house. And if I'm not there and she's not in a hurry she will waste a good five minutes playing stick with the dog. (Not that she's a time-waster, nosirree, just that it takes her that long to get back in the truck because Rosie keeps bringing her the stick to throw again and "K" feels obligated to throw it. Because she's THAT sort of NICE PERSON and not a cruel dog-beater like Mojo. But once again I digress.)

So now I'm all excited expecting this Important and Expensive Package at the lieberry. So I get in Tuesday around noonish, start bopping about doing lieberry stuff, and it occurs to me: I should check the online tracking so I can get the immense satisfaction of seeing it's on the truck and out for delivery. Because Mojo gets some sort of odd jolly out of that, to be perfectly honest.

Except this time there is no jolly. Instead the tracking website tells me it's already been delivered. And the person who signed for it is a "KF". And poor Mojo is all, like, "KF"? "KF"? Who in tarnation is "KF"? I DON'T KNOW A KF!!! MY IMPORTANT AND EXPENSIVE PACKAGE HAS BEEN LOST!!! AUUUGH!

So then I breathe and think quiet thoughts about calm blue ocean, calm blue ocean, and then I think to myself, maybe they left it with my friends across the street at the general store. Because that is the sort of small-town Mayberry we got going here. Nope. Of COURSE they're not going to sign for an Important and Expensive Package. My friends at the store now think I'm even weirder than they previously thought.

Okay, I think, maybe it was left with "S" at the post office. I wouldn't think a delivery service would have much to do with the post office, but by now I am grasping at straws. And sure enough, "S" announces I do indeed have a Certified package at the window. But it's not my phone stuff. It's just CRAP FOR THE LIBRARY. I nearly scream at "S", but instead I take my library package and head back to the lieberry to think things out.

So I go back online on the off chance that I have somehow managed to MISREAD my package delivery. Nope. Right there in black 'n' white. Signed for by a KF. So on the off chance, I look up a KF in the phone book. Yep, wouldn't you know it, there IS someone in town by that name, and they live about as FAR AWAY FROM ME AND THE LIBRARY as one can possibly get and still be in town. So I'm all like, huh? What the heck? But Mojo is desperate, so she calls this person out of the blue and explains everything to her.

Turns out I DO know her after all--she works in the TOWN HALL. Which is where the delivery person delivered it when the library was closed. Since the liberry is, like, part of the soulless government and all. So I went running back across the street, this time to the Town Hall. Luckily my next-door neighbor was there, and he let me in so I could get my package.

Sheesh! Well, at least when I got it home, I plugged it in and it works flawlessly. I don't know HOW many times faster it is than dialup, but my computer is SCREAMING FAST. I could almost cry.

Mojo