I sent in my rent cheque today. It so happens that I’m out of regular (48 cent) stamps, but I have a great many smaller stamps (10 cent, 4 cent, and 1 cent). A long time ago I decided to buy those instead of buying additional stamps for the US and for iinternational mail; why I do not know.
Anyhow, I decided to use up a bunch of my big sheet of 1 cent stamps, so on a tiny envelope, I crammed
-four 10-cent stamps;
-one 4-cent stamp; and
-four 1-cent stamps.
I would have done four 10-cent and eight 1-cent if they had fit. Maybe next time I’ll put the stamps on before the address, or just use a bigger envelope.
I like stamps, anyway. I don’t really collect them, but I think letters and packages look dressier with lots of stamps instead of just one or (worse) a label.
I found a bunch of older (US) 34¢, 33¢ and 29¢ stamps in my files not too long ago. I counted what I had, and then headed off to the local post office to buy a few hundred 4¢, 3¢ and 1¢ stamps.
I’ve been going through the older stamps first — two 4¢ and one 29¢ for bills — but occasionally I’ll break out the new stamps from time to time. I send my rent check to my landlord using military-related stamps (he used to be in the Army), and I often use the relevant 34¢ state postcard stamp, with a 3¢ stamp, for personal letters to that state.
I’ve been sending out my resume using old Elvis, Snoopy, Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck stamps on the envelope.
New US stamps are gorgeous, but made in such great quanitities that they’re really not that collectible from an investment standpoint. I have no qualms about using fairly recent, unusual commemoratives, like the state postcard or prairie wildlife stamps.
I buy shorter-than-normal laces for my shoes because I can’t stand to have the ends “tapping” with each step. I’m told this is unusual. If I have regular-length laces, I’ll usually tuck them into my shoes to silence them until they can be replaced, and I know that’s not normal.
I disinfect my toothbrush before and after each use, which I’m told is bording on Howard Hughes-ishness. (Isopropyl alcohol after use, and hydrogen pyroxide before use.) Personally, I don’t think that it’s inappropriate treatment for something something that’s four-and-a-half feet away from the toilet bowl when it’s not in my mouth. YMMV.
I have never used a porta-jon. One of those bathrooms they put up at concerts and festivals and the like. I’ll leave the site and find a retaurant and use the facilities there.
I also always look around in not-my-bathroom that there are no peepholes or other ways of looking in before I start.
I never touch the flusher with my hands. I use my foot.
And I don’t sit on the seat in not-my-bathroom, I hover. Not even in my friends houses do I sit. Not even in my sister’s house.
I don’t disinfect mine, but I scrub the dickens out of it (if there is any sign of toothpaste on it it grosses me out. Seeing other people’s pasty toothbrushes makes me literally queasy, as does watching someone brush their teeth.) and then dry it off before putting it away in the medicine cabinet, safe from splashing and so on.
My toothbrush goes into a travel tube kinda holder. No paste build-up allowed, and NEVER to be touched by other hands than mine.
True story that shows how weird I am about toothbrushes:
After my last cancer surgery, I am in ICU with a tube down my nose to keep anything from hitting my recently bisected stomach. They are giving me those nasty lemon swab thingies to “freshen” my mouth. I demand my toothbrush and some water. I am not allowed to drink anything only to rinse and suction out water. So, after several hours of arguing I get my toothbrush and toothpaste handed to me, along with the suction and a small cup of water. Then, the nurse takes my toothbrush out of the travel case. SHE TOUCHED IT!! Ick, ick, ick. So I open the side zip pocket on the bag and pull out a new toothbrush…
The nurse was wearing gloves. Fresh, clean gloves. Matters not, she touched my toothbrush. There were three spares in the bag.
I am quite skilled at separting food when I eat it.
I never bite an Oreo, I always take it apart and eat the icing then cookies one at a time. But I do this for other things like Pop Tarts, candy bars, and corn dogs. I get the weirdest look when I am able to bite off the chocolate around a 3 muskateer until all that is left is nugent, only then can I eat the nugent.
I can not eat fruity looking m&m’s. I can only eat the original colors and then I have to seperate them by color and eat them one color at a time. The green always go first
I count stairs.
Whenever I walk up or down a set of stairs, I count them inside my head.
In my parents’ house, there are two sets of 4 steps, and one of 8. In university, the set of stairs closest to my locker had 14 steps for each flight.
I have actually had to tell myself to stop counting because it drives me nuts.
I am a nurse. I am used to disgusting things. One day I counted all the weird body fluids or products I had handled or cleaned up in one day and the total was 8. And no, one was not semen, so can you even name 8 products?
But I hate having anything to do with mouth care. I dont usually have to brush a patient’s teeth but when I do I gag. I always have to wear a mask and protective eye wear when I do this. One day on my way to lunch (so I had my water bottle and lunch with me, in hand) one of my residents fished out her dentures and dropped it in my lunch bag. There were bits of lunch attatched to the dentures.
GAH!
Not only did I not eat my sealed in tupperware lunch, I ridded myself of the tupperware. I wasn’t going to, but after three passes through the dishwasher (with bleach!) I still couldnt look at those pieces, so I put them in a donation bag. I hope the next owner via Salvation Army doesnt have a denture phobia.
