Certified Fail

It's no secret that I tweak a bit when I am expecting mail, packages, or tickets. (Shirts and pins? Fuggetaboutit...I'm a wreck.) And, most of the time, things work out exactly as they are supposed to. The rest of the time things happen like they did today. Since my "I got shut out of lottery" story is extremely similar to everyone else's, I will skip forward to getting my ticket mailed to me by a really cool, super-awesome person who saw fit to sell me my NYE for face.

So the ticket arrived in her mailbox. She even took a picture and emailed it to me. See? You're in! Sweet. Tracking numbers were given for certified mail, she dropped the ticket off at the Post Office, and the wait was on. While we are waiting, here's a little information about certified mail:

This is one of two forms the receiver must sign

"Certified Mail: Find out when your item was delivered or delivery was attempted. Requires the signature of the recipient." - USPS.com

After a few days I tracked the ticket and it said it was going to arrive today! (A Festivus Miracle!) The mail truck made it's way slowly up my street. I make eye contact with the mail carrier, as she drops off the mail. I wave and head out there. Wait...the truck keeps going. OK. I have been here before. The posters arrived 2 days later than the delivery confirmation predicted, too. This is the Holidays. What obviously happened is the ticket never made it out of the Post Office, right?

These mailboxes also do not have tickets in them.

Well, it was 3:30pm, so all I had to do was drive down to the Post Office and give them my address, and the tracking. I could sign for it there. Only, the Post Office didn't have it. On the off chance that my mail carrier just missed it and left it there, they looked again. No letter. No ticket. Keep in mind that there's a scan this morning that said "Arrived at Unit" 8:32am. So, somewhere in between getting there and getting to the truck it vanished. All of this was based on the logic of paying for the ticket to arrive via Certified Mail.

New plan: Come back at right before 5pm when they close and see if it maybe it was on the truck.

So, I drive back to the Post Office this evening at about 4:45pm and my carrier was back. They attempted to find the letter once again. This time there were a few more people that got involved. I was eerily calm, but visibly worried. A woman had just had it out another clerk because she wasn't getting her mail (I secretly wondered if she lived on my street). Wait calmly. It was here. Nothing to worry about. Only it wasn't there. The carrier came out and joined the conversation at that point. After a call to my house and being reassured that I wasn't crazy, she suggested maybe it ended up in another mailbox. All I can manage to ask during the whole thing was "So, what's my next step?".

Not actual size

With zero recourse, and the carrier's manifest showing the ticket signed for, I was out a ticket and.......Wait....wait, wait, wait...I stared right at the manifest in her hand. As they all chattered away, it hit me. I never signed for anything and there was a signature...and she knew it. So, right in front of me, the carrier got permission to go back out...basically she followed me back to my street and proceeded to check every mailbox on the road leading up to mine.

When she pulled up to the house, she said it was in the mailbox next door to mine. As I type this I am still not sure where it actually was, but all that matters now is that it's here. I guess what I am saying is that if Jonathan Frakes shows up at Madison Square Garden on NYE with a trombone I will be neither surprised nor upset.

See you in New York!