Before you panic in fear that you forgot Lynne's birthday, you haven't. Her birthday is in late December. Since Christmas and the birthday are close together, they tend to get muddled up and Lynne does not get the birthday attention she deserves. So, I've decided we will also celebrate her birthday on June 28th. Why not?

We were recently introduced to the artwork of Tim Cox. And, one painting in particular reminds us of a favorite song from Dave Stamey, "Come Ride With Me". It is entitled "As Good As It Gets".

I decided to buy a canvas transfer of this painting for Lynne for her June birthday. Luckily, I got the last one they had in stock. And, I arranged to have it shipped to our neighbor's address here in Sand Creek Park. The neighbor was then going to hold it for me until I could get it framed and then give it to Lynne later this year.

A week after I saw the payment transaction come through, the painting had still not been delivered. So, I contacted the artist--well, his wife Suzie, actually--and inquired about the shipment. She assured me that the package had been shipped and was delivered by UPS. The delivery notice said "Left at front door". Hmmm.

While we used to have success with FedEx delivering to our door, UPS does not. They leave packages in a drop box at the Wooden Shoe Ranch across the state line in Wyoming. Further, since we are snowed in no vehicle can get to our cabin. There is no way the package was left at our front door. And, the neighbors had not seen it either.

So, I panicked. I contacted Suzie and told her that there was no way it was delivered to our front door. That I would look into it from my side, but maybe she should start a claim with UPS on her side.

The next day, I heard from our neighbor. The UPS driver, probably Roy, saw that the package was way too big to put in the drop box. (It is a large transfer onto stretched canvas.) So, he delivered it to our neighbor's brother who lives in Laramie. The brother had called to tell them he had a large package for me, but addressed to them. Whew.

A couple of days later, my neighbor called me and told me he was coming home from a few days away and that he had the package for me. Well, I stupidly said out loud on the phone "just take it to your house". This was stupid for two reasons. One is that he called me to arrange for me to pick him up in the tracked vehicle and take him home since the road was closed at the "trap", so I could have talked to him about it then. Also, Lynne overheard me and immediately started drilling me with "what did you mean by 'just take it to your house'? What is he supposed to take to his house?", etc. I was busted.

So, I brought the painting home and gave it to her right away. An early, early birthday present.

Living in a small community has these advantages. If the UPS guy can't deliver to us, he often calls and arranges to meet us on the road. Or, in this case he took the pragmatic choice of leaving it with a relative.

The USPS is equally helpful. We knew we had some oversized packages to be delivered by the Post Office the other day. So, I called the postal delivery guy who had previously given us his phone number. I left him a message, "You won't be able to get those packages scheduled for delivery today into our mailbox, or even the big yellow barrel for overflow mail. So, give us a call when you leave Laramie on the Wooden Shoe delivery route, and we'll meet you at the mailboxes." Turns out, using the tracked vehicle to access our truck at Mr. H's and then driving to the mailboxes takes about the same amount of time as the drive from Laramie to the mailboxes. 

We got a call early in the afternoon. It was not from our regular mail carrier, but the guy who delivers on Mondays only. He told us he was on his way, so we rushed to the Ranger and drove toward town. Sure enough, when we arrived at the mailboxes, he was there and hand-delivered two large packages to us. This kept him from having to return them to the post office. And, it kept us from having to drive into town to retrieve them within a few days. 

Where else in the world do you get that kind of service from UPS and the USPS?