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dj l's avatar
1dEdited

haha - when we play pool at our house almost every afternoon, when one of us makes a good shot, we'll either say "Well, that was lucky", or I have an old give-away from Best Buy, you hit the red button on top & it says "That was easy"

neither of us are the betting kinds. One son, when he was younger, would do call-ins, when you'd win something if you were the 100th or something, & he was surprisingly often the winner!! Once he won free Chipotles each month for a year. He won all kinds of other things... I don't know if he continues to do that. Another son does gamble a bit, which I don't care for - it's his money - & I don't know how much he's lost, but he has won enough $$ to purchase items not in his budget plus he's won things like a 4x4 which he didn't need so sold it to a friend. The other son I doubt very much if he does any sort...

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Melissa's avatar

Is it luck or just the odds in your favour? Way back in the 70’s, I won a 4-day trip to our nation’s capital. There were far more qualified students who applied, I did so on a whim and still have no idea why I was chosen. Was it luck? Who knows?

I have also won raffles and giveaways in my current town of residence. Is that luck or just odds? I think a lot of what looks like luck is really just the result of a lot of hard work. Even just being in the right place at the right time usually involves a lot of back research.

I will say FedEx is by far the best courier company I dealt with over the years. Never had issues with deliveries, whether domestic or international.

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SPW's avatar

Another one of your interesting stories about an interesting person who was in the right place at the right time. One could also call his success Fate. But I’ll have to admit, every time I read about Fed-Ex I think of Tom Hanks and “Wilson” in Castaway. That probably helped the company in its own way too.

While these companies serve their purposes I suppose, I’d still take the good old USPS. Before my big move overseas I priced Fed-Ex, UPS and the USPS for shipping all my crates of worldly goods and the Post office was, by far, the least expensive to use. I can’t say enough good things about the staff at my local post office who had to weigh, over a period of about two weeks, my 25 shipping crates most of which weighed 50 pounds. They all had to go from NC down to the overseas shipper in Miami. I got every one of them in good shape and had only three broken bowls but they were broken because they weren’t bubble wrapped well. The other 7 were fine. I wish I could remember how much I spent with the Post Office but I don’t have my son’s spread sheet handy. We usually took 5-6 crates at a time and I don’t remember spending much more than $350 at a time. Consider that and my having to use UPS for an off sized but very light piece of art(a brass spiderweb complete with spider and fly); you know, they ship anything anywhere? Getting that to Miami was almost $400. It was just a bit too large for the PO to handle.

All that to say, I’d use the Post Office in a heartbeat if I were still in the US. We don’t have mail service per se here. With as big an influence the US used to have here that surprised me the most. If I want to get something to the states from here I do have to use Fed-Ex or drive 4 hours to the big city, make an appointment at the Embassy just to use the diplomatic mail service. I may have to vote that way next time depending on what NC decides to do about overseas voters.

When I read about the discovery of that plot by the RCMP in Quebec City, it reminded me of when my husband and I spent a few days there before traveling on up north in the province. Beautiful city but the people definitely march to their own tune there. My very few words of French kept me polite and saved me from ordering horse meat for dinner. So there’s that.

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dj l's avatar

I try to use USPS whenever possible. One time in another state I had a lg mailbox. I opened it one day to find a normal sized styrofoam head that was decorated in what's called 'zentangling'. I LOL!!! In one spot was my name/address, in another spot was the USPS stick-on price label. I then found out they WILL mail everything. Since then I decorate styrofoam balls & send them in the mail for various occasions - ie: "Have a ball on your birthday" written w/in the zentangling. First time I took it to the post office to weigh it for postage the guy "had a ball", kept laughing, as it kept rolling around before he could actually get it priced. He said he could imagine his guys in the back tossing it around... by then everyone in the place was trying to find out what was funny. I now go in when prices go up to do this again, then print out a bunch of labels to keep at home.

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