Today is Thanksgiving in America. I am so uninformed about American culture that I didn't realize that Thanksgiving is on a Thursday every year, I guess I just assumed that it was a Sunday like most holidays that change dates. I also hadn't heard of 'Black Friday', the busiest shopping day of the US calendar. I googled it and got very confused with lots of information about a stock market catastrophe on 24 September 1869 before I added 'shopping' to my search criteria and discovered it is the public holiday after Thanksgiving and traditionally the first day of Xmas shopping hence all the flyers everywhere advertising sales.
Which leads me nicely on to the Krypton Factor challenge that has been getting my Xmas shopping posted out to the UK this year. I was all smug and organized and ready to send everything out at the beginning of the second week of November which I thought would be plenty of time for surface mail. When it got close I decided to actually look up the last recommended post date and found that it was 23 October. Doh!
So I sulked for a week and then sat down to work out how to send everything cheapest by air. The optimum package has dimensions that add up to no more than 90cm with the longest side being less than 60cm and weighs up to 1kg (I sound like Jacob now). I have spent ages arranging and rearranging stuff to get the right things in the right boxes and have just packed up parcel #2, it weighs 997g, and I had to leave off the ribbon and be very, very careful with parcel tape and gift tags to get it to that. I really hope that my scales are accurate and I don't get turned away by the nice ladies in the post office tomorrow. I might break down if I have to do it again, my only hope will be retail therapy so at least I'll have picked the right day.
Thank you for your informative blog... I now know why Amazon have been sending me continuous emails about Black Friday Deals. Your packaging sounds like the hand luggage calculations we were doing when mark was going to Australia !!
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