OK, that’s not how the saying goes but that is my life these days. All of those mailers I decided to do? I ended up with 624. While affixing address label number 618, I noticed the address said “Santa Monica Boulevard, Richmond, VA.”

You see where this is going. In case you don’t know, there is no Santa Monica Boulevard in Richmond. I know this personally. I should have been tipped off by the Hawaiian street names in Tennessee before that but I was too tired.

This is how it all started. My husband had gone out and bought me this lovely label/stamp printer at Office something-or-other so that my life would be easy. Inspired, I decided that instead of sending my intended 250 postcards to potential vendors coming to the trade show, I would go all crazy and do 600. I had this fabulous printer that printed like 100 labels a minute. That was a mere six minutes. I didn’t waste my time thinking about how long it would actually take to affix those labels to my postcards. That would have been too forward-thinking.

I took my Excel spreadsheet list of buyers and began to sort it. My husband gave me a speech about being careful. I maintain I was. Either way, after the debacle when I was going in to print up my labels yet again (to the tune of 8 cents a label), I noticed something about merged cells.

I was at Fedex Kinko’s when I called my husband. I was there because our laptop crashed on vacation and now I needed to pay to use someone else’s computer to get my work done.

K: What’s this thing about merged cells?
D: There are MERGED CELLS in that spreadsheet?
K: Um, I guess so.
D: Well, there is our problem.

Information that would have been useful the first time around, if we are going to get technical. I guess merged cells can mess up your sorting. Oops. That sucks. It took me hours and hours to take the labels off and reapply the correct ones. By the time I was done, Mr. Money did the breakdown and told me that if I had the printing company doing my mailing, I would have saved tons. The problem was I couldn’t get beyond that setup fee. It was SO much. It goes back to the same problem I keep having over and over again. My inability to determine internally what my time is worth. Because had I done the math, I would have realized that WITHOUT that problem, it still would have taken lots of time to put on those labels. Sure I was inspired to send more because I was doing them myself, but do I really have time for all this?

I put all those postcards in the mail except one. That one was a local business in my vacation area and I dropped it off personally. I’ll save that story of where all those postcards apparently go after they arrive at their intended destination. Let’s just say it was a little disheartening. I’m keeping my head up because by this time next week, I’ll be back from the trade show. Just keeping my chin up. It’s gonna be great.

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