Tennessee in the snow

Yesterday and today, snow has been accumulating here in Nashville. The schools are closed, some businesses are closed, and where I work (which was NOT closed, by God, even though we started at 2 AM when the roads were mostly untraveled and more dangerous), about a third of the employees called out.

There have been a lot of wrecks. I've seen several cars abandoned on the side of the road, and in one case, still partly in an interstate on-ramp.

I made it to work just fine. I made it back home just fine. The situation reminded me of a previous icy-road situation I was in back when I was a fairly new driver.

When I was eighteen or so, a brief but nasty ice-over hit the greater Knoxville area, where I lived at the time. My boyfriend (now husband) was leaving for his National Guard stuff. I went to the airport in Maryville to see him off, during which time the roads got a lot worse.

I was driving a beat-up '88 Dodge Aries with nearly bald tires.

My first path home was blocked by a 12-car pileup, so I had to go through the hilly subdivision instead.

I drove home, by myself, just fine, while the local yuppies in their massive SUVs and fancy Mercedes and BMWs slid and spun all over the place. I probably passed at least half a dozen wrecks. It was sad.

But I, in my Dodge POS with nearly bald tires (a vehicle which my mother would not allow me to take to college because she felt it too unsafe/unreliable to get from Knoxville to Murfreesboro), came out completely unscathed. (My mother, however, just about had a heart attack about me being out in that weather... this was a few years before I got my first cellphone, too.)

If, as a teenager, I was able to do in a junker with bad tires what people with decades more driving experience and much, much better vehicles than mine were apparently unable to do, I feel pretty good about my ability to handle the slick roads. But not too good--overconfidence, as the noted sage Luke Skywalker once said, is a weakness.

I'll be making my 2 AM trip again tomorrow morning. Bring it on, snowstorm. I'm not afraid of you--but I will slow down for you all the same. Way down.

Squee's Guide to Holiday Shipping

I created this guide in 2006 and I like to re-post it every year as a helpful reminder. This year I have updated it with a chart. Here you go:


Where I work, my primary job is address correction on shipped packages. I see a lot of stupid mistakes in both addressing and packaging, and here I offer some basic, common sense tips for making sure your packages get to where they are going in a timely manner.

  DOs:
-Put the full, correct address on the package. You'd be surprised how many people ship packages out with just a name and a zip code, or a first name only and no street number. A wrong zip code can (and often does) result in a package ending up not only in the wrong hub, but in the wrong state.

-Put the full, correct return address on the package. If your package is undeliverable, it has to go somewhere. An overgoods warehouse is probably not where you want it.

-Put the receiver's and shipper's current phone numbers (with area code) on the package. If there is a problem with the package or the address, a phone number on the package allows the carrier company employees to easily clear up the matter. (This is often helpful for new streets that are not in carrier companies' computers yet. Employees can call the receiver for directions.)

-Write legibly. G's can look like 6's. B's can look like 8's. Lowercase o's and a's can be hard to tell apart. Anything scribbled haphazardly can be almost impossible to read--thus impossible to deliver. Type a label or have a computer-generated label made by the shipping company.

-Inside the package, place a copy of the receiver's and shipper's addresses, their current phone numbers, and an inventory of the package contents. Sometimes labels are damaged or torn off so completely that no information at all can be determined without looking inside the package. Sometimes packages bust open and it's hard to tell if everything made it back in.

-Keep a record of your shipment. There should be a tracking number associated with your package; write it down so that you can check the movement of your package online or call the company if you have concerns.

-Use an appropriate size and weight box for your shipment. Placing a small item in a large box will probably result in a crushed box, and crushed boxes often have damaged labels. If the item you want to ship is irregular or you cannot get a proper-size box, fill the empty space with packing peanuts or another filler.

-If you recycle a box, make sure that any old shipping labels are removed or completely marked out.

-Secure shiftables and liquids. It's been my experience that those arrows denoting which side of the box should be facing up are pretty universally ignored.

-Insure high value items. Refer to your shipping company for specifics.

-If you are sending something to a person in an apartment complex, make sure that you include the correct apartment number or specify on the shipping label that it is to be delivered to the office.

-If you are sending something to a person at their work address, make sure that you include the business name and the suite number if applicable. "Bob Jones" somewhere in the mall isn't specific enough.

DON'Ts:
-Don't send packages to PO Boxes without checking to make sure that your chosen shipping company can deliver to them. Not all do.

-Don't assume that your package will be treated with the utmost care. Each facility handles thousands and thousands of packages per shift, and packages may be thrown, shoved, dropped, smashed under other boxes, or caught in conveyer belts. Package accordingly.

-Don't send cash through the mail or other shipping service.

-Don't send drugs through the mail or other shipping service. Especially with the wrong address. That's usually how we find them. You really should steer clear of the drugs completely, but if you get busted because you or your dealer shipped them to "Bobby" on Jones Street with no zip code, well, you kinda get what's coming to you.

-Don't send live animals through any service without thoroughly checking the specifications. Some animals (fish and insects most commonly) are allowed and others are not. Don't ship a puppy. Don't ship yourself. It's not a clever way to save money, its a stupid and cruel way to kill a living creature.

-Don't strap boxes together. Seriously. It's allowed by many companies, but such strapped boxes often fall apart and the straps can cut handlers and trip people. Just humor me here.

-Don't seal your box with scotch tape, duct tape, masking tape, Elmer's Glue, string, bubblegum, or voodoo spells. Using these will almost guarantee that your box will open before it reaches its destination, and you don't want that. Use packing tape.

-Don't assume that shipping company employees can read your mind. You may know exactly who "Aunt Jane" in New York City is, but we sure as hell don't. Once again: put the full, correct address on (and in) the package.