With first class postage going up next week (a whole penny), I’m spending this week frantically paying every bill I possibly can. It depends on how much money I have to pay bills with, of course, especially with my personal bills. But I pay a lot of those on line, so I don’t worry so much about stamps. With the company bills, I have to write checks and put them in the mail, and I’m doing it as fast as I can.

It seems I’m destined to be stuck with at least one full roll of a hundred 41c stamps when the letter rate goes up to 42c next Monday. That’s because I thought I was buying “forever stamps,” and they sent me 41c stamps instead. But they look exactly the same! Same color, same design, same price. If you order stamps on line, beware the sketchy marketing ploy. On the other hand, the one-cent stamps to make up the difference are pretty cheap. They only cost a penny.

The other thing slowing me down is that I forgot until today to order more company checks. I have enough to last the two weeks or so until the new ones get here (I think), but I won’t take a chance of missing a payroll, so I need to have at least 16 checks in reserve. It’s a kind of tug-of-war: use up the stamps, but don’t use up the checks. Anyway, that’s how I spent my Tuesday.

I was definitely feeling better today, and I could have worked out in the yard this afternoon. The reason I didn’t is because it didn’t rain in Pittsburgh. A nice evening in western Pennsylvania kept me from trimming weeds in California. The Giants’ game against the Pirates, you see, started at 4:00 pm my time, which is just about the right time for me to get out into the yard. I could still have gone out when the Giants fell behind 8-0 in the fifth inning, but by then I was doing something else. There’s another 4:00 game tomorrow, too, so the weeds will have to wait.