The grinch that stole Christmas. #1: Christmas gifts delayed?

I’m making twelve mantle clocks for Christmas this year. Each of my four sisters will receive one, my brother in-law, father in-law, mother in-law as well as my two oldest children. My two youngest sons are in the Navy and don’t have anywhere to keep a mantle clock. I’m also keeping one for the house. I’m not sure what I’ll do with the remaining two clocks.

Anyway, I ordered the clock inserts from Klockit.com last week and they were shipped on Monday. I’m in Iowa and Klockit is in Wisconsin, just a hop, skip and a jump away. ;) After getting home from work this evening I checked on the status of the order. The U.S. Postal Service web site provides the following information:

Label/Receipt Number: ### #### #### #### #### ##
Status: Shipment Accepted

Your shipment was accepted/picked up at 1:36 PM on December 12, 2007 in BLUE GRASS, IA 52726 .

So I’m thinking, “great, the clocks have arrived.” I look on the front porch and nothings there. I look out by the garage door, again nothing. I walk up and down the block thinking maybe it was delivered to the wrong house. Again, no sign of the package.

Yesterday the mail carrier had a registered letter for us. He handed me two things to sign, so I do without looking at them or thinking much about it. Now, I’m wondering why were there two things to sign? That’s kind of odd.

Tomorrow I’m heading to the post office to try to sort this out. I’m hoping that some little grinch didn’t five finger disount the package. If so I’m going to have to place a rush order for twelve more inserts. I sure hope the information means something other than they’ve gone missing. Anyone else ever have something like this happen? I’m not even sure if the post office insures packages like UPS or Fed-Ex.

Crossing my fingers. Hopefully I’ll have a good update to post tomorrow.

-- Owen Johnson - aka IowaWoodcrafter