What's The Deal With The Red Stick On The Box Again?

The problem with never using stamps is that you lose your stamps  

Fortunately, Jeremy has a connection where he buys stamps...the post office.  And all was well in the world...

So not the point.  

The point, I guess, is that mail isn't what it used to be.  It's an issue that's been addressed across multiple media outlets, social and otherwise, about how people don't pay all that much attention to the mail anymore.  I sure don't.  Quite seriously, I go out to my mailbox and empty its contents roughly once per week or so, mostly because there's never anything worthwhile in it.  There's the standard town "newspaper" and advertising circulars, solicitations from various cell phone/cable TV/sattelite radio/insurance providers which go straight into the rubbish, the occasional political mailing, a year's subscription to Sports Illustrated that I'm still not 100% sure how I ended up with, and every once in a great while...bills. 

It's a sign of the times that there are precisely two bills that I get in paper form, and of those, only one that I pay in paper form.  One doesn't have electronic billing, but I can pay directly from my bank's website, and the other charges a $3 "convenience fee" for electronic payment, so they get a check mailed to them.  That second bill is my water bill, which arrives like clockwork every 90 days and gets paid a little less like clockwork when I darn well choose because even if I forget about it, they'll just tack an additional 60 cents on to my next bill for a late payment and I care less than 60 cents worth about the whole thing.  Also, it's the only time ever that I have to drag out my check book and envelopes and stamps.  It's a hassle.

It's less of a hassle than it could be because I keep all of these gubbins in one place.  I reach into a single shelf on my desk and pull out my check book, an attached pen, and stamps squeezed in between.  Directly above that is a box of envelopes which I had to buy not long ago for the first time in 8 1/2 years.  I checked the box.  

Not long ago, I embarked on this process because the friggin water people wanted to get paid again, and they still haven't accepted the inevitability of free online bill payment (Thanks, Town Water Department).  I grabbed all of my stuff, and to my dismay, the stamps were not attached to the check book (which incidentally also hasn't seen an update in at least 8 1/2 years, since the checks still don't have my current address on them).  I had no idea where else they could have been since the only time I ever use them is every three months when using the same three items to pay the same one stupid bill.  I looked all over the desk for the stamps of which I'm almost entirely certain I still had several left.  No avail.  To this day, I have no idea where those stamps are.

My water bill got sent out two days later when I finally went to the post office to buy new stamps.  The rest of them went right to the shelf on top of my check book.  See you in 90 days!