Wednesday, 28 November 2001 | Auction

I won an auction on ebay in mid-October, and it wasn't until this week I received the item. I almost never bid on anything (this was number three), so the chances of me landing a uncommunicative seller were quite slim. Of course that's what happend; I had to write the seller three times before I heard from her at all (two weeks after the auction), and, a month after the auction, when I still hadn't received my lens, I tried to call the number she'd given ebay, which of course had been disconnected. The seller finally wrote back (after I wrote a mildly threatening e-mail, so mild that the threat probably wasn't even detected) and said she'd sent the lens the week before, and don't I know the US Postal Service is slow these days?

Days later, still no lens, and no slip of paper at my door. Then on Sunday night, while Martin was digging underneath couch cushions for the remote, he found a slip from the postal office, dated a week earlier, that said I have a package waiting. Oops. I still can't figure out how that happened, but now I feel ridiculous giving negative feedback, even if she does deserve it.

In other mail-related news, I received the December issue of The Sun yesterday. When I walked in from work, Martin said, "You're on the cover of the Sun" and tossed the magazine toward me. On the cover is a fuzzy, high-contrast black and white picture of a girl with a faint halo over her head, and, he's right—it does look a lot like me. Creepy.