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My wedding poster, trailer, and epic cake

It’s been a few years since I last mentioned this stuff, so I’m gonna share it again for the benefit of new readers! Back when my wife and I were first engaged, we were both working in movie advertising. So naturally, after setting a date, the first thing we did was make a poster (above, click for bigger).

Then, we made a trailer:


‘Getting Married’ Trailer

(if you don’t have Flash, here are lo-res and hi-res QuickTime versions)

And being action-movie fans, we decided we needed an action-movie cake:

It was designed by me and created by Mike’s Amazing Cakes in Redmond, WA. Click the image for a closer look!

If you have further sinister curiosity about our wedding itself you can always look at some of our vaguely interesting pictures as well. But the main thing is the cake — I’ve seen it linked around the internet anonymously before, and I want to make sure it’s got an attribution attached to it.

By the way each tier was a different flavor

Postal Experiment Follow-Up

Some great comments and emailed feedback from my recent Postmark Experiment. Here are some of my favorites:

Before his retirement after 40+ years at the USPS, my father was a postmaster for several post offices in Puerto Rico (where they currently have only 1 APC on the whole island! – a travesty to be sure), so I was taught at a young age all of the official state abbreviations, got to climb into the very first long-life vehicle (the now-common mail trucks that replaced the Jeeps), and was required to use the APC to send just about anything to my dad. So, that fact that someone else not only uses and enjoys the machine, but also experiments with the machine makes me feel like I am not the only post office nerd in the world. (From Sara)

Maybe things have changed since I was a youngster, but in the good old days, I’ve sent letters with S&H Green Stamps, stamps from book clubs and so on. ( There may have been the odd stamp from the Columbia Record Club in the mix). IIRC, they all arrived just fine. (From Mister Zip)

And in the same vein:

There are some guys here in Chicago that make “art stamps” that are most interesting when sent through the postal service and canceled. Some with guns, drugs, boobs, odd things to run through the post office. And they’ve had some nasty nasty nasty dealings with “the man”. http://www.badpressbooks.com/mhdl.html (From smonkey)

Finally, a LiveJournal reader reminded me about my all-time favorite postal experiment, and one of my favorite things on the internet period:

Having long been genuine admirers of the United States Postal Service (USPS), which gives amazingly reliable service especially compared with many other countries, our team of investigators decided to test the delivery limits of this immense system. We knew that an item, say, a saucepan, normally would be in a package because of USPS concerns of entanglement in their automated machinery. But what if the item were not wrapped? How patient are postal employees? How honest? How sentimental? In short, how eccentric a behavior on the part of the sender would still result in successful mail delivery?

Well worth a read.

The Postmark Experiment

Every year, on April 15, I see long lines at the post office as people wait to send in their payment, and similarly at other times of year when corporate taxes and other deadline-specific filings come due. Now, most of these people are certifying or registering their mail, and thus require a visit to the retail counter. But last year I overheard the following exchange just as the post office was closing at 7PM:

CUSTOMER: I need to get this postmarked by today!

EXHAUSTED CLERK: No. We’re closed. You need to go to the main depot [8 miles away], they’re open till 11.

CUSTOMER: It’s already stamped! Can’t you just cancel the stamp for me? It’ll take two seconds!

EXHAUSTED CLERK: Sir, we’re closed. You need to go to the depot.

This was a person who didn’t need the added certainty of registered or certified mail; he just wanted to get his check out before the deadline. All he wanted was a postmark reading April 15.

While this exchange was occurring, I was staring directly at this:

This is the Automated Postal Center. It prints stamps. Stamps with dates on them.

My neighborhood post office has an APC in a 24-hour-accessible lobby. Before I got the Endicia system to print postage at home, I often went to the APC to mail packages in the middle of the night. Any stamp bought before midnight is printed with that day’s date.

One day I realized that all the packages I was mailing weren’t being processed until the following day, and thus their stamps were a full day old. This didn’t seem to be a problem — in fact, now, in the course of my business, I often print stamps on a Friday or Saturday that don’t get mailed until Monday, and I’ve never had any sort of problem.

And then came the day when I realized I hadn’t sent a rent check yet, and it was already the evening of the third — the last postmark day before my landlord charges a late fee. I was out running errands, so I stopped by the post office, printed a stamp from the APC, and took it home. The next morning (the fourth), I mailed the check — the idea being that as far as my landlord knew, it was mailed on time.

Let me repeat this for emphasis: Nobody knew that I hadn’t actually mailed the check on the day I was supposed to. I’ll also clarify that rarely had I ever seen APC stamps, especially on packages, be canceled — so, often, the only date on the envelope would be the date printed on the stamp.

So last April, as I watched the long lines of people wait to mail their taxes, I thought: How many days after April 15 could you still send a tax form with an April 15 stamp? In other words, could you print out an April-15 stamp, go home and finish your taxes, then actually mail the check a week later? Would that work? Or would there be an additional postmark added? Would the letter even arrive?

Let me take time out here for a sanity-check caveat. I am not suggesting that you mail your taxes late, or that this method is in any way reliable or a substitute for doing things correctly. Still, I was curious. So I did the following experiment:

On April 15 of this year, I went to my local APC at 10:30 PM, long after the actual post office had closed. My intent was to buy ten first-class stamps and mail them in succession, seeing how old the stamps would have to be before the letters would start being returned, as well as whether or not they would be canceled with an additional, dated postmark.

The APC has a few purchasing restrictions. One of them is that you can’t make a single purchase for less than a dollar. If you try to buy first-class stamps, it’ll default to a minimum purchase of a dollar rather than let you buy a 44¢ (or, at the time, 42¢) stamp. Anticipating this, I’d brought along a package that needed to be shipped, and bought that (two-dollar-something) stamp first. After that purchase, the APC asked if I’d like to charge something else to the same card, and I said yes. Because I did!

Another restriction is that you can only buy five stamps at a time for the same value. My intent was to buy ten, so I bought two batches of five:

Soon, I had ten first-class stamps, all dated April 15:

I figured that to really put these stamps to the test, I should send the letters to an address relatively far away — to make sure it went through a lot of depots, verification centers, biometric drug-sniffers, or whatever. I don’t know how this stuff works; I assumed the barcode encoded a lot of crucial information about where the letter came from, where it was going, and how long the stamp should be honored. So I arranged with friends a thousand miles away (in Seattle) to receive the letters, and as a control subject, sent one letter that night of April 15:

The next letter was sent the next day:

…And so on, at increasing intervals of time, through April 29, a full two weeks after the date of the stamp. I expected that letters sent in the first week or so would arrive, and then they’d start coming back.

I was wrong. They all made it.

Three to five days after each letter was sent from Los Angeles, it arrived in Seattle. I happened to be going to Portland, Oregon during the trial period, so I sent one letter from there; despite the “from a California ZIP code” embedded in the barcode, it made it to Seattle just fine.

Now, perhaps this isn’t so surprising. After all, a stamp is a stamp, and most letters and packages fly through the postal system without anybody second-guessing them. I was clearly wrong about there being a system of CIA-grade laser scanners checking every barcode on every letter for anything awry, but really, that was wishful thinking on my part. I began to tear up my 24 fanfic. Bauer would never follow that last remaining lead now! And the conspiracy threatened to go all the way to the Postmaster General.

The interesting part was that, as predicted, not all of the stamps arrived with cancellations. Of the ten sent to Seattle, only six arrived there canceled — meaning that four envelopes (40%) arrived indicating only the April 15 date and no other postmark.

I had my friend put a new address label on those four envelopes and drop ’em back in the mail — and they all made it back to me in Los Angeles just fine. Now we had letters being sent successfully over a month after the date on the stamp, to say nothing of these stamps having been used twice with no problems. Roughly the same ratio of this second set arrived with cancellations: only two out of the four, or 50%.

Then, in May, the postal rates went up. One-ounce first-class mail increased to 44¢, instead of the 42¢ I had paid. Like the “Forever” stamps, I wondered if the two remaining un-canceled stamps held their value. So two weeks ago, while in San Diego for Comic-Con, I re-mailed the two remaining un-canceled letters, now hoping for a third trip on each stamp. Did they arrive safely? Any guesses?

Of course they did, just a few days later. And again, only 50% (one out of the two — I know it’s hardly statistically significant, but still) arrived canceled. Both were sent in July (a week apart), over three months after the date on the stamp, a hundred miles away from the ZIP code where each stamp was purchased for 2¢ less than the current first-class rate. What is that bar code for, I wonder?

The moral of the story? Perhaps it’s that the Post Office is forgiving. Maybe it’s that those APC stamps last forever. I wouldn’t necessarily use them for time-sensitive stuff like taxes, because you’re definitely playing the odds against having the stamp canceled with an official, dated postmark. But in a pinch, I wouldn’t toss the idea out the window either.

I still have one stamp from April 15 that, as far as I know, is still good. Maybe I’ll keep it safe, and mail myself something every April 15 for years to come until its luck finally runs out and it’s canceled. Or if I don’t, then maybe I can imagine that this is the Lucky Stamp. A hero stamp. Immune. A three-time mail traveler, weathered with toil and still valid besides. How many stamps in history can claim that?

UPDATE: Follow-up!

Essay: One More Chance.

This is a re-post, with photos newly added, of an essay I wrote a few years ago. It was originally published in the AOPA ePilot newsletter, March 2007.

My earliest memories are of pointing to the sky, having detected the far-off drone of a piston engine. Dad had been a pilot since before I was born. He flew a pea-green Cessna 172 from Rialto Municipal in Southern California. I can remember with crystal clarity those lazy Saturday afternoons at the airport, helping him push back the big hangar doors and leaning my small weight against the airplane’s struts as he pulled it into the sun.

I read him checklists, learning words like “aileron,” “magnetos,” and “pitot” that no one else in my first-grade class knew. I drew airplanes and helicopters all over every piece of paper I could find, proudly telling Dad that I was going to grow up to be a “helicopter designer.” I went to the library, looked up the addresses of every aircraft manufacturer I could think of, and sent them packets of drawings. (Grumman was the only one that responded, with a very nice letter and some glossy 8-by-10-inch photos of fighters.)

But, as a teenager, I had “better” things to do than hang out at the airport. I turned down invitations to fly out for breakfast — that would require getting up too early on weekend mornings. Eventually, I graduated from high school and moved away for college, beginning to build my life in a new city. I saw Dad less and less frequently. He talked occasionally about flying out to visit me, but then he lost his medical and sold the plane. At 75 years of age, he was grounded.

Over the next few years his health deteriorated further. He lost weight, and his energy flagged. When I did see him, he often sat slumped in his chair in a defeated pose I’d never encountered before.

And then, one morning, I got the call that the ambulance had come in the middle of the night to take him away. I rushed to the hospital and met, for the first time, a thin, sad figure that I hardly recognized as my father — so different from the strong, robust figure of my childhood. I drove him home that day, driving as carefully as I could, and knew that he was weak when he never once bothered to comment on my driving!

That night I told my then-girlfriend (now my wife) about how much I regretted passing up the opportunity to fly more with Dad when I’d had the chance. I mentioned that in the back of my mind, I’d always thought that I’d become a pilot someday. I’d just never done anything about it.

A few weeks later, for Valentine’s Day, she surprised me with a $49 introductory flight at a local flight school. I grinned like a chimp as I climbed into the school’s Piper Cherokee. When the Lycoming engine barked to life, it was as if a spark had jumped a gap in my heart — the love, vigor, and excitement of my childhood came rushing back.

As the instructor led me through some simple maneuvers, I realized that flying had to be part of my life again. The instructor complimented me on how comfortable I seemed in the sky and how sure my movements were — I told him that I’d done this before.

Before I left the airport that day, I bought a logbook and had the instructor sign the first line. I was working an evening shift at the time, so I worked flying lessons into my morning schedule. Within three months, I had my private pilot certificate and was as happy as I’d ever been.

But by now, Dad’s condition had gotten worse. His energy was very low. I’d told Mom about the flying lessons, but I didn’t tell Dad — I wanted it to be a surprise.

Dad still liked to go to the airport now and then to watch the airplanes and perhaps chat with some of the pilots. Mom told me about a fly-in breakfast that was coming up and said she would make sure he’d be there. When the day came, I took to the air, flying the one-hour cross-country to my hometown. As I taxied from the runway to transient parking, I found Mom leading Dad across the ramp toward me.

The first words out of his mouth were, “Why didn’t you tell me?” I laughed and gave him a hug.

The next thing he said was a string of admonishments — “Always watch the weather. Don’t spend too much money. Always be careful taxiing. Take the time to do a proper preflight.” Once I heard his strict tone, I knew that the old Dad was back, if only for the day.

Mom coaxed him into the cockpit, and I gingerly steered the plane onto the same runway that was featured so heavily in my favorite childhood memories. With a roar the Cherokee pulled us into the air, and a trip around the pattern rushed by all too quickly. On final, I asked him if he wanted to go around again. Feeling the stress of the flight, he declined. I let the plane down gently, pulled off the runway, and taxied back to parking.

Mom and I helped him climb down the Cherokee’s wing, and Mom asked him about the flight. “Sure, David’s a good pilot,” he said. Coming from him, this was high praise.

In the months that followed, he weakened further. I took any opportunity I could to visit him, even as his speech and breathing became labored. We discussed where I’d flown recently, and he told me stories of notable trips he’d taken. He continued to warn me about the hazards of not watching the weather, a lesson I’ve taken to heart.

Dad passed away about four months after the fly-in. My first flight ever had been as his passenger, and his last flight had been as mine. I continued to revisit the little Southern California airports that we’d been to together.

At Apple Valley, an airport in the desert northeast of Los Angeles, a restaurant wall is decorated with handwritten messages from 60 years’ worth of pilots who’ve passed through. Names and dates fight for space on the long, painted brick expanse. I remembered this place. I wondered if I’d written anything there.

I spent 15 minutes searching the wall, trying to find my own name. Instead, I found Dad’s — dated five years before I was born.

The ink had faded over the decades, and the name was partially covered by newer additions. I borrowed a marker from the waitress and inked over his signature, smiling as I recognized his familiar scrawl. I colored in his name and date, and then added my own beneath it. Mine was a little bit smaller, a little bit newer, a little bit sloppier — but it was right next to Dad’s.