This summer I am going to Peru for a two week mission trip.
But i need to raise the funds to go. So i started my support letters in February and finished sometime in mid March. I realize it took me way to long to write them. Not bad timing if I had sent them out right after I finished writing them. Then i had to create a recipient list. That took 5 minutes, but I didn’t write that until later. And now May 9 (last night) I finalized the list with addresses and all. So I was ready to package and mail. But Lucky me, my computer and printer begin to mess with me.
At my new job, i am learning all these cool tricks with Word and excel and other programs. i thought I would try one of them out with my recipient list and envelopes. My plan was to mail merge my address list with a template of an envelope in word. It worked all fine for the standard envelopes. I hit print and bang…. My computer starts freaking out, skipping on downloaded music and freezing up. then my printer starts jerking and stopping. i can’t believe it. When I tried to close a few programs on my computer, it didn’t respond. So my printer is working on printing out the envelope addresses. It stops 2/3 into the list. So i try to print where it left off but it won’t let me do that. So i create a new file of what i need. YAY. it finally works all the way through, after an hour of fiddling. Then i try to create another template of the smaller envelopes. That wasn’t as easy. It didn’t work quite right. But i fiddled some more and got it to work. but it would only print one at a time. Then i would have to hit print like 30 times for it to print the number of copies i wanted. AWWWWW. I am now about 3 hours into the task. I just want it to print and be done. then my printer decides it doesn’t recognize my computer, or maybe it was vice versa. My computer didn’t want to recognize that the printer was plugged in. arggggggggg. After some more fiddling and fiddling, i got it to work. It slowly printed all the envelopes i needed, but not with out jerking and uncertanity if it would continue. then I just had to white out a date on 50 letters and rewrite the correct date of when 1/2 payment is due. I did that and signed all the letters. then i addressed the letters to the person and packaged all the items into the envelope to be mailed. At the very end i realized i was a few small envelopes short, so i hand wrote them so i didn’t have to deal with my printer again. Finally at 11pm I finished all my letters. they were addressed and stamped and all ready to go to the post office. But the post office isn’t open and i didn’t think it was a great idea to go alone at 11:30 at night.
In the process of being frustrated and almost screaming my aunt walks into to find out what I am doing. I tell her and she looks around at my tornado-hit room. She asks me why I didn’t make labels? I don’t know. Why didn’t you print these at work? I don’t know. You are goof. She walks away and I laugh at myself. I am a goof. i think i did everything the hard way.
And when i think about all the people I am sending them to, i don’t think i included everyone I wanted to. I might have to do this again….. But the next time, i will use my brain. 
