The price of a first-class stamp is 78 cents, up 5 cents as of July 1, 2025. But that’s only if you buy your stamps from the USPS. As I found out this month while looking for additional Halloween stamps (see screen capture), there are ways to buy stamps for less than the latest Forever rate.
Continue readingDIY Exercise: Use your favorite graphics program to design a USPS-style Forever stamp depicting President Trump. Whether you save the file is optional.
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Last week I received a letter from the Kitsap County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office (see screen capture) scheduling yet another trial date for Alice L (a pseudonym). That makes five so far. I’m a witness in the forgery case against her, which involves check washing. While I would like to put this ongoing saga behind me, it will be mid-November before I’ll know if the trial will take place.
Continue readingPosted in Government
Like many career politicians, Washington Governor Jay Inslee has a history of using an elected position as a springboard for seeking higher office. In 2012, then-U.S. Representative Inslee resigned before his term was up to run full time for governor. In 2019, after announcing his candidacy for president last week, he has no plans to quit his day job. Are there differences between 2012 and 2019?
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Site of the former Westgate Fire Station
I felt a certain degree of safety when the old Westgate Fire Station operated out of the building at 1550 Rocky Point Road. The photo shows the cinder-block structure as it looked before the new tenant, Olympic Mountain Rescue, painted and reroofed it last summer. Although I have never made a 9-1-1 call in my life, living a mile from a fire station was reassuring, even one staffed by volunteers.
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Posted in Government, Mud Bay & Rocky Point
DIY task: Please supply your own color photo of President Trump.
This morning, while watching his Rose Garden speech about the “deal” to end the government shutdown, I wondered, again, if it would be appropriate to recycle former Major League Baseball player Rusty Staub’s nickname when referring to President Trump. With his carrot-top hairdo and tanning-salon-hued skin, the president clearly fits the bill for the third word of the wondrous French phrase Le Grand Orange. He falls short, though, when you consider the true meaning of the second word.
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Posted in Current Events, Government, Sports
Return to sender.
Last week, in a senior moment, I mailed in my final 2018 quarterly tax payment with one big omission. Yep, I forgot to stick on a Forever stamp (currently $.50 in postage), thus denying the letter a smooth flight to the IRS office in San Francisco. And now forever is due (see photo).
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Posted in Current Events, Government
Read and heed
Posted in Government, Mud Bay & Rocky Point
For some reason when I woke up this morning a reminder popped into my head that a quarterly tax payment to the United States Treasury is due on Tuesday. Normally my income tax preparer sends me a reminder by email well ahead of time. I didn’t hear from her last week. Perhaps she thinks I’m trained and no longer need one.
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Posted in Government
A story in yesterday’s Seattle Times detailed how the Port of Seattle missed out on collecting almost $400,000 in revenue from the SeaTac Airport parking garage because of credit-card charges that were never processed. So far some 10,500 people have parked there for free. Buried in the article’s online comments was a nugget about how to continue to get free parking.
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