For those of you reading this who have been partners in my mission trip, and are on the list to get a CD with stories and photos, I hope I don’t owe you an apology.

I went this morning to mail 21 of the CDs at the post office. The clerk took one of them, weighed it, and printed a postage label from his computer, but it would have been too time-consuming to do all 21 of them that way, so he used the price of the first pouch as a guide to sell me stamps for the other 20 pouches. He went back and forth trying to figure out the best combination of stamps to add up to the proper postage.

However, he got it wrong. When I was entering the expense into my checkbook just now, I took a look at the receipt. The computer postage pouch cost $1.13 to mail, and I looked the rates up on the USPS web site just now and confirmed that rate to be correct, assuming the pouch was only one ounce (and I think it was). Because the envelope is unfoldable, it’s considered a package, not a letter, and falls under a first class package rate.

But I now realize that he only sold me, and I only applied, $1.03 worth of stamps for each of the other 20 pouches. Each pouch got a 58-cent stamp, a 41-cent “forever” stamp, and two 2-cent stamps. I handed the stack back to the clerk myself, and he accepted it, so I don’t know if someone will notice the discrepancy. If your pouch comes postage-due, I certainly apologize — it wasn’t my intention!