I had one of those rare Saturday mysteries in front of me last weekend: A package I had not ordered was included in my mail.
I do a lot of my shopping in Mount Vernon and Lisbon, but I frequent online merchants for DVDs and Blu-Rays. And with the eclipse, Criterion — one of the retailers I buy a lot of movies from — had drawn attention to their Eclipse sets of movies. I spotted a set I wanted, and then looked for cheaper options than their current sale price and found an auction over on eBay. I bid, and because no other bidders were interested, I got the set cheaper than the sales price.
The set had all the DVDs when it arrived, and I’ll eventually get to watching the movies. I also received the second book in a three-part series I’m trying to read, and as I joked on Facebook, everyone knows you can’t read a series that has multiple books without having the second book in your hand ready to go if it’s already in print. That is just one of the unwritten rules of reading.
Saturday morning rolls around, and as I was returning from covering an event in Lisbon, I had a random package at my apartment door. It was addressed to me, but I didn’t recognize the sender in California, nor was I expecting an item of this size. When I opened it (since it was addressed to me), it was definitely an item I’d seen somewhere, but not something I’d purchased. A quick check of the checking, and PayPal and credit card statements confirmed that I had not bought this package. Some pre-orders for Blu-Rays on Amazon and a Funko Pop on eBay that were still in transit, but not these mini figures I was staring at.
As I’m scratching my head as to where I saw this item, I got to checking eBay items that need feedback from recent orders and realized one of the sellers is based in California.
By the time I did a few more advanced searches on eBay, it became clear what happened. The seller had printed a mailing label for this other item they sold, but had forgotten to update where it needed to be shipped. A package destined for New York ended up taking a weekend siesta at my apartment since I didn’t discover this until Saturday afternoon or know where this package was supposed to be sent.
By Sunday morning, the seller let me know where to forward the package, and I got the item in the mail Monday.
I had the chance to solve a mystery in the span of half an hour on my weekend — roughly the time it takes to eat a bowl of cereal.
Now if I could just get to rewriting some history…