The reason for the season

I sat down this evening to watch "Monday Night Football" and to simultaneously do my Christmas cards, equipped with my address book, my order of 40 Christmas cards (with my return address printed on the envelopes for the first time this year), and 40 37-cent stamps featuring whimsical snowmen.

The first step was to address all the envelopes. I did so, and only had one name left over in my address book, and it's someone I've never sent a Christmas card to before. "[This person] won't notice if [he or she] doesn't get one this year, either, so I'm fine," I thought to myself.

The second step was to put stamps on all the envelopes. Wait a minute, I had five more envelopes than stamps. "What the hell?" I thought to myself, and started counting the cards.

Now, in previous years, the Christmas cards I've ordered from this company have come with exactly as many blank envelopes as cards. But it seems that, if you order personalized envelopes, they print up and send a few extras. Five extra envelopes, as it turned out.

So the upshot is that I'm going to have to buy five extra Christmas cards to put in the five envelopes I've already addressed, and I might as well buy six so that left-out person can get one. And six of my Christmas cards are going to have "Spay or Neuter Your Pet" stamps on the envelopes instead of the whimsical snowmen. Oh, well, it's always the season to help control the pet population.