Rings, roadies and the American rural landscape

OK So it's my turn....
Herb is at the desk; I am at the kitchen table. It is raining outside and the snow is melting at a 48 degree temperature (I am starting to see a theme here - I am weather obsessed and focused on physical place....Hmmmm I wonder why!).

We were planning a solid work day yesterday, but instead fielded about a dozen phone calls about how to get the rings into our hands (as H said... not on them, but in them). So the gallery owner called and said they were in. We were at work all day Friday but thought we might drive to VT Friday night and to Portland (Maine) on Saturday to get them.  But clearly it made more sense to have them sent to us.... Most places you could call Fed Ex or the postal service. So I looked up Fed Ex (knowing that DHL and UPS don't deliver on Saturday in very rural Middletown Springs).  They would indeed do an overnight from Portland to MS but they won't insure the cost of the rings.  They're 99.44 reliable but there's just that chance... SO the postal service can do it right? Well, yes. They insure but they can't get it to us by Saturday before the post office closes at 11:30 in rural Middletown Springs. They can deliver on Sunday for a Monday delivery by dropping the rings off in a lock box at the post office. Then we can pick them up on Monday. But we have to be at the dentist's office on Monday (yes, both of us- intimate no?) and we have to leave by 7:30 a.m. and the post office may not be open when we have to leave. SO they can get them to us in Boston on Monday, but we are going to be in the dentist chair on Monday and may not get to work in time....So we can see them on Tuesday. Nope. Herb has to be in Baltimore and doesn't want to have to wait til Wednesday to see them, and I would get them before him... yadda yadda... So maybe we should drive to Maine right?  Road trip!  We googled the directions... OK so some of you who are more savvy already knew this but for the rest of us, that's a 5 plus hour trip in each direction and we just drove from Boston to Vermont on Friday and THAT took 5 hours, and we need to work... and an 11 hour trip in ONE day somehow leaves me a bit short on the enthusiasm. SO now it's Saturday... and Edie (gallery owner--we're on first name bases by now and she has given us her cell phone - a real mark if intimacy if you ask me!) has called the post office and  driven there and called and driven to UPS. And we thought again about driving. And about FedEx.

Bottom line? The rings are being delivered by postal service some time before 3 at yes, the dentist's office. Pretty romantic, eh? But then you haven't met our dentist!