Ship off from Amazon

Hooray! This afternoon, I sent off Lunar 1, that a customer bought from me through my Amazon store. Who would have thought that Internet entrepreneurialism could be so fun! Could Amazon replace eBay? Who knows, right? It probably already has. Anyway, my main concern is making some extra cash. I need it.

Of course, my venture to find a box to ship the game was not without issue. I thought to myself that I could find a shipping box to send the game at the Meijer located in west Urbana. So, I hop on the bus and arrive at the big box. I managed to locate the section of the store that has all the packing materials, and they only have big boxes. I was vexed.

I leave Meijer and begin to bicycle up Philo Road. (It was a good thing I use a combination of public transportation and my bike to get to place.) I know that smaller shipping boxes can be found at pharmacies, so I go to the CVS on Philo. Nope. They only have big shipping boxes, too. Not giving up, I go to the Wallgreen's, and lo-and-behold, they have smaller boxes. They were bigger than what I needed, but at that time I was desperate to find something close to reasonable. (The sales associate at Meijer told me that I would probably have to go to Staples to find dedicated DVD / Book shipping boxes for my needs. I wasn't about to spend hours on the bus just to buy boxes.)

I ride back to the house was surprisingly treacherous. I brought my triangular backpack with me to carry stuff. Naturally, it wasn't big enough to hold flattened cardboard boxes. So, I tried to hang the bag from my handle-bars. That was a bad idea. The corner of the boxes were getting stuck in the spokes. Frustrated, reluctantly, I put the folded boxes in my backpack. That worked, but I was riding slowly on my bike because I didn't want to lose stuff.

I make it back to the house, tape up the box, throw in some packaging popcorn, and the game. I print off the shipping inventory from Amazon, throw that in the box, too, and seal the box shut. I quickly rode my bike (again) to the post office, and sent off the box. The shipping was two extra dollars more than what Amazon allotted me, so I had to cut into my net profits from the sale.

But...I had a blast. If someone wants my old retro games -- and if I can make some money back in the process -- I'll be more than willing to sell things online. So, I had a pretty eventful day. I just wish it was a touch warmer than it was outside. I froze my ass off riding my bike.

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