You might have noticed that amazon prime was one of the elements on my good list not long ago. I am way too spoiled by this oh-so-successful marketing strategy...in fact you might say that amazon prime and I were born for each other. For those of you who haven't been sucked in yet, lemme 'splain.

For a mere $79 a year, amazon will ship you ANYthing they sell (excluding 3rd party sellers' items) by TWO-DAY shipping for NO charge, or NEXT-DAY shipping for just $3.99 per item. You can order a book a day, every day, and never pay any more shipping costs. No more bulk orders to get free shipping, no more waiting for a week or two to get an order. And this applies to anything I send to the kids in Virginia, to my mother, to anyone. No more shipping charges added to my totals! It's phenomenal! During my first year of membership, I ordered two vacuum cleaners one day and had them both the next morning (actually I ordered them from Annie's house in Virginia and had them sent to Texas--the family had called, desperate, saying the last vacuum had broken and they had to have something before the church crowd came Wednesday night), so next-day shipping for two heavy vacuum cleaners was $7.98!

In fact, I'm sure I'm the reason that amazon's stock dropped that year...there was almost a stockholder revolt since amazon lost money the first year of the program. But, the genius marketing mind that came up with the plan had the last laugh, as the resulting build in brand loyalty to amazon skyrocketed! And while they're laughing all the way to the bank, I'm getting WAY more than my money's worth every year! I have something delivered here three or four days a week, what with school books, kitchen items, CDs, birthday gifts...

Anyway...just now the doorbell rang, and it was the friendly UPS man who has a well-worn path up our front walk. Caleb got to the door first (why does that always happen??) and signed for what was obviously a small, book-size amazon package. The UPS man said, "Tell your mother I said thank you for faithfully contributing to my job security!" ROFL!!