Simpsons postcards

Although I don't have a TV, I am a huge fan of the animated series "The Simpsons." It's a long story, but I find their brand of humor brilliant. So when I stumble across out-of-print Simpsons postcard books, I snatch them up. This postcard of a surfing Bart (doesn't that wave look Japanese?) was US-1097163 sent to the Netherlands.



The next two postcards come from a much older set, circa 1990, when the Simpsons were still quite young as a TV series. It even includes characters who died, like Bleeding Gums Murphy. All those postcards are single-spot mug-shot character studies like this one. This sweet little Maggie card went out as US-881455 to Poland.



And of course the great Homer! He went out as US-952533 to Russia. Favorite snack: pork rinds lite! Ewwww!

A calligraphy letter

I was so delighted and impressed to find this beauty in my mailbox! It looks to me like one of my blog readers is a professional calligrapher, because this work is just gorgeous. I love the sense of humor of orange ink matched to the Homer Simpson stamp.



In fact, the entire fine letter is in calligraphy, and he praises his wax seal from Atelier Gargoyle. Cool stuff.

Wax seal: gold sun on Crane envelope

My wax seal envy continues. Here's a really fine sun with a sharp, clear impression on beautiful gold sealing wax. I love the concentric circles of the wax, and am proud of myself for successfully capturing the embossed "Crane & Co" logo. I'm a great fan of Crane's 100% cotton papers.

On another note, thanks to all my viewers, new and returning, for making yesterday the highest-traffic day I've had yet. (Gee, I wonder if it was my review post on FPN?)

Finally, a mail nerd moment: I have planned a trip to the post office this afternoon to pick up my new Simpsons stamps!! Today is the release date. Don't forget: postage rates go up on Monday. First-class letter rate goes up to 44 cents.

Simpsons stamps are coming!!!

It is really kind of crazy that I just learned about this release this morning from a UK blog, but there you have it. I troll the awful USPS website for mention of new releases, but I guess I've been looking in the wrong section. My crazy-logical brain tells me to look in the stamps area, under Forthcoming issues of the stamp release schedule, where of course absolutely nothing is posted. Silly me.

In any case, I've long since given up trying to make sense of the nutty United States Postal Service website, since whatever info I need flows to me eventually... including from foreign blogs.

So, here's the full skinny on the Simpsons stamp release, due out on May 7 -- just in time for the rate increase to 44 cents on May 11.

I'm a huge Simpsons fan, so of course I'm all atwitter about these new stamps and can't wait to get my paws on' em.