What your flower delivery person whishes you knew.

Mother's Day flower deliveries are this week, Friday and Saturday.


Those who've read my blog for a while will recognize these, but i hope you will all pass them around.
 
So, once again, from the point of view of the person who just might be delivering your flowers, comes a few hints for how to make my job easier and assure that you will get those flowers there.

1.  Order early.  Earlier than that.  Yes, that early.

     Here's the thing.  The florists order lots and lots of flowers, and some are going to be in better shape than others.  The nicest ones get used first.  By 3pm on the Saturday before Mother's Day, they are using the ones they would have passed over earlier.  Ordering ahead, and ordering for early delivery, gets you the nicest selection.

Ordering early also means that if we can't find your location or have trouble, we have time for a redelivery.
 
2.  Mark your home well!  This is for your benefit as well as ours.  After all, if we can't find you, what makes you think the EMTs can find you in the middle of the night?
 
3.   Delivery drivers know the town in general, but not every single side street, business, nook and cranny.  Give us your whole, complete address.  This means include:

     Avenue, Street, Boulevard, Drive, Circle, Lane, or whatever is in the actual title of your street.

     Your apartment complex name and apartment number
     or the nursing home name and room number
     or the business name and office number/division of the business where your sweetheart works.

     You know where it is, but we don't, and it's no fun having to guess.

4.  If you live in a gated community, please tell us, and give us a way to get in.  It's frustrating not to be able to get to your home because we need a code.  Give us a phone number, and i'll talk more about that later.

5.  The same goes for if you are having flowers delivered to a limited access work place.  Make sure we can get in there to it.  More than once i've had to wait until someone was leaving the building to beg to be brought in, and had to register, and all of that. Again, a phone number helps.

6.  If you and your recipient are both at work all day, give us permission, when you place the order, to leave the flowers in a safe place by your back door, under a patio, or with a neighbor.

7.  Tell us what time your recipeint gets off work, if you really want us to go there.  It's frustrating to get there a half hour after s/he got off for the day.

8.  About phone numbers:  tell your recipient to answer the phone!  Yes, you usually don't answer if you don't recognize the number.  Tell him/her to answer anyway, on this day, because there is a surprise coming.  Give us your number as well, and answer it.  If we can get in touch with you, or your recipient, we can work out most delivery complications easily.



Yes, i know, you want it to be a surprise.  So, if we have to call the recipient, the surprise comes over the phone.  That's better than the nasty surprise of us not being able to get it delivered at all.

9.  Please if you ask us to deliver to the school, make sure you let us know it's a school, and order early enough that we can get there before the carpool line starts.  The people in the carpool lane get very upset with us, as they think we are cutting in line.  Tell us if the person is in the office, a teacher, or someone in the cafeteria or on the janitorial staff, too.  One year it took the office people 20 minutes to figure out who the person was and in which department.

10.  Remember your driver is paid only for completed deliveries.  Time is of the essence for us, we want to successfully deliver as many items as we can, for the joy it brings you and the money it brings us.  There's no shame in earning some extra cash by doing this service, so help us serve you better by following the tips above!

Today is

Badminton Horse Trials -- Badminton, Gloucestershire, England (international horse trials of show jumping, cross-country, and dressage; through Sunday)

Beaufort Wind Force Scale Day -- birth anniversary of the British Navy officer whose wind scale, in refined form

Bonnie Blue Horse Show -- Virginia Horse Center, Lexington, VA, US (a major, A-rated, all-breed event of the American Horse Show Association; through Saturday)

Box Camera Day -- George Eastman patented the Box Camera on this day in 1888

Day of the Soldier -- El Salvador

Desert Folk Festival -- Homs and Palmyra Syria (keeping the culture of the desert peoples alive for the next generations; through Saturday)

Election Day -- South Africa

Experience the Awesome Stomach-Churning Wonder of a Thrill Ride Day -- internet generated, and they can have it!

Feast of St. Nicola -- Bari, Italy (celebrates's the moving of the relics of St. Nicholas -- yes, later Santa Claus -- to this town, where they still are; here he is patron of orphans and pirates, and the date of his body's arrival is celebrated as a huge three-day festival with fireworks included)

Fire Escape Ladder Day -- Joseph Winters patented a wagon-mounted version on this day in 1878

Great American Grump Out Day -- encouraging everyone to avoid grumpiness and rudeness for 24 hours; who knows, you might enjoy it so much it will stick!

Hamburg Harbor Day -- Hamburg, Germany (founding of the city)

Homeland Defender's Day -- Kazakhstan

Homespun History Day -- internet holiday often exploited by Modern Drunkard Magazine as a day upon which to drink specifically so the stories will sound better

National Barrier Awareness Day -- US (declared by Presidential Proclamation in 1986)

National Bike to School Day -- US (encouraging kids to have fun, get their exercise, and get to school under their own steam)

National Roast Leg of Lamb Day

National School Nurse Day -- US (the school nurse is there to help!)

Nones of May -- Ancient Roman Calendar

Occupational Safety and Health Professionals Day -- US (info here)

Radio Day -- Bulgaria; Russia

St. Domitian of Huy's Day (Patron of Huy Liege, Belgium; against fever)

Thank Your School Librarian Day -- US (American Association of School Librarians)

Upper Canada Village -- Morrisburg, ON, Canada (through early October, various programs that let visitors and students enter the world of the 1860s)



Anniversaries Today:

Founding of Univerzita Karlova in Prague, the first university in Central Europe, 1348


Birthdays Today:

Owen Hart, 1965
Peter Reckell, 1955
Amy Heckerling, 1954
Tim Russert, 1950
Johnny Unitas, 1933
Teresa Brewer, 1931
Darren McGavin, 1922
Eva Peron, 1919
Gary Cooper, 1901
Archibald Macleish, 1892
Gabby Hayes, 1885
Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, 1840
Johannes Brahms, 1833
Robert Browning, 1812
Francis Beaufort, 1774
David Hume, 1711


Debuting/Premiering Today:

"Strike It Rich"(TV), 1951
Choral Symphony in D Minor(Beethoven's Ninth), 1824


Today in History:

The dome of the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople collapses, 558
Joan of Arc leads the final charge in the Battle of Orleans, 1429
Louis XIV of France inaugurates The Palace of Versailles, 1664
The city of New Orleans is founded by Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville, 1718
Jews are expelled from Ukraine by Empress Catherine I of Russia, 1727
Chief Pontiac begins the "Conspiracy of Pontiac" by attacking British forces at Fort Detroit, 1763
The independence of Greece is recognized by the Treaty of London, 1832
George Eastman patents the "Kodak Box Camera," 1888
In Saint Petersburg, Russian scientist Alexander Stepanovich Popov demonstrates to the Russian Physical and Chemical Society his invention, the Popov lightning  detector — a primitive radio receiver, 1895
German  submarine  SM U-20  sinks RMS Lusitania, 1915
England lowers age of women voters from 30 to 21, 1928
Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering (later renamed Sony) is founded with around 20 employees, 1946
The Council of Europe is founded during the Hague Congress, 1948
The concept of the integrated circuit, the basis for all modern computers, is first published by Geoffrey W.A. Dummer, 1952
Canadian Patrick Morrow became the first person to climb each of the Seven Summits, 1986
The Space Shuttle Endeavour is launched on its first mission, 1992
Mercedes-Benz buys Chrysler for $40 billion USD and forms DaimlerChrysler in the largest industrial merger in history, 1998
The tomb of Herod the Great is discovered, 2007
A new study reports that all Europeans are related to a small group of ancestors dating back only 1,000 years; researchers believe it's likely that everyone in the world is related over the past few thousand years, 2013