One of the things I do to while away the time – while I’m cleaning the kitchen, for example, which it seems I’m always doing – is listen to podcasts. And one of my favorite podcasts is called Radiolab, self-described as “…a show about curiosity. Where sound illuminates ideas, and the boundaries blur between science, philosophy, and human experience.” In short, Radiolab has no particular subject nor format; but it gets the dishes done.

Although Radiolab usually measures an hour, they occasionally feature what they call “shorts,” which are what you would expect them to be: short podcasts – far shorter than the usual hour.

Which took me far off topic, and I haven’t even introduced the topic yet.

This is an Expat Almanac “short.” A brief little tidbit of a post. The Spanish would say “un poquito posta.” I like that.

Oh yes, the topic: How we get our mail.

Even though we’re in Girona for three months, that really isn’t enough time to change our mailing address. Not officially, and not when we’re about to move again in three weeks.

Instead, we use my daughter’s mailing address in the States. She looks at our mail as it arrives and writes a quick email if anything appears to be of specific interest. (This doesn’t happen very often: in this electronic age, where we do our banking, pay our bills, and accomplish almost everything else via the Internet, USPS mail rarely presents anything of interest.)

If we email back and say she should examine a specific letter, she opens it, takes a picture of it with her phone, and emails the picture. Emailing pictures is something she does all the time (she’s Gen-X, after all), and the pictures are clear enough for us to determine what we want to do next.

That’s it. At least for us, mail is that simple.

End of short.