eBay: by the skin of my teeth

Would anyone would like to place bets on whether my eBay'ed monitor, a 24-inch Acer beauty that sold for $75 plus $25 shipping, will arrive intact at its destination in Wisconsin? I wrapped that sumbitch up real good, but there was still a lot of empty space inside the large box I put it in. The monitor fits diagonally inside the box without any chance of wigglage, but I'm a bit worried about what might happen should my box end up at the bottom of a stack of heavy items. Well... if the buyer demands a refund, then I guess we'll have our answer as to the monitor's condition upon arrival. Meantime, place your bets.

UPDATE: In case you're wondering why this post is titled "by the skin of my teeth," well... I'm wondering, too. I think it's because I had originally wanted to say something about the amount of time I spent this morning hunting around for packaging materials while also preparing for work.

I spent the morning desperately rummaging around, looking for enough styrofoam or bubble wrap to fill the interior of the box I ended up using, but didn't find enough. Luckily, I had plenty of material with which to cocoon the monitor. By the time it went into the box, it looked like Frodo after Shelob's attack: layers of bubble wrap and cardboard over the screen itself, and foam shielding for the monitor's mount.

The process of prepping the monitor, then prepping the box (with a dangerously dwindling supply of packing tape), took me most of the morning, and I needed to leave by 12:30 for my job. The post office scared me for a second: the nice lady said my box might have been in the wrong size and weight category, but it turned out that, because I had fortuitously clicked the "large package" selection when printing my shipping label, I was in the proper size/weight range after all.

Everything got done on time, but just barely, hence the "by the skin of my teeth" in title. At least I think that's what I intended when I wrote that.


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