Darkoshi

The thing* I ordered from India on eBay was simply delivered to my porch yesterday, with no mention of needing to pay any extra fees, hallelujah! The delivery person wore a yellow reflective vest and drove a personal vehicle with no very obvious company markings.

The package does not have a USPS label on it. It has a uniuni label on one side, and a ShipGlobal label on the other side.

Checking the tracking numbers from those labels on the respective websites shows that my item:
2025-09-21: was received at UNI DATA CENTER
2025-09-23: arrived in Delhi, India
2025-09-25: departed Delhi, India
2025-09-27: arrived in the USA; was being inspected by customs
2025-09-30: "Gateway transit in", in New York
and was delivered on from there to me.

So my package made it into the US on 9/27, two days before the De Minimus exemption was removed!
NO, scratch that. (Gosh darn, I keep mixing up August/month 8 with September/month 9!)
I don't know where my package was between the time I ordered it in mid-August and Sept. 21 when uniuni received it. But somehow I got it without having to pay a tariff fee. I suppose the seller ended up paying the extra cost.

Actually... I placed the order on 8/16.
On 8/20 eBay posted an "order update" showing "Tracking number provided" along with an India Post International tracking number. That must have been when the seller ordered a shipping label, before mailing the item.
On 8/22 or 8/25 (per my prior post), IndiaPost stopped accepting shipments for the US. The seller must not have dropped the item off before that cut-off, or if they did, perhaps IndiaPost returned the item to the seller.
The seller must have started looking for another shipping option, and eventually sent it through ShipGlobal.in who must be partnered with uniuni.

I still think it is bad form that the seller never informed me of any of this, and didn't even reply when I messaged them through eBay asking about the status of the shipment. But I'll give them good feedback considering the hassle they must have gone through.

I'm still in the dark about the other item which is showing up in my USPS daily digest emails. It started showing up in the emails back on 2025-08-19 as "Awaiting from sender". Yesterday, I thought that must have been the India package after all. But today I got a new email that the mysterious tracking number item is expected to be delivered by Wednesday.

*an Indian brand of toothpaste

Update:
I bought the toothpaste for $39 (excluding taxes, free shipping). As a point of reference, the eBay seller is now charging $50.70 for the same thing, and that is still the best price I can find. So the tariffs increased the price by $11.70.

The seller posted a reply to a negative review from someone else who didn't receive their order, asking them to kindly wait longer, that the tariffs are causing delays, and that the seller paid the tariff for the order, and that the buyer will not need to pay anything at time of delivery. That seems to confirm my speculation as to what happened with my order.

Errant thought:
Now people can probably use AI agents to determine what items that are available in local stores could be sold online at a profit to people in other locales, taking into account current shipping prices and tariffs and the current online prices being charged by other sellers.

Errant thoughts 2, 3, 4:
Now people can make software to make use of AI agents to determine what items [ditto]...

Then people could buy the software to help them determine what items [ditto]...

Then companies can use said software to direct employees or gig workers in various locales to buy items from local stores, and to mail them ... for making a profit.

I look out the window and see a little gray cat lying comfortably there in the dirt next to the azalea bush. How out of place cats seem, soft and cuddly and clean, in a cold hard world. It rolls over, stretches, gets up and walks on, no speck of dirt visible on it.

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Tuesday night, Qiao's garage floodlight cam sent a "pet detected" notification to my phone. I was very surprised to see a black cat carefully toying with a snake. I went outside; the cat ran off. The snake was crinkled up like I've seen once before with a snake on the back patio, though in a curled position this time. So it was probably a non-dangerous "rat snake":

https://tulsaworld.com/rat-snakes-sometimes-freeze-with-kinked-posture/article_763dea4d-93e5-5e64-ab51-43256048e2fd.html

“When frightened, they often assume a ‘kinked’ posture and remain motionless,” noted the University of Georgia’s Savannah River Ecology Laboratory. The posture makes it appear wrinkled.

https://backyardwildlifeconnection.com/2018/09/29/rat-snake-found-kinking-in-backyard/

The black rat snake is one of several snakes that assume this bizarre posture. When threatened, rat snakes sometimes don this folded or braided pose as a form of camouflage. Supposedly, to a potential predator, a kinked snake looks like nothing more than a stick, and will pass on by without attacking the motionless reptile.

From my daily notes today:

That woodpecker is intermittently pecking on the sunroom windows again. It goes from one spot to another, not angrily pecking, just a peck peck here and a peck peck there. Here a peck, there a peck, everywhere a peck peck.

I plan to hang up some strips of what they call "bird scare tape" to see if that will deter the woodpecker. This pecking noise isn't very loud or bothersome (unlike the rapid banging on the other side of the house which sometimes wakes me up), but the pecking itself is damaging my window screens. Today I managed to take a video of the bird when it flew to a nearby tree.

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Last night in bed, I tried to remember names of stuffed animals I had as a child. It bothers me that I can't remember some of their names anymore. I may have written the names down long ago when I remembered them better, but I don't remember where.

The name "Buttercup" came to me as a possibility for the bunny with the wind-up lullabye music box. I don't think that's the right name though, as the rabbit was pink, not yellow. It doesn't feel right either.

Then I imagined Westley from The Princess Bride saying the following (I turned the light back on to write it down as it amused me):
"Oh Princess Buttercup, you're my cup of butter in the morning, my cup of butter in the evening; multiple cups of butter at night! Oh how I love your cups of butter more than a cup of tea!"

All this time, and I never knew the Princess Bride movie was based on an actual book. I thought the book part of it was just part of the movie! Have any of you read the book? If so, how does it compare to the movie?

Lying back on the porch, looking up at the pine trees. I start counting the pine cones on one tree limb and estimate... probably a hundred on just that one limb.

It's quite possible the tree has more than a thousand pine cones on it! And therefore it's quite possible the other trees have that many too.

Occasionally I pick up pine cones when I'm cleaning up the yard. But I never pick up *that* many.
Do thousands of pine cones fall in the back yard each year, I wonder?

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The pine cones are just shrapnel when they fall.
The trees are missiles.

errant thought: I believe there are secretive groups of people who are promoting conspiracy theories as a means of inciting chaos and violence and destabilizing governments, among other things. I suppose that makes me a conspiracy theorist too.

errant thought:
Is the skin of a banana called a banana peel, even before it is peeled?
Is the rind of an orange called orange peel, while it is still all on the orange?

yes, I was just outside enjoying the piercing heat of bright sunshine on my skin

but if I were outside a nuclear reactor and felt that same sensation, I'd be freaking out wanting to get away and protect myself from the cancer-inducing rays

If it doesn't holler, you probably haven't really caught it.

"There's actually enough water out there for the geese to float on!"

(my thought upon seeing the usually-mostly-dry weed-grown lake-bed behind Qiao's house after some rain)