Author: /u/RealConfirmologist

In years past, I’ve taken some friends for a car ride through some of the more impressive areas with houses well-lit for Christmas.

This year we’ll skip it, since I’m not ready to risk exposure to covid for such an unimportant thing.

My friends are already hitting me up, though. “Okay, if you’re not going to take us, we’ll go by ourselves. But where?”

I imagine most of the standard places will be nice this year… River Oaks, Shadow Oaks, Tanglewood/West Oaks, etc.

On the other hand, with the pandemic, I suppose some of the regular decorators might not be participating.

Figured I’d ask here and get some feedback.

Thanks in advance.

P.S. I put my lights up on Thanksgiving, since I stayed home and had no one over… and right now my house is one of only three in my whole neighborhood where lights are up and on at night. This is my 3rd Christmas here and usually there are quite a few more homes decorated. I’m hoping some of my neighbors will get lights up over the next week, but right now things seem a little subdued.

I’m out in the northwest part of Houston near Beltway 8 and Hollister.

I signed up for Informed Delivery with USPS quite some time ago and really like seeing an email showing me what’s supposed to be coming to my mail box each day.

After a USPS facility was badly damaged last year, Informed Delivery was impacted but seemed to have resumed after several months.

For the last few weeks, though, I get an email every mail day but it shows “Mailpieces that we do not have an image for are included in today’s mail.” Example image.

Some days it shows 3 envelopes like that, some days it shows 7.

Since most of my mail is trash anyway, I’m not overly concerned, but I’ve had some semi-important things coming (a replacement bank card, a passport, etc.) and these kinds of things are why I signed up for the service.

Curious if others are having this issue. I used the web site to send USPS an inquiry about this. Will update this post when/if I get a reply/response.

TL;DR – Are you getting your Informed Delivery emails with scans of your mail? Mine come daily without scans, lately.

Edit/Update: Added that I’ve sent an inquiry to USPS.