Tell me I didn't do it!

I bought $123 worth of 41 cent "Forever" stamps about a year ago. Today, as I was peeling some stamps off one of the strips, I noticed that there were stamps on the other side of the strip. I thought, "Oh, s**t, tell me I've been throwing away about half the stamps!"

Fortunately, I did not follow through on my intent last week, and take the overflowing trash bag in my office to the dumpster. I started going through it, and found 6 strips, all with stamps on one side. Mostly, it was the side with 8 stamps, and they were all there. Strangely, however, there were a couple of cards with only 2 or 3 stamps left. What was I thinking? Or was I thinking at all?

It was interesting...well, interesting isn't quite the proper word...to excavate downwards in the trash bag. I usually didn't even have to find an envelope with a postmark on it to tell where (in time) I was. Some of the layers were obvious...the tax layer, where Form 1099 envelopes we had received were found; the late November layer, where numerous iterations of the invitation to the Wendel/Rioux Family Christmas were edited and reprinted; the Halloween layer, where a quantity of snack size candy wrappers lurked (a testament to my bad behavior.) There was the layer with multitudes of notes I had taken during phone calls with Dee, giving me information I could email to the friends on the "Gary Group" mailing list. A Schlitterbahn layer was evidence of our strategies for booking rooms for the 2009 trip, along with grocery lists and food plans for the 2008 trip.

The earliest layer was in May of 2008, so I'm hoping that means I didn't waste too many stamps. I'm going to give myself credit for using all the rest. In all, I rescued 35 stamps.