Postage, Computers, Fiction Submissions, Fall Issue, and other thoughts

I can't sleep, and I don't want to wake up my wife by rattling submissions around out here in the living room, so I figured I'd add a few thoughts to this newsreel for anyone that's interested:

• It's no secret that the USPS raised their rates recently and added some confusing regulations on top of that mess, so we've stocked up on 2cent stamps. Those of you who submitted to us before this crazy rate increase, do not worry, we'll be able to respond. Though I will be honest here, a few of you who asked that we return your manuscripts (and provided us with a full-sized, stamped manilla folder), I must warn you, some of those envelopes will have quite a lot of 2cent stamps on them.
• This information is for our international authors: we're having trouble with the International Return Coupons. I don't know what it is really, some of them have been coming to us postmarked and some haven't. We can't use the ones that aren't postmarked, since, according to the postman, they haven't been paid for (in other words, we'd have to pay). And basically, everytime we get an IRC, we have to go the post office to send back our response. This isn't a huge problem, but it needs some attention. I guess what I'm saying is for international authors, 1) I want to apologize for taking so long to handle this, and 2) we might be able to save a lot of hassle if we just respond to you by email in the future. Now this isn't an official change of submission guidelines, but I'll have to talk it over with everyone else, since I'm just fiction.
• I don't know about poetry, but we're now getting into the fiction submission packets that we received in February and March. I can't promise anything concerning decisions, when they'll be made, etc, since the Spring 08 Issue print deadline is a while off yet, but I will say that we're reading those stories now. As far as our summer process goes, it's a bit more relaxed (read: slow, sorry), since we have a smaller staff. Nat's reading, I'm reading, and I think one or two of our fiction readers will stay on board to help out. Our assistant fiction editor will be out of town this summer, but I'll be in touch with her to talk about what we've been seeing. But we're taking our yearly break from reading incoming submissions so we can catch up on what we already have.
• And our Fall 07 issue just came in a few weeks ago (all 1,200 copies of it, I think) and it's cluttering up our tiny cubicle. We can't wait to get it out to everyone, especially our contributors, but we're having a little trouble with the bar code; we have to wait for stickers or something like that. But I will say, it looks great. I'll post the new cover when we get our new computers up and running.
• Yes, maybe not exciting for you, but definitely for us: we've got two new machines that Nat's setting up this week. Our old ones were about ready to conk out (we were scared of losing all our submission records, money stuff, artwork, blah blah blah), but now we'll be safe and sound.

That's it for me. Have a good weekend.