Say thanks to your postal carrier today...

Yes, we're all about e-mail, but "snail" mail still matters. (I'm sorry -- those e-mail holiday cards just aren't the same as getting a holiday card in the mail!)

And the Postal Service reports that today is the busiest shipping day of the year with Wednesday as the businest delivery day. (I'd provide the link to the page, but USPS does one of these foolish scrips that doesn't allow me to get the link. Go to their holiday news page and look at the notice on Nov. 29th.)

If all the mail the U.S. Postal Service will deliver on Dec. 19 was placed end to end, it would circle the globe. Six times.

The Postal Service will deliver 20 billion letters, packages and cards between Thanksgiving and Christmas, with the busiest mailing day expected to be Monday, Dec. 19, with more than 280 million cards and letters being cancelled - more than twice that of an average day. Total mail volume on Dec. 19 is expected to rise to 900 million pieces of mail, up from 670 million pieces on an average day...

About 100 million First-Class letters are processed every day. That number increases to 150 million a day during the holidays. About 1 million packages will be delivered every day through Christmas Eve. The busiest delivery day will be Wednesday, Dec. 21.

Some people think the U.S. Postal Service is broken. The agency has been losing money with no replacement in sight for those lost dollars as more people send e-mail and pay their bills online.

But just as new technology is hurting USPS, officials are also pinning their hopes on technology to revitalize the 225-year-old institution in the 21st century. Information technology has a critical role to play not only as a cost-cutting tool but also as the basis for a variety of new fee-based services that officials hope can offset the steep and continuing drop-off in the use of first-class mail, the agency's principal revenue source.