The Joy of Real Mail

As I was lamenting to my parents the other day, you start to get a lot of crap in the mail when you buy a house. I must get a weekly minimum of four offers to purchase "mortgage protection," mostly from the same companies over and over. Drowning under this deluge of junk spurred me to start shredding it and using it as cat box liner, although that is not the point of today's post.

No, my aim today is quite an opposite matter. See, when you get so much non-specific mail all the time, trying to get your money by selling whatever product it is that you don't need, it makes the rare instances of truly "personal" mail all the more delightful. And when that mail is an actual package from dear and generous friends, well I ask you--what could be better?

This box arrived yesterday from Sunriver and I knew what was in it--indeed, I had been expecting it. What I didn't know was whether or not the contents had arrived intact.

So far so good from the outside . . .


Within, I discovered a kind of corrugated box version of Russian nesting dolls:


Then, inside the smaller box was a layer of tightly-packed newspaper . . .


. . . followed by bubble wrap . . .


. . . which served to cover and protect these two beauties!


Green Lakes Organic Ale and The Abyss Imperial Stout are two of the most recent creations of Bend's Deschutes Brewery, where Kristen is now working part-time giving tours. I am *extremely* excited to try them (which K recommends doing soon, as the organic ingredients in the Green Lakes apparently don't have a tremendously long shelf-life), but the only catch is that each comes in a 22 oz. bottle. Which, sad to say, at this point in my life is more beer than I can easily drink on my own at a single setting. Well, maybe not, but it's more beer than I care to drink while sitting home alone in my house--that would start to get kind of sad.

Anyway, I'm looking for the right opportunity and the right co-drinkers. Applications currently being accepted.

Thanks for the lovely gift, K, N & Z. (And great packing job, btw.)

Also, many thanks to another friend Kristen, who with her husband and little boy gave me and the rest of us at Midtown an equally wonderful gift today. Thanks for sharing your stories and your journey with us.

Happy new week, y'all--one week from today, we'll be in March! (Yikes!)