in the spirit of swap!

I am participating in a blog-induced swap. This means that one of the blogs I frequent (I Suwanee) organized a little swap, which you can read about in more detail here. Last night I was slaving away on some items for my swap partner and Alex glanced up from his book curiously to see what crafty project I was working on. I explained the premise of a swap (albeit not very well), and he seemed to think it was a very strange idea. And probably unsafe. True, there is a chance my swap partner will send me a box full of antrhax. But I think it's far more likely that it will just be a nice thing to do, sending a box of treats to a total stranger. Plus, my swap partner seems to have a pretty good sense of humor (proof here), and I just don't think that funny people are the kind of people to send anthrax. I am planning to post a little update whenever I receive my box, so stay tuned.

Also, in the spirit of receiving things in the mail, I received this yesterday from my long-time friend and pen pal, Margaret.






We were friends in the 7th and 8th grades when we both lived in Santiago, Chile. I haven't seen her since I moved away in 1998, but somehow (miraculously) we've kept in touch solely through snail mail. She is constantly bouncing around the country. In the past year I've gotten artsy little cards she hand made while serving a post as a forest ranger in New Mexico, letterpress notes from when she worked as a librarian in Pittsburgh, and most recently this polaroid of the Alaskan summer. We have no electronic communication whatsoever and I don't even know her phone number. There is something so timeless about our decade of non-technological communication. I always love getting her letters in the mail, but I really, really love the Alaska polaroid and will absolutely be hanging it on my wall where I can look at it on a regular basis.