On the way back I stopped by Costco to pick up- a print for my layout I thought I had in 12x18, but didn't. Ordered it late Saturday night. They do good work quickly, worth keeping my membership for. Also got batteries - I ran down the ones in the flash at the museum, and was all out of AA's.
So what to do instead of writing the article? Well, I'd seen an ad for a new massage place, phoned them, and they were about 6 blocks from me. Grand opening. Not the best massage, but at least nothing hurt more after than before. Did some shopping too.
And I went all OCD over something which ate the rest of the evening. My cousin in Brighton is putting a birthday book together for her mother, Viv, who will be 60 next month. She has hit all of us up for photos and anecdotes. Her mother was my pen pal from the time I was 13 until maybe college. I forget when we tapered off writing. My mother encouraged us to have pen pals. My older sister and I had written to kids our age in Japan and Israel since grade school. My sister's name is Briana, and we have cousins Brian and Howard in London. Briana wrote to Brian, but cousin Howard was not interested. So Brian arranged for me to write to a cute redhead in the neighborhood, named Viv. Viv and Brian eventually got married. After email came along, we started writing again, and are now in touch daily with Facebook.
On my way back from Thailand and Israel in the winter of 1977, I spent a few days with Brian and Viv, Viv took me to the British Museum, and I took a picture of her and her son Mike all bundled up in heavy coats in a niche near the museum's main entrance. I have stumbled across that photo several times this year, but now that I wanted to send it for the birthday book, I can't find it. I've looked almost everywhere. The places I have not looked require too much work than it's worth. The funny thing is I instantly found the first photo Viv sent me as a pen pal, scanned it, did some Photoshop restoration and emailed it.
Which is my excuse for not writing the article, and I'm sticking to it. :-)