I’m back from Alaska, and while I have many lovely things to write about my trip, I first have to get this ridiculous story out there. Because the combination of my foolishness plus the U.S. Postal Service can only end like this:

On our second night on the Aleutian Islands ferry, it stopped in the tiny village of Sand Point, Alaska around 10:15 pm, so it was rather late to stroll around. But I got off to stretch my legs, along with my dad, a girl I ended up befriending on the ferry and her mom. My friend said her coworker had grown up there, and had told her own mother to look for the ferry when it arrived. We noticed a small woman standing alongside a SUV at the dock, and sure enough, she was the mom, and she offered to give us a tour of her village. The tour was pretty simple: Here’s the “big shop,” here’s the health clinic, here’s the pool where I finally learned to swim when I turned 60 (which is crazy, because can you imagine growing up on an island and not knowing how to swim?). Anyway, she had a little gift shop, so I asked if we could stop and buy something to thank her for our tour. I bought four glass Japanese float balls, these beautiful orbs that wash up on the beaches in Alaska after they detach from the fishing nets of Japanese fishing boats. They’re gorgeous, and almost totally worth the rest of this story…

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