Scooping the Letterbox <br>-or-<br>Boxers 'n' Briefs: July 2008

Hey, 'Boxers! Remember me? Or has that glorious eraser "time" rubbed the foul memory of my jokes off the parchment of your soul? Well, tough... here I am again, ready to write the wrongs.

So, what's been going on since last I wrote? Well, to put it in perspective, at the time of the last BnB, Ryan was still on his hike. McBoxer was busy pushing people's buttons on the AQ boards, and had nearly a month before his "big project debut". LTCs were just starting to take off, but there were no official trackers for them. And "pink" was becoming a way of life.

A lot has happened since then, so much so that it is rather pointless to attempt to chronicle it all. Instead, I am going to tell one little Letterboxing story, then proceed into the usual morass of disjointed linkage... only this time it will be even MORE disjointed. Tens of thousands of posts have occurred, so my "selection" will be very nearly random.

A few months ago, while Ryan was somewhere in the wilds of Florida, I took my daughter on a trip to San Luis Obispo, CA, for one of her Acro-Gymnastics competitions. For those of you who don't know it, SLO is the home stomping-grounds for our very own Green Tortuga. Now, I had never gotten a GT box, so I was really excited about this trip.

As it turned out (and as I shouldn't be surprised), I had very little time to myself to "escape" from the rigours of a competition weekend. I got about an hour the first day to get some wonderful boxes at a park that happened to be right near the hotel, and I was able to snag my first Amanda box. But no GT boxes. Drats!

As the weekend wore on, I was eventually resigned to the prospect of not achieving the GT goal. But fortune smiled on me, or at least stopped pummeling me with a blunt instrument, on Sunday afternoon. There was a break in the competition, and I decided to head out and get some Subway sandwiches for lunch, instead of the methane-burgers they were serving at the meet (notice how that isn't spelled "meat"). I hopped in my car, and headed down the road. As I was driving around SLO, getting wonderfully lost, I suddenly spied an establishment whose name was strangely familiar: "Leon's Used Books". HEY!!! There was a GT box in that place!! I parked as soon as I could, and as I was getting out of the car, it dawned on me that I didn't have ANY of my Letterboxing stuff with me! No sig stamp, no inkpads, and not even any clues. NOOOOO!!!!

Well, by this time I was determined. I recalled this box was "special" in that it didn't have a logbook - it was simply a stamp-on-a-magnet - so the lack of sig-stamp was not an issue. The lack of an inkpad, and especially the lack of the clue, however, were a little more worrisome. I searched the dark recesses of my memory (to be honest, that's pretty much all I have is dark recesses), and dredged up what few things I remembered reading about this box. It was around the corner from some topic-or-other that was vaguely intriguing to me... it was near the bottom shelf, but not the VERY bottom shelf... and it was at either the far right or far left of the shelf. I figured "how hard could it be?"... until I stepped inside. The front of the store looked like it was nothing more than a hole in the wall, but stepping inside was like the scene in "The Wizard of Oz" where Dorothy first steps into Munchkinland... the place suddenly loomed larger (and deeper) than it seemed possible from the outside.

Mildly daunted, I wandered through the stacks and shelves, looking for anything that seemed "vaguely intriguing" and had a metal shelf. Finally, while being vaguely intrigued by Photography, and running my fingers nonchalantly under a shelf, I discovered "that which I seeked." Woohoo!!! I found a GT box!

Uhhhh... well, I had the stamp. But no logbook. And no ink. Now what? No way I was giving up at this point. I searched through my pockets, to see what I had... and found my checkbook. Heck, it's paper, right? I looked closely at the stamp and noticed... it seemed to have some residue ink on it from previous stampers. I snuck back into one of the side-rooms in the bookstore, made sure I was unnoticed, and HUFFED like a madman on the stamp (I knew I would only get one shot at this), then quickly stamped it onto the back of a blank check. Ha!! I GOT it! I now have a voided check with a faint but definite impression of Green Tortuga's Bookstore stamp displayed proudly in my logbook. Persistence pays!

Ok, enough of this drivel. Time for the links!

1) Cents and Sendability

2) Of Mice and Mentions

3) Ask Dr. Science!

4) Mail enhancement.

5) They Might Be Vagrants

6) Tidal Waive

7) Beggars can't be Chaucers

8) wifeamatta_u

9) The 200,000th AQ Board Post!

10) Kids say the most incroedipal things

11) Dialogging your finds