The 500th Post Giveaway Prize

The internet can be an amazing place for reconnecting with old friends.  Here's a photo from the summer of 1985:

I'm holding the microphone, showboating for all I'm worth, and the lady in the white jacket in the foreground is my friend Beverly.  We were doing a bit of 'entertaining' at the Wednesday night service at our church youth camp.  A recent Facebook conversation caused me to unearth the photo and share it there, and I thought I'd share it here, as well, so you can appreciate how fun it was that she was the one who won the giveaway.

'Cause, you know, things happen, people move on, and even though you mean to keep in touch, you don't.  We swapped Christmas cards for a few years, then they moved to a new neighborhood and I somehow missed their new address.  It has been YEARS since we have actually seen each other.

But we connected recently via Facebook, and because I link my blog posts she wandered over and happened to leave a comment for me on the 500th post giveaway. The Flute Player randomly picked her comment number,  so yesterday we met at a local restaurant so I could give her the goodie bag.  We talked for nearly 2 hours...it was a great chance to catch up and we WILL do it again, soon!
 
So here's the contents of the giveaway prize goodie bag .  I thought I might pick one post from each 100 posts to represent in the goodie bag, but as I looked back over the first 500 posts I found that the items I really wanted to put in the bag did not quite follow that distribution.  But that's ok.  It was kinda fun to match stuff up to the posts...


1) A bottle of vanilla, representing The Plain Vanilla files 


   
2) From several posts in which I reference one of my favorite books, Hinds' Feet on High Places, a copy of the book

3) A 4-color Bic Pen, with which to Mark it Up 


4) Play-Doh, for some Life Lessons from Play-Doh

And, finally, from the number one search-engine-hit post of the whole blog, 5) A Christmas Pickle

It was fun to watch her pull the items from the bag;  she even said she remembered that I always had a 4-color pen with  my Bible.  The pickle is just like ours; only the shape of the jar is slightly different.  And I had to go to two bookstores to find the book; Barnes & Noble didn't have it at all, but there was one copy in the 'Classics' section at Family Christian store.  I was beginning to wonder what I would do if I couldn't find it.  The clerk had to find it for me; I was looking for a different cover and the books weren't exactly in alphabetical order; this one was sitting with another book with an almost identical cover; apparently this edition is part of a 'Christian Classics' series.

It was fun to do the giveaway, and it was a treat to get to see Bev again; thanks to everyone who's stayed with me for the first 500ish posts!  Maybe I'll do another one at 1000...if I notice when that happens... ;-)