Once Upon a Good Deed. . . .

Back in December, when we were in Maryland for the Christmas holiday, the four of us went to National Harbor to hang out for an afternoon.  We parked in the St. George garage, mostly because that's where I parked when I went to the Gaylord for NCNP conference.  Steve tucked our minivan into a corner spot, and when they got out of the car, Steve and Thea found a cell phone on the ground.  I put the phone in my purse and we walked over to the ICE show, which was sold out for that day (even though the web site showed tickets available for a couple of time slots).  As we were walking around, the cell phone rang, and it was the sister-in-law of the cell phone owner, who was actually nice enough to not hang up when I told her that I was just some random person whose daughter had found the phone in a parking garage.

As Steve and Thea got our lunches at Potbelly's, the cell phone owner's SIL and I had a couple of chats on the phone - she gave me names of her SIL's family to see if they were listed in the address book or recent calls, we would hang up and I'd go looking.  No such luck, so we started working on how to figure out how to connect to hand off the phone since she lived a few exits north of National Harbor.  She and her husband volunteered to drive down, and I'd meet them. (The cell phone owner was visiting the area from South Carolina and was to be seeing her brother and sister-in-law before leaving the DC area.)

Meanwhile, Steve, Thea and Micah went off on a water taxi ride to Alexandria and back.  I got to wander around for 15 minutes doing some window shopping.  (Who would have ever thought that there could or would be a store almost entirely devoted to selling Little Peeps?  Just amazing.)  With a couple more calls to get connected, the hand-off took place in front of Ketchup (a restaurant, very unappealing name, IMHO, let's see if it's still there on our next trip there) and took less than 30 seconds.  They were happy, I was happy - and I had some time to wander around and see the water taxi coming back and heading for the dock at the Gaylord, so I could call Steve so they could disembark there and I'd walk down to meet them and we could check out the Christmas lights at the hotel.

Later that same night, I was going through my purse and found the plastic battery compartment cover to the cell phone.  Damn, damn and double damn.  What a half-baked good deed, the cell phone returned but not all of it.

Fortunately in the course of exchanging information with the SIL, I had her name and address written on a scrap of paper.  So when we got home to New Jersey, I wrapped the cover up in a bit of padding mailed it there figuring that if the SIL was nice enough to come and pick up the cell phone, she could be counted on to mail the cover back.  And then I pretty much forgot about it.  Not even pretty much.  I completely forgot about it.

Today the mail came and there was an envelope - very creatively decorated - with a return address from South Carolina.  Still didn't ring any bells.  Inside was a custom-made thank you card from the lady who got her cell phone back, and then who got her cell phone's battery cover back, too.   Really, really thoughtful.  Nice to see that thank you cards and snail mail aren't completely lost arts. The half dozen or so foil stars that came falling out when the card was opened, those I could have done without.  Whoever thought of putting confetti, however large, in cards is either a sadist or a vacuum cleaner salesperson.

Anyway, that's about all the excitement around here, other than watching bits of "Mama Mia!" while charting and catching White Collar's latest episode.

Shameless Advertising:  Stones into Schools by Greg Mortenson.  Just finished it yesterday.  Three Cups of Tea was one of the best Christmas gifts I've gotten.  Ever.  One of my top five favorite non-fiction books (Half the Sky, The Unheard, China Ghosts, Love in the Driest Season and There Is No Me Without You rounding out the list in case anyone wants to know, and those are just the ones I can come up with off the top of my head.)  The sequel is equally wonderful.  A must read, in hard copy, on Kindle or Nook, or whatever.  Though I still favor a 'real' book because there is just something about turning the pages and smelling the paper that just cannot be duplicated by an e-reader.