i don't hate everyone

i keep in touch with a number of friends from the 2 high schools i attended. there are varying degrees of "keeping in touch". some i email once a season. some i won't speak to for a year or more then get a massive email about their latest adventure. some i IM with every week. but there is one special person where email and random IMs just don't really cut it. we've never kept it going consistently, then would drop off each other's radar for a long time, then try to communicate again, rinse and repeat. all the while, we keep thinking, 'this sucks. this person is more important to me than slowing growing apart.' so today what we ended up deciding to do was getting a small notebook to write/draw/etc in and mailing that back and forth. it's a throwback to our high school days when we wrote so many notes to each other that we just got a notebook to have less clutter. so i was wondering if anyone out there in the ether knows any other creative and fun ways to keep in touch long distance that's not just over the internet?

p.s. j, i want us to write more again too.