I am lucky to have many wonderful friends in my life. I think of them regularly, even when I don’t get to see them frequently. Unfortunately, I have trouble getting well-wishes out in a timely fashion. I used to think it was just getting things into the mail. But email proved me wrong about that and the blog has reinforced it.

But the wishes are always sincere, even if their timing leaves something to be desired.

Rebs and Rick celebrated their fifth anniversary last week. I’ve known Rebs for years now and am very happy that she and her soul mate were able to spend their anniversary at the same place they went on their honeymoon. I hope they had a lovely time and are feeling rested and relaxed.

Happy anniversary, Rebs and Rick. May your love continue to grow as your lives expand over the next half-decade and into the future.

and

ECN is the youngest of my college foursome known to ourselves as The Cwm. He deserves the credit of finding the Welsh word after a discussion about whether the letter “w” could be used as a vowel and deciding that it could apply to us.

I don’t remember how we met. Through mutual friends, clearly — Evers, perhaps? But I do know that ECN and I stayed up one memorable night and talked about any number of things and watched the sun rise and then ate breakfast on trays on the floor of the Conn dining hall. And that was the start of a friendship that has spanned moves, trips to the beach, scavenger hunts, and favors (including when he went and picked Rudi up at the train station for me when I couldn’t find our Falcon Ridge tickets and was running ridiculously late) over the last 11 years.

The most creative of the cwm, ECN crammed his rooms full of things that other people might have deemed junk (AOL cds that came in the mail, ), but that he could see the purpose for — and that gained cohesiveness through his fondness for them. It comes as no surprise, then, that he is about to start an MFA program at Yale. He’s moved to New Haven and is embarking upon new adventures, all of which I hope are indelible.

Happy birthday, ECN!