You leave for three months, and things change. Mainly, several of your friends pop up with new blogs that you didn’t realize they had.
My friend James Baber has a new blog, I am QuasiJames’ Mind. A brilliant thinker who unabashedly says what he thinks. Rachel Ryle has a new blog with the best title ever, Once in a Ryle. Rachel spent an entire year rhyming every single one of her Tweets, so expect good stuff from her. Cali Harris has a new blog called Caligater with posts that will dance into your heart. Which is appropriate for an award-winning dancer. My former Schenkein colleague and friend Abbey O’Neal has a blog called Days Like These about living with purpose. Her writing is striking me right at the heart as it is a lot of things I am working on right now.
And…a belated shout friend to my friend Ryan Behner. Ryan committed to doing a photo a day in 2009, which he actually followed through on. And not only did he do a photo a day, they were absolutely brilliant. Before I left for my trip, Ryan was so kind as to do a photo walk with me to give me tips on photography. He is as kind as he is talented. And every time he looks at my photos, he must reflect upon how those two hours were wasted. Fear not Ryan, when I get back I’m going to waste more of your time as I really want to get better at this.
Posted by Elaine Ellison September 20, 2009 Friends /
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My friend and former Schenkein colleague Meredith Stevens has started a new blog, “Here’s To The Dash.” I love the reasoning behind the name…
Paula would say, “Here’s To The Dash.” Why?On a person’s tombstone, there is the year of their birth and the year of their death. What’s between those years is the “dash” aka what you did in your life. Successes, accomplishments, challenges… all memories and all things you did while LIVING.
Love is a battlefield. Which is how our friend signed my friend’s Steph and Neal’s wedding guest book. From now on, I will be carrying an assortment of 80’s and 90’s songs to pull from when signing wedding guest books. I went with “Congratulations and I love both of you.” Pro tip: Don’t say good luck. Brides think that implies you don’t think they’ll make it.
Despite all lack of originality in my signature, I do love the both of them. Our first weekend of college, Steph came and knocked on our door and asked, “Do you want to go to a party?” Ummm…yes. Please. Steph and Neal, who didn’t actually start dating for several more years, took us to our first official party off campus. From then on, their crew – Katie, Andi, Carmen, Alli, Joe, Ryan, Andy, Neville – were the sophomores, and we were the freshman. They became the juniors, we became the sophomores. They became the seniors, we became the juniors. And so we stand, six years post-grad, they remain to us as the seniors.
The seniors took us to many more parties, they bought beer for our St. Patrick’s Day party, they gave us their old furniture, they hosted tailgates, told us what classes to avoid and drove us to Target. They even threw my 21st birthday party (and Beth’s) complete with cake, beer, balloons and hair holding. They were the older siblings we always wanted. With beer.
So a cheers to Neal and Steph. May their lives continue to be full of the love and warmth they brought into our lives.
