The following post is a very personal one for me.  Feel free to ignore.  60 in 3 will be back to the usual fitness and health tips next week

Mother’s day is coming up and various commercials are constantly reminding me to be thankful to my mother for all she has given me, preferably by buying her something expensive.  While I’m still considering the best thing for my mom, this did remind me of something.  We have a day for appreciating our partners (valentine’s day) and a day for appreciating our parents (mother’s and father’s days) but what about our friends?  What about all those wonderful people in our lives who help us shape who we are?  When do they get thanked?  When are they appreciated?

Now I’m not a big fan of commercialism and I believe that the good things in life should be appreciated every day, not just once a year, but I do think it’s nice to have extra special days in which we appreciate just one thing and really consider how important that one thing is.  Which is why I’m declaring April 24th to be “Friends Appreciation” Day!  I’ve been through a lot in the past 7 years and I would not have come out of it nearly as happy without all of my friends.  So without further ado, here’s to you:

Thank you Dave for sharing a brain with me, for coming over to support me even when you didn’t know or agree with what you were supporting, for watching awful movies with me and for being my original hiking partner even when they turned up the gravity on Mission Peak and that cow chased you.

Thank you Greg for being my own person technical support for 60 in 3, for teaching me the basics of PHP, MySQL (my sequel!), for being my workout partner even though it meant waking up every day at 5:30am and for being OCD enough to spell check most of my articles.

Thank you Donald for being my original running partner even though your walking speed was faster than my running speed back then.  And thanks for coming back safe from Iraq.  You’re way too nice for the rest of us.

Thank you Rui for being willing to walk the dog with me every night at 10pm and for going with me to the gym at the oddest possible hours.  Thank you also for tolerating my occasional late night rants about various topics.

Thank you Jason for tolerating me despite my occasional impatience and thank you also for providing me with an example and an inspiration.  Your recent weight loss and diet changes are amazing and I am truly impressed.

Thank you Sasha for being you.  I can’t say anything more because if I do so this post will be blocked by various profanity filters

Thank you Tilla, Cheryl, Tiffany, Shannon and the rest of the Gal2k crew.  You girls took a socially maladjusted engineer and turned him into the shining beacon of fashion and style you see before you today.  Thanks for seeing the potential underneath those ratty shirts and surly manners.

Thank you Christine for teaching me how to move from walking to running, and I mean that in a variety of ways only one of which is jogging.

Thank you Georges for teaching me about self esteem and respect.  The one last lesson I needed to learn to become a whole person.

And thank you to all of you, assuming you’re still reading this, who have listened to me struggle with a variety of issues over the past two years.  It’s been an amazing journey but I’m glad to be here.  I’ll close this post with a quote taught to me by the newest person to inspire and teach me:

“We die containing a richness of lovers and tribes, tastes we have swallowed, bodies we have plunged into and swum up as if rivers of wisdom, characters we have climbed into as if trees, fears we have hidden in as in caves.  I wish for all this to be marked on my body when I am dead.  I believe in such cartography.”  -Michael Ondaatje

I believe in it too and thank you all for being a part of my life.

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Got a friend or an inspiration you would like to thank?  Feel free to add it in the comments or better yet, talk to them in person like I intend to do