Note: This letter never got finished, and consequently never got sent out, but here's as far as I got with it before I ran out of time and was bogged down by the impending doom of turning 40 in combination with not having a whole lot else to say because so many of this letter's recipients have done their damnedest to elude me. It's included here just to have something to put on the 2002 link in the index.
HFH from Mar(l)b(o)ro(ugh)!
Here's something that's been weighing heavily on me lately. As of this moment, both Phil and Nancy are 40. As in years old. Next month, Amy turns 40. The month after that, it's my turn, plus the ephemeral Jeff Frankenstein, whom I beginning to doubt ever really existed. A few others follow shortly thereafter, although some still get a couple years reprieve, especially Cris, who must be around 25 by now I guess. And I guess the part that's got me thinking is - God, we're so freaking OLD!
Speaking of the Kocher, got to see him and his wife Amanda for the first time since Chloe was a baby (Amanda was for the first time ever, actually) this summer whilst in sunny Chicago. The annual pilgrimage to the homeland happened to coincide with Karen Stonehill graduating from Northwestern for the second time, so we got up at the crack of dawn that Saturday morning in June and drove the zigzag route from Bartlett to Evanston and arrived with time to spare. Saw the whole Stonehill clan, plus Karen's dad, who pretended to remember me from their wedding way back when. Saw Karen graduate with a masters in some kind of music thing, which was only fitting since I'd written a recommendation for her at her request to grease the skids and get her back into the School of Music in the first place.
Phil & Amanda, who are living in suburban Milwaukee these days, couldn't get there early enough for the graduation itself (which, unlike in our day, was bright and early in the morning, the general convocation having been the previous evening), but they met up with us at the end and we went out to Old Orchard for lunch at Maggiano's. Then we all hung out in the 100-degree outdoors for a while and watched the kids run around and get heatstroke. The Koch's were so inspired by our and the Stonehill's familial bliss that they're expecting one of their own sometime after the new year. Although my former roommates seem to be the most difficult to keep track of (especially my former imaginary roommate Jeff), we are hopeful that Phil will be a little easier to pin down now that he's rejoined the midwest, even if he is 1000 miles away from my favorite seafood buffet now. The Stonehills, of course, are always agreeable, even crashing Karen's graduation was something they insisted upon. I would lay odds that we'll meet up with them at some point next year.
But the rest of you? Fageddabodit.