“Hear my voice in your head and think of me kindly”

One of things I always try and do at the beginning of a new year is send out an email to everybody in my address book in order to check in with friends new and old. Even with the convenience of electronic communication, it is quite amazing how lax one can become about keeping in touch.

The auto-responses from some web domain stating, “this email account is no longer active” are usually the saddest. This year I got back two of them, both from work colleagues of yesteryear. Without another means of contacting them, they officially join the list of people I’ll probably never be in touch with again.

However, this year I received some of the best pieces of news from a batch of folk. I was very happy to find out that my oldest friend in the world Lisa (in terms of how long I’ve known her, that is – I first met her at the age of 4) is getting married! Her future husband Randy unofficially lived with us when we were roommates back in Toronto and is a fantastic bloke. I wish them all the very best.

I also received three emails from former work colleagues from the infamous BrandEra stage of my working life. All have gone on to much better things, have married and have their first child. With the wonders of digital photography, I was able to see a picture of each of their new bundles of joy. I know people always say this, but each of them are extremely cute and adorable. A fourth colleague also announced that he too has a child on the way. I knew things would be better once we got out of that place!

And as always, it was great to hear the latest from the Ottawa group. The nostalgia was high on my end when I read the stories of their holiday get-togethers. I’m also happy to report that Mike and Drew appear to have returned to the world of blogging after a short sabbatical.

It also sounds like the Toronto group had an enjoyable holiday and are doing well. I see there is one serious freeze going on over there at the moment. Relatively speaking, it’s almost (as Steve put best) tropical in these parts at a respectable 10 degrees.

With upcoming weddings (three mates getting hitched this year), new jobs and homes and babies by the barrel full, it really has hit home that I and my peers have indeed hit a new stage in life. And so it goes!