The people you meet

In our life, we sometimes get to rub shoulders with people who do amazing things daily.  Oh, they don't think of themselves that way, which invariably makes them even more of a delight to know.

I game with some really amazing folks from all over the world and some from right here in my city.

My pal Chris is from Nanaimo and is one of those muscular giants with a heart of mush.  Everyone has  confidence in his quiet ways; he's a leader.  He's also a listener and a man of action with a clear path to a prosperous future.  And he really doesn't know how to adequately clean a washroom; just ask his mom.

When that line was coined "your friends know when you're down and laugh at you anyway," they were talking about my buddy Eric who has a home in Montreal, but lives and breathes the information highway.  He's the one I trust when geekspeak is needed to clear things up.  I can also always trust him to shatter my far too serious demeanour when I'm being, well,  far too serious.

South America is home to more friends ... Luis, an international studies major in Cartegena, Colombia and his brother lawyer brother Cisco.  Luis and I have had ups and downs and go rounds galore over the years we've known each other, but in the end, we're still friends.  I guess history just makes the bond stronger.  Peique is a tall thin man with a heart of gold and an obsession for pizza who calls home Rio de Janeiro.  All of these men have a real zest for life and a flair for chasing the latin ladies.  Luis, though, can be convinced to do anything for a good brownie.

My pal Josh and I sometimes laugh about knowing a rocket scientist, but our other friend Josh is a physicist working for NASA in Texas, and we're not-so-secretly proud to know him.  He's got published works on nanocarbon tubes that I .. well, I can't say I would undertake it (or even understand it for that matter), but I'm glad there are folks like him out there working on dissembling the the inscrutable building blocks of our world.

The first Josh is a staff sergeant in the US air force and since I know not a single person in active duty in Canada, I find it interesting to know so many in the US.  Josh, though, is the first one I know who regularly gets to enter the doors of the Pentagon and sometimes the White House, and not at the side entrance for deliveries.  He was at the inauguration ceremonies tonight and I made him send me proof, so I share it with you.  Told him not to pass his cold to the leader of the free world.  I hope he listened.