Day of Appreciation

I think longtime readers here will recall that one of my professors (my faculty advisor/research mentor) is going through a tough time. Her husband has leukemia and had a bone marrow transplant in Boston last month. There has naturally been a sense of optimism b/c he actually got a transplant, but unfortunately it is now tempered by various realities. Yesterday she e-mailed us an update saying her husband has been having some complicatons, and that she's starting to come to terms with the fact that he's likely to have lasting and chronic health problems even if he lives.

I feel bad. I really do. She concluded her e-mail, saying her husband 41st birthday is today, and she had a "request" in honor of today. And so I simply felt a strong need to spread that request to you, my tiny collection of gentle invisible/faceless/silent/virtual "friends":

"A. turns a hard-earned 41 on (Tuesday March 24). In honor of his birthday, please turn to a friend or someone you love, a spouse, significant other, parent, sibling, or someone else important to you, and tell them how much you appreciate their presence in your life. Thanks, that means a lot to me and my family.
--S.".

Do it. Me? I've done it already.

PS, Thanks, planetqueen for weighing in RE: Twitter.

PPS, Despite yesterday's entry, I realize that there may be some people here who find Twitter fun/useful, and that's cool. I may one day discover it has a place in my life. My entry was really a result of being annoyed to check FB and find a whole bunch of status updates from people who cross-post from Twitter and tweet in order to live-blog their every move. It's generally not nice to crowd up your friends' and acquaintances' FB news feeds with minute-by-minute status updates that say "via twitter".