Kevin's Sixteenth New Friend: If you wanna be my lover, you gotta get with my friends.

Courtney Leibering is in a sorority, but I don't hold it against her.  I love her, and told her so a number of times this weekend.  I got to accompany her to her senior date dash and that means drinking with a bunch of college kids.  Man, I didn't feel that far out of college until I tried to hang.  I did not feel very hot the next day.  Good news though, while recovering, I got to foster my friendship with Courtney's roommate, Andrea Nell.  While enjoying oldies at the bar (oldies as in early 2000s, not Rockin' Robin), we both wished for a Spice Girls song.  I knew then that she earned the honor of being sweet 16 for my blog!  Andrea is originally from North Jersey, Passaic county to be exact.  I shared with her that I'd taken a cartography class in college and one of the maps I made was of the county boundaries in New Jersey so I know exactly where Passaic county is.  (Now that I think about it, that A+ or maybe A- work never got its time on the fridge! I'll have to print it out and hang it up now.)  She now lives in California and goes to the University of Arizona.  I know about the California part because Friday night I insisted that she give me her phone number in case I got lost.  It's a 760.  I think I'll call her next time I'm in Tucson so we can find a DJ who can fulfill a Spice Girls request.

Kevin's Fifteenth New Friend: Hiking Etiquette 101

Kevin's Fourteenth New Friend: A Knight to Remember

Lindsay Davidson ties with Danielle Burr for the nicest person I know.  But, she graduated from St. Mary's and Danielle is a gator so, if I had to choose just one person, I think you know what would make the final say...

Admittedly, Lindsay and I did not meet in 2012.  We went to high school together.  She graduated in 2005 and maybe I had seen her twice since then...that is, until the annual McShane party January 2012.  Lindsay and I decided to become running partners.  AND, we are still running partners! That's right, I have a running partner and we actually run.  NBD.  Every Tuesday and Thursday morning we wake up and run at 7:00am and on the weekend we go hiking.  This week I realized that she has been my biggest friendship of 2012 and is not on my blog so she ran back to the house with me for a picture (well, honestly, I'm done running way before I get to Claremont Street).  

Lindsay introduced me to the Luck of the Irish run out at Westgate.  Now I have done the TurkeyTrot (for thanksgiving) and the Luck of the Irish run (for SPD).  My new favorite thing is organized runs the morning of a holiday.  Being that she is my 14th friend, I would say we have definitely been running together for 10 weeks and always have long conversations every time we are together.  With that said, I could go on forever about her greatness and everything that she does, but I won't.  Trust me though, she is great.

Lindsay is a local of Phoenix and her parents live in my dream neighborhood.  I can't remember whether she was born in St. Joe's or Good Samaritan, but I do know she was born.  She went to St. Thomas and spent summers at her grandparent's lake house.  Now, she lives with a married couple and I don't think her grandparents own the lake house anymore.  She is, like me, a substitute for the diocese of Phoenix and, unlike me, works at Runner's Den on Sundays.  She also babysits and is a caretaker for a woman in Arcadia.  (I'll have to ask her about the woman, she may not work there anymore...funny thing though, the lady's house is down the street from my sister's house).  And she makes cards.  Her cards are mostly (maybe all of them) blank and have a photograph of a flower.  Many of the photos are flowers that she saw while living in Seattle but there are also desert flowers.  Her next step is either grad school or teach.  I'm hoping she teaches so she can stay in Phoenix (but that's me being selfish because I just want to keep my amazing running buddy).

Lindsay is another victim of my love of showing people new places to eat.  So far we have just done The Duce but I know there will be more.  

Lindsay is awesome and if you want to hike with us, let us know because we want to do some overnight hikes and don't have any hiking friends...

Kevin's Thirteenth New Friend: Catholic Gyro

I love Jen Pitera and don't get to see her that often so we set up a dinner date for after mass: Crazy Jim's.  It was her first time.  I love bringing people to new restaurants, probably one of my favorites parts about being alive.  It's about mid morning and Laura McShane asks to join me for Palm Sunday mass.  Yes, please come! But I have a dinner date afterwards.  You can come.  Jen, Laura is coming.  Jordan has been hanging out with Laura all day and wants to come to mass with us too.  Jen, Jordan and Laura are coming to dinner tonight.  I show up to mass and Jen tells me that she has invited all of her teens and Father Matt Henry.  We are not very good at keeping our dates to "a table for two"!

Although Father Matt Henry had been to Crazy Jim's before, I still tried to show it off as though I opened the restaurant and he didn't rain on my parade so, thank you.  Matthew Henry grew up in Arcadia, went to St. Theresa's and then Brophy for a year.  Yikes! Don't worry though, he did not like Brophy and switched to a public school.  Redeemed! And, speaking of redeemed, he is now a diocesan priest.  Not only does Father Matt Henry know my good friend, Jen but he went to high school with the 6th grade teacher at the school I work at.  I'll have to mention it to her, maybe she'll want to be a friend on my blog too!

Claire's Thirteenth New Friend: That is what happens when you eat dessert first!

This week I attended my friend Chariti's wedding in Phoenix. I worked at Maggie's Place with this awesome lady, who has been working there for the past 10 years. If you don't know what Maggie's Place is, it is a nonprofit with 3 homes in Phoenix and one in Cleveland for pregnant women who are alone or on the streets. The typical staff member works at Maggie's Place for only about 1 year because you actually live in the house with the women and babies....and you make a stipend. It is definitely a life changing experience. So, as you can imagine, the turnover rate is pretty high, and if you work there for over one year, you get to know a lot of different staff members. Chariti knows pretty much all of the staff who have ever worked there. And a large portion of them were at her wedding.

I was lucky enough to sit with a group of alumnae staff, which is comparable to sitting with a group of alumni from your college or high school who are close in age. Some of us worked in the same house, but at different times, we compared insane and unfortunate baby names, and told horror stories of diaper blow outs and crazy residents. I sat right next to my new friend Kate Raber. She moved from Bremerton, WA to become a staff member at Maggie's Place in 2005. She worked at The Magdalene House in downtown Phoenix, hated the desert and was counting the days until she could move back to lush Washington, untilllll she met the man she was going to marry! Enter Jason Raber, a pastor at Redemption Church in Tempe. Kate and Jason's love story has been passed along from year to year and is what Maggie's Place staff members' dreams are made of. Seven years later, Kate and Jason are married, living in Chandler/Gilbert (aka DESERT!) with 3 beautiful little kiddos. Kate brought her youngest baby, 4 month old Magdalene, with her to the wedding. Man, she is cute!

A little cake was sitting at each of our place settings at the wedding before the food was served. While waiting for the food, Kate and I were getting a little hungry, so we decided to eat the topping on the cake, which was an edible charcoal colored sugar diamond. Well....our mouths turned black. Not just the inside, but it was dripping on to our lips. Good trick Chariti and Joel! Congratulations!!


Photo to come....it is on somebody else's camera.