Tonight I talked for hours with a friend I haven’t talked to in months. Although we were as close as two people could be years ago, recently we have grown apart. It was not because of anything that happened, but rather we got busy and didn’t keep up contact well. In spite of the time between us, we talked as if we hadn’t missed a beat. That’s the way we’ve always been. I can’t really explain the connection that we have but since we met there has always been a weird level to our relationship. Even when I had a boyfriend and he had a girlfriend we were able to talk more intimately with each other than with anyone else. In the past couple months I got really sad thinking that we weren’t going to stay close after we left school, especially since we didn’t talk a lot while we were there. However, tonight was the most wonderful, uplifting conversation I’ve had in so long. We feel exactly the same way about each other and it’s perfect when you can share your feelings with someone who understands everything you say. Although he’s the total opposite to me, he’s very good at sharing emotions and getting into my head. For my part, I can see the good in him and the way that he’s always trying…even when he falls short. I worried that our closeness might interfere with other aspects of our lives (we are definitely just friends, but sometimes good friends seem like more to other people) but he told me not to worry. It seemed odd and flowery coming from him, but he described our friendship as a relationship on a pedestal, above of the world around it. I think it’s really important to have someone who is family. He’s mine. There is no weirdness about it, no relational ties or sibling rivalry, just the knowledge that we can never get rid of each other; we are lifetime friends.

We got so burnt! Look at (e:Mike)'s back...I'm the same way...

Nope, these are just pictures from our day at the beach. The weather was so great, just enough of a breeze to lull you into thinking that it wasn’t hot and you weren’t getting burned to a crisp. Okay, well I’m not too burnt but I will definitely be sporting the lobster chic skin until my redness turns to tan (I hope). Anyway, enjoy the pictures of (e:Mike)…I know you are all jealous that I got to beach it with someone so hot!

I was working on a fundraiser for an organization that I routinely support and I decided to look them up online. I came upon this link which I’m posting. It’s a report by Elliot Spitzer about professional fundraising for 2001-2002 and it has lists and lists of statistics about the percentages of donations that actually go to charity. It’s pretty amazing and a site worth bookmarking. Enjoy…or be horrified.

I used to love the show Made on MTV. For those of you who have not seen it, it’s basically a reality show that takes kids (usually in high school) and gives them a chance to get made into anything they want. They get a coach who is an expert in whatever they want and in three months they work toward a major goal. In the end there is a final test or event that proves how well they have been “made”. In the first season there were some really interested kids with fantastic goals. One football player wanted to become an opera singer, a prissy girl wanted to be a BMX biker, etc. I loved trying to think of things I would be Made into if I could be on the show (of course I would never ever want to be on tv). It was such a departure from all the other reality tv shows that exploited people and showed how greedy and cunning humans are. This show highlighted the capacity for people to have dreams; it showed how hard work can help you achieve something more important than money or peer acceptance. But now Made is so disappointing. The new kids seem to basically want to be made popular. Each week it’s like one wants to be the prom queen, another wants to be class president, etc. I used to love Made because I felt like it showed people (especially vulnerable high school kids) that they could do something completely unexpected and really be good at it. Now it just feeds into all the stereotypes about what kids should want. I used to give the kids so much credit because they were reaching outside of the norms of their peer group, but now they are just getting professional help to run a student council campaign. Sure, some kids still have neat goals, but it’s become much more diluted. I miss the old days of Made, when kids were really putting themselves out there and achieving more than they ever thought they