Thanks

Prometheus, teacher of every art, brought the fire that hath proved to man a means to mighty ends.

Three years ago, New York woke up and had a very bad day. Like many others, I spent most of that day frantically trying to get cell phone reception so I could figure out who was alive and who was dead. Given that I had previously worked on the 89th floor of 1 WTC, and that it appeared from television images that one plane had flown directly through my former office, I had ample reason to fear the worst, even before the towers collapsed.

Although it was touch and go for over 12 hours, I made contact with everybody in the end and miraculously lost no one. Many others weren't as lucky as me, weren't as lucky as the people I was concerned about. They lost friends, relatives, co-workers -- people who were important to them, people who were taken from them without warning.

It's true that life can be capricious and whimsical on any given day, but on that particular day, life's whimsy was downright cruel. That's why, for the third year in a row, I'm choosing to spend the day just connecting with the people around me, so they can know how much I appreciate and value them. That includes various members of the poker blogging community and the larger "blogosphere". Some of you I knew before I started blogging, some I've come to know afterwards, and some I know only from your writings, but you're all important to me in various different ways.

Thank you for being my friends, thank you for being interested in what I have to write, and thank you for expressing yourselves here from time to time.