2022, May 26 Who loves a solicitation call?

 Two things I love: My little house in Richardson that I owned for 33 years and The Lamplighter School. Today, I received a fundraising campaign call from The Lamplighter School's advancement office. I sometimes forget but I really do love to continue giving every year to The Lamplighter School. CC introduced herself (she wasn't working at Lamplighter when I was there) and told me right up front, we had a very dear friend in common: MS. She had worked at a major non-profit with MS for many years. They both got laid off on the same day as part of a poorly designed "restructuring." MS is a dear friend from church that rented my cute little house the first 9 years I lived in Maine (and I sold the house immediately after she moved to another state...she spoiled me as a landlady, she was such a great tenant). CC had spent time with MS in my house and so she knew my name from MS. Then she got the job at Lamplighter and there was my name again. Even after my being gone so many years, she said my name comes up in conversation or she'll see it in print and she always thinks, "Ah, MS's friend."

I wonder what degree of me it is when someone knows my old house as well as me?

2022, Jan 2: We go way back

CL posted a "Happy Birthday" wish on ML's newsfeed. How do these two know each other? CL is a UMF graduate who is now a social studies teacher in Maine. ML is the son of my sister's friend Big ML--they were stationed in Orlando together in the 1980's. Big ML became a family friend and we stayed in touch through my sister. I knew that over time, ML got married, retired from the Navy, moved to Maine, had children. When I moved to Maine, I got in touch with ML through Facebook. In 2009 or so, I participated in a 2-day conference in Big ML's town and stayed at his family's home and got to know Big ML's wife, daughter, and ML. I became Facebook friends with the whole family. For 10 years, I've watched ML and his sister grow up, go to college, and become cool adults. Today I found out that cool adult ML knows cool social studies teacher CL--they went to high school together and are best buds.