Today I have two anniversaries to think about. First, it is one year ago today that my second daughter was born, Anna Sophia Mack. She is complete joy – exceptionally beautiful, and she even looks like me (I know, it is an enigma). This last year has gone by so fast, just like the cliché that every parent I’ve ever met has told me.

But today is also another one-year anniversary. On the evening of that same day, my good friend Jeff Byers was in a car accident. After two months in a coma, Jeff died. These two events will always be linked for me, but that’s not such a bad thing. I am happy to be reminded of Jeff. As I sit at my desk writing this, I’m remembering of a good Jeff story.

Six years ago I started remodeling my house. On the third floor was a very small bedroom that I knew would make the perfect wood-paneled office that I had always dreamed of having. In fact, I had already bought the prefect desk, one of those giant walnut monsters that oozes class and substance. A quick check, however, showed that the desk was too big to make it up the stairs and into the soon-to-be office. Talking with my contractor, we decided to get a crane to lift the thing in as we added a gabled roof.

Telling Jeff this story, he was appalled by the inelegance of my brute-force solution to the oversized desk problem. Quickly, he organized a contest at work to see who could come up with a better (or at least more imaginative) way of getting my desk into my office. When the deadline for entries arrived, over a dozen solutions were submitted, involving things like operas, dolphins, weather balloons, and leaf-cutting ants. My personal favorite had Susan (now my wife, but then my girlfriend) convincing me that it was more manly to leave the desk downstairs (I’m quite sure that one would have worked). Jeff judged the entries, with winners paid in beer.

In the end, the process of remodeling the room into an office removed a few walls and opened the stairs sufficiently to allow the desk to go up them after all. The office was finished around the desk, so that it is now a permanent part of the room.

Thanks for that memory, Jeff. We all still miss you.