A pleasant side-effect to my unexpected trip to Phoenix was that our good friends Jeff and Carol Duntemann invited us out to their house for dinner.  They also invited our mutual friends Pat and Sue Thurman.  The six of us shared dinner, drank perhaps a little too much wine, and enjoyed hours of conversations ranging from silly to serious–moving up and down that scale throughout the evening.  Later we went up on the deck to see the fireworks displays over the city.  Jeff and Carol’s house is in far North Scottsdale, and from their deck we could see a half dozen or more presentations that others were paying to see.  A thunderstorm coming in from the southeast added another dimension, with some spectacular lightning flashes adding to the man-made pyrotechnics.  This was the most enjoyable evening that Debra and I have had in a very long time.

Good friends are very rare and precious gifts.