Keeper

Opera
Cycling
San Francisco Giants
Mike Fox
Pizza pizza pizza
Sports radio
Really comfortable socks."

These are a few of your favorite things, and thanks to you, now they are mine too. You should come with a warning label: "Caution -- Befriending this man will cause you to be infected by unforeseen hobbies and interests." Because when you like something, you REALLY like it. Like really. Like you wont shut up about it. And because you wont shut up about it, those of us in Sammy's world have no choice but to try it, and the next thing we know we're in an opera house in hour 4 of a Wagner magnum opus, or we're huffing on a bike on some pristine backroad staring at your behind and wondering how, exactly, did I get here? Of course, some of your interests never quite stuck (see fantasy Tour de France, x-country skiing), but for the most part the things you like are really fantastic, they stick, and our lives are better for them.

So that’s one thing. The other is that you have this way of being just exactly right. Highy annoying -- like when you tripled the estimated cost and time for our remodel (grr!). Freakish too -- like how you consistently predict the naked bootleg. But it also means that you have a knack for saying just exactly the right thing at the exactly the right time. Like the time I went from having a crap boss to a great boss, and you said I should celebrate the occasion by going out and doing something nice for myself. Of course, what you, being Sam, exactly said was that I should go buy all new underwear. And of course, like so many other times, both in terms of celebrating the occasion and in terms of bodily comfort, you were just exactly right.

Which is all to say that I’m glad that years ago you decided to share an apartment in San Francisco with our favorite pain in the ass, Hecker, because that's how you and I became friends. And I'm glad it's continued through the countless runs, rides, angst exchanges, the backpacking, the float, the boys trips, the family trips, the weddings, the kid, the other kid, the daily IMs, the sports debacles, the moves, the remodels, the hangin’. A few years ago we moved, at great cost to my neuroses, a lot closer to you, from a house a few miles away to a new house just a few blocks away. When people ask why we moved, I usually mumble some vague non-reason like "Oakland is cool." Really, though, it's more like because you have become, for whatever reason, one of those things we don't get too many of in life, especially as grownups: not just a friend, but a keeper. Happy Birthday dude.