A number of friends have achieved or will be achieving some significant goals this month, so a round of congratulatory back-slappings is in order for the following individuals:

• My good buddy and the official Web guru of this very site, Jack Hattaway, who has finally completed his undergraduate degree. Specifically, he has been awarded a BFA in ceramics, which provides him with formal validation to pursue a hobby and passion he’s been playing with for several years anyhow.
  

• Jack’s lovely Mrs. Jack, a.k.a. Natalie Hattaway, who has received her Master’s degree in education. She is now even better prepared to mold the minds of the next generation than she has been for the last several years of mind-molding.
  

• My old Cambridge drinking companion and Evil Twin, Robert Ellenson, who has successfully defended his doctoral dissertation on obscure English literature (specifically, religious texts that no one outside of academe will have heard of, including myself) and must now be addressed as “The Doctor.” Unlike Jack and Natalie, who have now received sanctioning for things they’ve been doing anyhow, The Doctor’s degree has virtually nothing to do with the career path he has somehow stumbled into. Imagine that.
  

• Finally, my “little brother” Jeremy Brooks, who makes artificial limbs and others prosthetics for a living, will be completing his one-year residency shortly and will then become eligible to be certified as a fully-qualified prosthetician. Jer is himself a user of prosthetics and understands the needs of his patient-clients in a way that I imagine few other people in his field do. I fully expect him to someday open his own shop…