Hanerino

There's a writing principle that says that things that come in threes are inherently funnier, more satisfying, or more effective. Three months ago we brought another life into the world, and that little guy made us a family of three (sorry, Milo). The Hanerino logo has always had three spirals. We've bought our first house three years ago. Our third wedding anniversary is next month. Three has been pretty good to us.

But last year, three gave us a scare. My father, after a somewhat routine doctor's appointment, discovered that he had not one, not two, but three types of cancer. Radiation and chemotherapy ensued. Surgery to remove a lung was aborted. Things looked bleak. Would my son ever meet his grandfather?

Luckily for us, three finally got its shit together and my father's health has turned around. Just last month he received a positive report from his doctor, the cancer in his lung had actually been reduced. But even this good news couldn't distract me from thinking about the limited time he may have, and how we had to capitalize on that. In fact, as I write this, he's dealing with sharp pains on his right side that could be serious.

Eight years ago I started a little thing called Refresh Boston. A dozen people attended the first event and a few months later we had a speaker, an unknown developer who spoke about a JavaScript library he created. He called it jQuery, maybe you've heard of it?. Several years later the always entertaining Jared Spool drew over 100 people to an event. And up until recently, we've had regular events with great attendance.

Refresh Boston events at Microsoft's NERD Center

But 2014 has seen zero Refresh events. Between having a baby and preparing for a move and having venue issues, we've lost our momentum. I knew that even if I wasn't moving away, I'd need help. And now I've got that help.

I'm leaving Refresh Boston in good hands, and events will continue. In fact, we've got a special reboot event scheduled for Thursday, September 18th with none other than Mat Marquis. It will be my last and I hope to see you there. More details to come, but your new hosts will be Tim from Fresh Tilled Soil & Ian from Future Insights. We've talked things over and they're prepared to make Refresh even better by bringing you more fantastic events while sticking to the mantra we expect from Refresh chapters. As much as I'll miss putting these monthly events together, I feel good about the future of Refresh Boston.

With only a few weeks left before we say goodbye to Boston, we wanted to put together a going away party of sorts to make sure we saw as many of our friends and colleagues, and favorite places, as possible. So we've decided, in Boston fashion, to do one last pub crawl on Saturday, September 6th. It'll be an all-day event, and we'll post the schedule online so that you'll be able to meet up with us along the way and share a drink. And you're obviously welcome to join us for an entire day of drinking if that's your thing too.

Please, join us for some beverages. We can't drink them all.

If you can join us, we'd love to see you. Just visit the Last Crawl for Alcohol page and RSVP using MailChimp's excellent Gather tool so we can let you know about updates to the pub crawl and send you day-of text messages about where we'll be (your phone number will be deleted from MailChimp's database the day after the event for privacy concerns).

We'll miss you, Boston. You've been really good to us, and we won't forget that.

PS. Yes, I titled this post after the Drake song of the same name. But I urge you to listen to Christina Grimmie's cover from The Voice. It's pretty magical.