Honorable Mention in the Non-daily Newspaper Column category of the Washington Press Association’s 2006 Communicator of Excellence Award. After discovering our car was stolen on the heals of learning my wife was pregnant with our second child and we were being forced to move, our troubles were put into shocking perspective with news of an old friend’s cancer diagnosis he received shortly before his wife went into labor with their second daughter. — “Here’s the topper: the day she was born, Marc was under the knife getting three cancer-swollen lymph nodes removed from his neck.” —