Last night my staff and I (minus Merete, who’s in Italy with columnist Peggy Markel) took our three departing editorial interns out for a thank you dinner courtesy Hapa Sushi, one of our sponsors.

While our interns dutifully asked if the chicken was free-range and I showed Mark, the uber-cool owner, my sustainable fish iPhone app, we ordered a tonnage of food and drink and enjoyed the company of a few random friends, better halves and one VIP (the US’s Hottest Male Buddhist Blogger, as voted by ele readers, ’09: the good Rev. Danny Fisher, in town to meet with some Naropa professors and do some unknown reconnaisance work [given his Mad Men look and habit of appearing randomly all over the globe, I now call him the Buddhist Double-O Seven]).

The iPhotos, flash-less, are dark and murky.

But in any case I did want to thank Elleni, Claire and Claire: they’ve worked since January, in which time they’ve helped us to nearly double in size, readership-wise. They’ve penned some great articles of their own, that reflect far more research than I myself generally am able to do, and they’ve learned about social media (during which time we won the national twitter award for #green content) and been a diligent, fun presence at our new digs at The Candy Shop, an eco/modern co-office in downtown Boulder.