Friends

I was very lucky yesterday and today to be a stop on the Great Erin/s and Maggie Road Trip of 2009. I would have been thrilled to host these friends in Madison, where I had friends, but it was especially nice to have guests in this new home where (since Charlie is currently on the Rez, as he will be every week) I know not a single other person. Except the garbage guy, Patrick. Oh, and the CSA lady, Karna. But really, I have not even a real acquaintance here... so friends at all was wonderful. And what was even more wonderful, was that Maggie turned in her dissertation, from my house, this morning. Dr. McConnell! What followed was the best. After a round of high-fives, we went to town and drank bloody marys in the "Coffee and Spirits" shop of a circa 1927 Route 66 motel. So first, I am thrilled to be with people who delight in getting bloody marys at noon on a Tuesday. And we're sitting there, talking about both the common experience of events and people at college, in Brooklyn and beyond. We asked another customer, a middle-aged Chicos-shopping woman to take our picture. She asked where we were visiting from. A flood of un/necessary answers came out, "L.A., well, Pasadena, well, Cambridge... and Oregon and well, I just moved here... and..." Erin offered that Maggie just completed her Ph.D and I just finished a J.D. "Smart women!" the photographer said. And we followed up with, "and she's studying architecture at Harvard and she's getting an MBA and... and... and." She was pleased and overwhelmed. And I was so happy to be with, for lack of a better term, what I consider "Wesleyan-caliber" friends. It's really what I associate with people I know from that place. These are friends earning advanced degrees and doing amazing things who don't think twice about drinking strong bloody marys with you on a Tuesday morning, to celebrate one person's success and us all being together.