Old Friends and New

Well I am reflecting on how blessed I am to have amazing, wonderful friends. My friend Jessica came to visit last weekend - she was only here for 1 night and I only saw her for a total of 6 hours, but it was completely wonderful. She was my roommate in college for sophomore and senior years, and we just have a great connection. She spent the past year in China so we hadn't talked in over a year - but when we got together it was like we never spent a day apart! I just love that!
She arrived at my home Friday around 5pm. I showed her my home as she had never seen it, and then we went to the Bangor City Forest for a walk. It was great to just talk and enjoy the beautiful Maine air. Then we went out to eat along with my hubby and had lots of fun laughing and sharing about our lives. Once back at home, I got to see some (not all) of her photos from China. They were so amazing! She spent a big part of her time in some of the larger cities doing language study, but then the rest of the time she traveled around western China seeing some of the much more rural areas of the huge country. It was hard to go to sleep that night because I just wanted to use up every possible minute talking with her, but the fact that I had to work the next morning motivated me to get some sleep. Anyway, it was a blessed time with an old friend.
Then recently I've also connected with my friend Tony. We were friends in high school and sort of lost touch during the college years. Now he's married to Jolie and we have reconnected through myspace - of all things! So they invited us over for dinner Saturday night. It was so much fun! I had never met Jolie before, plus they had two other friends there - Morgan and Jason. It was great to catch up with an old friend - Tony - but also start to develop new friendships with everyone else. We laughed so hard that I started to have trouble breathing (the only time my asthma kicks in is during intense laughter), and we had serious conversations about faith and church and life. And we played Cranium - girls vs. boys, and the girls won - of course!
That's what I've been thinking about today, so I thought I'd share.

Remembering

Yesterday was an important day for a few reasons. One - the most obvious - was that it was the 5 year anniversary of the day our country was attacked by terrorists on 9/11. I remember the day it happened. I was at Gordon in a class upstairs in the chapel. One of my classmates had gone to use the bathroom, and when she came back up, she brought us the news. Our country was under attack. It was a shock to us all. We stayed in class for a little bit, but then most of us were wanting to go call our families and find out what was really going on. We went downstairs and I headed to Lane where I saw people gathered around the televisions. It was then that it hit me - this was big. I decided to head to my room where I could process what was going on. I called my mom and she had not been aware of it. I went to school about 1/2 hour from Boston, which is where some of the planes were hijacked from, so it was close to where I was.

All of this took place on my 21st birthday. It was hard to celebrate on that day - a day of tragedy, sorrow, and death. And now, 5 years later, I will never forget that day. I hope that we always remember how we felt on that day and how we came together for the sake of our neighbors.

Life Is Good

Well I'm sitting on the couch watching TV with my dog curled up at my feet. Yes, she's supposed to sleep only on the futon, but lately we've let her up on the couch when we're up with her. (We're softies...)

Anyway, life is good. I just had a 4 day weekend with my hubby. We got a bunch of stuff done plus had some nice time with each other. It's been a while since we've been able to do that. One of the most exciting things we did this weekend was paint our bedroom and our guest room. We painted our previously dark teal bedroom a light gray-blue and then sponge painted a darker bluish gray over it. It looks so good! I am so excited, because our room is so much brighter and happier to be in now. And, the guest room which used to be sky blue is now a nice sea green-blue color. Plus, both rooms ceilings are now painted white instead of icky half-painted grossness.

So it's been nice, and I am not looking forward to going back to work tomorrow. I feel like I need another day off so that I can clean up all the mess we've made with the painting projects... Well I'm signing off for now. I'm going to finish off my weekend with a nice bubble bath.