SLICE #23- An old friend

So last night I had a class and walked out of school after 8:00.
It was warm. In the sixties.
I didn't even put my jacket on.
And this morning, when I got up super early to do schoolwork,
because I was too tired to do it last night,
it was raining, a nice soft spring rain.
Then two hours later, when I was ready to get dressed for school
I checked the news station to find out what the temperature was
and found out that school had been cancelled
because we were going to have a blizzard
except at that point it was really only about an inch of snow
between 6 this morning and 3 this afternoon,
we had about 15 inches of snow. A lot.
And everything was closed-
all the school districts, the malls,
the library, even the airport
was closed most of the day.

Finally, about 3:00 it stopped.
And I shoveled out the car
and made a 30 mile round trip
to go out to dinner.

Some people might wonder why
I would go out to dinner
when we had just had a blizzard
and the roads weren't all that great,
and there were tree limbs everywhere
but the roads actually weren't all that bad
the sun was shining,
and the main roads were mostly slush.

My best friend from college was in town
and I didn't want to miss seeing her.

Penny and I are sorority sisters.
We met my sophomore year in college,
lived together for most of the next three years
and have been friends ever since.

Penny's an adventurer.
She's married to Eric.
He's an engineer who works on projects all over the world.
They have three kids and when the kids were young
Penny stayed in the United States
she lived in West Virginia, and Florida,
and Maryland and Arizona
but now that their kids are grown
she travels all over the world with him.

She spent part of the last five years in Turkey
but then Eric retired, or retired for a little while
and they went on a bike odyssey
all over Asia, and Australia, and Europe.
I followed her adventures via blog.

Periodically she would come back to the States
to celebrate a birthday or wedding
and we would squeeze in breakfast,
or a walk at the Botanic Gardens.
But now she's back for good.
She's going to live on the Western Slope
about five hours away
still far
but a whole lot closer
than Turkey
and I will get to see her
a lot more often
I hope.

This week she was in town
just for a couple of days
and we had planned to have dinner tonight
but then the blizzard came
and we thought we were not
going to pull it off.

Then the weather cleared
and so I got in the car
and drove 30 miles
to have dinner at her hotel
because Penny is an old, old friend

And old friends are important.