The Long and Shorty's of It

Saturday night was a rare occasion.  The girls got together sans children AND husbands and headed to a little NH chain called Shorty's - A Mexican Roadhouse.  Without the whines and cries of our beloved offspring and "The Dans" befriending everyone who works in the restaurant, it was ALMOST as though we were back in college. 

• College roommates don't mind if you take notes during dinner.  In fact, they encourage it.

• You will be made fun of if you chose to order a Caesar salad at a Mexican restaurant, even if you can get it as a wrap.

  

• After a margarita and a half it is hard to read a menu with no pictures on it.
• Chinglalingas is a dirty dish to publicly display under appetizers.  
  

• Necesito escribir en espanol porque soy una baracha!
• If something is advertised as "con fajitas" does that mean that it comes with an entire side of fajitas? 

• What is the difference between being buzzed and just having a plain old good time?

• If you are going to be an overattentive server, we would appreciate that the drinks come a little more quickly and you care less about what food we are going to order.
  

• After a few drinks, Captain Obvious braces us for the fact that she is thinking about changing careers....again
  

• Leave it to Holly, of all people, to say the most poignant thing of the night, "Life has changed, but we have not."  Which she then sealed with a manly belch.
  

March Madness

March is sort of like the middle child of the year - stuck between being winter and spring. Poor March.  

For me, March celebrates the birth of three very important people.  I have always been steadfast in my belief that the best thing about me is my friends and have been lucky enough to have made them throughout each phase of my life, and though miles continue to separate us and our lives are constantly taking different paths, all roads seem to lead back to each other.

March 9 celebrates Izzy, my college roommate.

  

To have Izzy in your life, you must be prepared for perpetual sunshine.  We first met at the ripe age of eighteen in Williamson Hall at UNH and while I enjoyed sunshine, I didn't mind a rainy day either.  She loves to reminisce about our first meeting.  It was early one morning, and when I say early, I mean we were up and getting ready for some 8am lecture.  And there is Izzy, dare I say, happy to start a new day even if it is still dark out...I was not quite as thrilled as she to be awake nor was I prepared for someone to be so chipper so early in the morning.  Needless to say, neither of us made a good impression on the other.  

Fast forward three years; she and I end up roommates senior year.  Knowing each other by this point, when she awoke at 4am to attend her nursing clinicals, I would open my eyes, greet her with a good morning, and fall back into my slumber. 

March 14 is the birth of my childhood best friend, Julie.

Julie and I have probably known each other forever, but it wasn't until Bonny Becker's Birthday Bash (that last part for the pure alliteration of it) that we became Best Buds (I can't stop!)  It was actually a birthday party where we made friendship bracelets.  What I remember is Julie being funny and us laughing so hard that it was the first time she made me pee in my pants, and certainly not the last...ImaJean Tallahassee.  Julie is a portal to my childhood and during the rare occasions when our lives put us in New Jersey at the same time, I never tire of her reliving those years.  I do however regret that she has them immortalized on film...

March 23 is for my Clairie

She is the crossover friend who shares childhood memories, but more importantly was the definitive best friend of those weird years after graduating college and trying to figure it all out-- our "quarter-life crisis"  I had sort of moved back to Jersey, for lack of knowing what it was I wanted to do, and she was in some job she hated.  It was during this time that we both found our paths - mine in teaching and hers in fashion. 

This picture is pure blackmail and undermines her beauty in ways that I would never be able to explain, but she was the friend who was undoubtedly the best during this period.

This picture is old, and it undermines her beauty, but it was taken in her dorm room in London and is sentimental, which is also Clairie.  She is everything that is tradition to me in the best way possible.