The Journey -It's a Long One

I'm at kind of an impasse with myself. I don't even know how to begin. I haven't updated anything of substance for so long, and the longer it gets the more I find myself asking what the point is of trying to catch myself up in the blogging world. It's been nearly eight months since I've been back in Utah. Eight months, and I still type the words and my brain says, "In that place completely devoid of any cultural diversity." So there's that. Eight months, and I'm still figuring it out; What this new phase of my life looks like. The thing I most often compare what I've been through is the defibrillating of a heart. When we defibrillate a heart --send a giant shock to the muscle-- there is a moment when the heart is completely stunned into stillness. We resume CPR (contrary to what you have seen on tv) immediately after the shock to force the heart muscle through the motions of beating. To pump oxygen to the muscle so that it can begin to beat again on it's own. For two minutes we pump oxygen to the heart muscle before we check for a return of spontaneous circulation. Before we see if the heart is able to do it again on it's own after such a giant shock.

As much as I planned and was looking forward to moving closer to family, I was ill-prepared for what a shock it truly was to my system. To me. I look back to those first few days and I wonder if they actually happened. Was this real life? Did I actually leave a beloved friend's wedding to drive 800 miles, unpack my entire life in a day and start a new job two days after leaving the place that still feels like home? It's all such a blur. I remember smiling and faking it a lot --just because I was so stunned from the change that I couldn't keep up with reality. I watched a lot of The Vampire Diaries, and listened to a lot of music --because they were constants. I remember hoping that I wouldn't be unbearable enough to permanently damage any friendships, but feeling powerless to change or take control over any of it. It's all such a fog now!  I feel as though I'm finally emerging from the fog though, finally keeping up with life.

And oh those people who saw me through it. The girl that left so long ago is not the one who returned. The girl that left who had never lived without roommates, thrived on being constantly surrounded by people, with lists of things to do and social functions to attend. The girl who lived for all things college-life. That girl came to value the calm and serenity of solitude. She came to no longer fear being truly alone with herself, she didn't need the other noise anymore. The obsession with all things college-related moved to an obsession with the Yankees, and Broadway, art and literature, and love, and being outside, and self-discovery. The girl who never missed an episode of Grey's Anatomy realized that she hadn't actually liked the show for the past four years, yet continued to watch every week. Until that realization. Things just change. Not my most eloquent words, but simple and true. It was a long seven year process. It still is. It always is. That's life, right?

And the thing about only seeing people on vacation -family and friends- is that you only see the best parts of each other. It's all sunshine and reunions and catching up. Before any of the real-life hits it's time to go back to your real lives. And so it's been rough. I'm so grateful to have friendships that have stood the test of time and change and growth. For friends who are still friends even when I bail on plans we've made. Friends that have put up with me during this tumultuous time of my life --I quite honestly haven't made it easy on anyone. But it's getting easier for me. Easier to be here. I no longer cry on the way home from my parent's house or from my brother and sister-in-laws. I no longer cry at the thought of having to put scrubs on and go to work. I no longer require ten minutes of sitting in my car to talk myself in to going in to work. It took a lot of Wednesday nights, a lot of cross-continent venting sessions, a lot of therapy-writing, a lot of wistful text messages to my Seattle family, and ultimately a dinner in Seattle with the people of the last five years of my life to let me normalize myself.

The opening sentence to each journal entry written during the first six months of living here:

*I never wanted to come back here. I've hated it here since I left if I'm being honest with myself. (Sept.)
*What was once a passion is now a mindless diversion. I smile, I say the right things, I don't care. This isn't what I signed up for. It's not the vision, not the plan. (Sept.)
*I hate it here, I hate it here, I hate it here, I hate it here. (Oct.)
* It's been a reflective past couple months. I'm struggling to hold on to myself. To the girl that I fought so hard to become. (Dec)
*I'm still hanging in here, just trying to figure life out. (Jan.)
* I haven't felt "at home" for six months. Every part of me feels out of place. (Jan.)

Thoughts scribbled on my trip back to Seattle in the end of January --meant to be notes to a long and beautiful blog post, then two months went by and I still hadn't written it anywhere outside of my head:

*It feels like I'm going home.
*It's been six months since I've been on a plane,and I'm strangely out of my routine. The ear planes, the phone, the iPad, the noise cancelling headphones, I'm out of practice!
*The airport smells like home!
*Never underestimate the comfort to be found in a grocery store that's familiar.
*Everything looks familiar here. There are trees everywhere, and it's just easier to breathe. Like a weight is finally off my chest.
*It's more than just familiarity. It's the sitting in a room at a dinner table full of people that you've been through the worse of your life with. As have they. And we're all healed. And happy. And whole.

That trip. That dinner. There are just no words to describe. What I came away with was that it wasn't the location that I missed. It was the familiarity and the bonds of friendship that I missed.  My dear friend Janice put it best when she said, "This whole weekend has been amazing. It has shown me how people can truly heal, even from their lowest lows. How change can be good, and sad at the same time. How sometimes friends are more family than your family is. And how even after many years, those trusted in your darkest moments are still your biggest support no matter the time or distance between you... What a good weekend of memories, friendship, and love."  There are many people I wanted to see, but didn't have time to. And a couple that I would have liked to spend more time with than I did, but the group at that dinner table could not have been more perfect. Every person at that table had been through the roughest part of their lives at some point in the last five years. And each person there had seen each other person through it. We all know each other's skeletons and deepest secrets because we lived through them. And to sit there and just look around and how whole and happy and healed and grown up everyone was. It was mind-blowing. The moments we shared. The moments and the way that we took care of each other. The way we leaned and relied on each other. Bonds forged in the fire that can never be broken. It's strange the way feeling so at home for a weekend made me okay with coming back to my life. But okay I was. I came back and I felt like myself again.

I had a moment. A flashing moment on the tarmac just as we were picking up speed (my favorite part of a flight) about to take off from Seattle soil where I panicked. Where I felt like,and actually contemplated, running up the aisle and screaming, NO! I don't want to go! Don't take me away from here! Tears rolled down my cheeks and my breathing became shallow and rapid, panicked. Before I took a deep breath and told myself, no. It's ok. It's time for you to figure this out. Go back and figure out this next step. And don't you dare be that quiet timid girl who dreamed small and accepted what was given. You fight. Fight to stay the you that is at peace and at home here. The girl who dreams and lives large and loud. The woman who is apologetically herself. You went through a lot to become her, don't loose her. Don't you dare stop exploring, experiencing, and loving. They may think you insignificant, but don't you dare make it so.

And that was it. I came home and I started living again. Not just going through the motions. I started running. I started being outside. I started smiling. I started uploading photos to facebook -something I hadn't felt like doing for months. I finally felt up to it. My dear friend Mercy is living in Ethiopia saving lives in the realm of public health --she's amazing. She had messaged me a day or so before having a homesick day -craving the familiar. As you do. The "home" in homesick is a very relative thing. I shared with her my post-vaca realization "The move was harder than I could have ever anticipated. I thought it was going to be easy to be honest. All good things, sunshine and roses and what not. Then I got here and was just in complete shock for six months. Just stunned with change. Going through the motions, grasping at anything that made me feel human...It wasn't really Seattle that I missed, it was the feelings. The people. My people. And thank God for modern technology, because I have those things with me everywhere.I have access to my people always. And maybe we don't get to all sit in the same room very often, but when we do, it's magic. Friendships like that never die. Even though it's hard to be thousands of miles from the people who know you best, and whom you love with all your soul, the relationships are there."

Even through the rough months I was SO blessed with amazing friends. Both far away -as described at length. But also here. And I don't want any of my struggles to take away from the sheer awesomeness of my people here. It's not them, it's me ;) My best friend from high-school and I have been getting together every Wednesday under the pretense of baking. Don't get me wrong we always bake something, but this has been the thing that I look forward to like no other. I count down to the days when I see her and her sweet family like therapy. Her friendship has been a constant through all phases of my life, and I couldn't be more grateful to be so close again.

My amazing brother and sister-in-law have saved me so many times! I leaned on those Sunday dinners and days when I could spend the day playing at their house with my nephew like it was necessary for my survival. And really, it probably was. I'm such a lucky girl to have such an amazing brother who married such an amazing woman and who makes such adorable little humans :)

My sister. Oh my sister. What would I do without her! Having her so close and always within text or call for my many freak-outs is a god-send. And her sweet husband and sweet sweet baby. I really have the luckiest family in the world.  My mom who loves me so much, and my dad who just gets me in a way that few people on this earth do. They're amazing.

And my Jill. Jill is my tie to my college years -that's when we became such good friends, and she's saved me in oh so many ways since I've been back. The parties, the dinners, the showing me where Target is,and where the yummy places to eat are, and really, just how to live here!! :)  Love her!

And that has been the last eight months of my life in re-cap. Minus the Seahawks superbowl win, and a couple other things to be blogged about later. There ya go Heids --I blogged ;)

Oh, and a couple of bonus random thoughts:

*I feel bad for people with thin naturally sleek frizz-free hair. They will never know the orgasmic joy of the silky smooth softness that is your hair after a deep conditioning Moroccan oil mask!

*Miracles aren't always punctuation marks. -Elisabeth R. Finch (The Fault in Our Stars)

*I'm OBSESSED with the ballerina project on instagram!!!

*I started my third week of training for a 5k today and actually enjoyed my run!  I'm not so much looking to love running --if I do that'd be great, but I just don't want to hate it anymore. I want it to be something I can do -even if I choose not to after running my 5k. I don't want to be stuck in middle school anymore where my attitude toward running currently resides.

Significativo

Every vacation I go on there is a moment. A moment when I sit back in wonder and say to myself, "This is why I travel." There is so much culture in the world, so much beauty, and so much to experience! I'm not naive enough to think that resort life is authentic real-life culture, but its in the meeting people, talking to them, hearing their stories, smiling, laughing with them, and learning their language. It's in the food, the drink, the music, the dance. That moment that must be felt, words cannot do it justice. We are all the same. And that is why I travel.

Pittsburgh State of Mind

So many things to still get caught up on. The good news is in my three days off in the last two weeks, I've started doing just that! I've read three books, cleaned my apartment, and well... that's just about it. The last book I read was The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephan Chbosky. Loved it. It was so well written and one of those books that is instantly relate-able and therefore in my opinion timeless. Everyone has a coming of age experience and the awkward transition that is middle to high school. The family story, the friend story, the personal story were all intertwined beautifully. I liked it so much that I ordered the movie on demand and enjoyed it instantly well. The whole thing put me in a Pittsburgh state of mind.

It's a place I had never visited before last fall and probably would never had visited had a dear friend not gotten married there. Now I have a sudden urge to go back just so I can ride under the tunnel completely free and utterly infinite with my hands in the air and my hair in the wind. And of course epic rock would be blasting from the stereo.

It is a remarkably beautiful place, and I'm quite grateful I had the opportunity to go. The thing I remember most about the trip of course is the memories made with dear friends.  There's something to be said for being able to get back together with our small group of three and not miss a beat. I had gone to Tampa with Ken the year before, and DC with Tricia the year before that, but the three of us hadn't been together since Key West nearly two and a half years previous.  And still when Tricia got in late that night, we all huddled in our hotel room to get caught up on everyone's lives. And it was as though we had never been apart.  Over the course of five minutes we went from Marfan Syndrome in Abraham Lincoln, to incest in West Virginia, to reconstructing a tympanic membrane, and wallpaper in home depot. Go figure :)

Ken and Sylvie's wedding was absolutely beautiful. Sylvia was stunning and radiant, the boat was the perfect setting, the music was fantastic, and the company was unbeatable. At the wedding another friend from NYC joined us, and it was great to see Heather and meet her fiance as well. At one point as the three of us were reminiscing about the good old days in the city, Heather's fiance just laughed at our stories and said, "Sex and the City is over ladies, you have all gone home." And he was right, and it was funny how well the analogy fit our time there together. And heather said it perhaps best in a line that hit me in many areas of my life. "Sometimes it wasn't meant to be. It was just a great moment." Beautiful.

Miss you Pittsburgh, miss you New York, miss you friends!

Athens

There was a day. A day in college when, after watching The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants, my roommates and I made a pact. We were going to Greece when we turned 30. Fast-forward ten years. One is married with baby number two on the way. One had plans to spend the summer in Southeast Asia with YouthClinic on a mission trip. And the other was slaving away working all summer for the University.  And there I was. Slaving away in Seattle... there's just one thing. I still had a dream. And I was committed. Fast-forward 13-months of planning and me and three dear friends from work are in an airport in Philadelphia. We were in the jet-way waiting in line to get on the massive airliner and it hit me. I was going to Greece. This was it, I'd really done it. We snapped a photo, roller bags in hand and settled into our seats.

I had never been on such a large plane! We had come prepared for the 12 hour flight with plenty of anti-anxiety and sleeping medications. After doling them out for the just-in-case-we-woke-up scenario, we settled in. When we got up in the air we cheers-ed with our waters and downed the lunesta. I reached up above me to turn off my overhead light... it did NOT turn off when you pushed it. It did however give me a good second-degree burn to my finger.  Never fear. I added a vicodin to my sleepy-cocktail, stuck the finger in my bottle of water and went to sleep. My finger felt better, but the blister stayed with me for the majority of the trip :(

We landed safely in Athens twelve hours later and I woke up just as we were descending. It was perfect.  Of course I had been woken up a few times on flight when the flight attendants brought us food. Apparently it's not like on domestic flights when if you're sleeping they assume you don't want your complimentary beverage and peanuts. I forgave them. Probably because of the narcotics.  Anywho... So we landed in Athens and made it through my first customs line. And we got our first stamps in our passports!!! Well, all of us but Krista.

It was a pretty big deal. So was the driver I had arranged for to pick us up and take us to our hotel. He had my name on a card and everything!! We followed him out to the car and he offered us each a bottled water for the drive. We accepted and got in the car, giddy with excitement. It was 9am when we landed in Athens and we were excited for a day of fun.  We each took a sip of our bottled water, and I don't know about everyone else, but I was instantly dismayed. I did not like the water in Greece. It had this TERRIBLE metallic taste to it. And I am a water drinker. Seriously. I kept at it though, thinking that I'd have to get used to it, or it was going to be a long week. After a few sips I said something to the other girls. They thought the same thing. It was at that moment that Siobhan remembered that the one time she'd taken lunesta before, she'd had the same problem. Boy was I relieved!!! It wasn't the water, it was a side-effect of the medicine. I was going to be ok after all.  Our driver was great, and even stopped on a ridge as we first came into Athens so we could take photos of the amazing ancient landscape.

We checked into our hotel at the Athens Cypria and settled in... Got connected to the wifi so we could check out Greek Google, then we headed out to explore. By far the pinnacle of our time in Athens was the amazing history we saw while there. There are no words to express how it felt to walk through the birthplace of democracy --literally. How crazy is that?!  And the ruins built by a civillization thousands of years ago that are still standing today. It was beyond words.

To-Do Lists

These are what keeps me sane. My 'save your money reminder board,' aka checklist, aka to-do list. The first one is a list of things I successfully planned and saved for. The second, my new list that replaced the old one this morning :) ...things I have in the works.

Our National Vacation

What a whirlwind!! One of my favorite places with two of my favorite people. A couple weeks ago I flew out to DC and met my parents where we all stayed on vacation for a week. It was an amazing time as always, only this time it was extra special because I got to share it with my parents. It was almost more fun watching them see the sights for the first time. It was great to be able to show them the little parts that I knew and to be able to explore new things together. We saw all the monuments and memorials, and even did a couple things I hadn't done, like Ford's Theater and the Museum of Crime and Punishment (both amazing). The only thing I'd like to do next time is the Spy museum... and maybe the National Cathedral. Apart from just getting to spend so much time together, one of the highlights for me (and I think for my parents as well) was the day that we rented a car and drove to Gettysburg. It's about a two hours drive from DC and absolutely worth it. Unlike last time when I was there though, this time we had a plan. We scheduled a private tour through the National Gettysburg Military Museum with a national park service certified battlefield tour guide. Best. Idea. I've. Ever. Had. Fred was amazing. And it was great to just hand him the keys to our rental car and have him drive us all around on our own private tour. He customized it to our interests and everything. Other favorites as always are Arlington National Cemetery and the changing of the guard (another must see for anyone going) and the Holocaust Memorial Museum. Kind of a morbid --no, solemn-- grouping of favorite places. I think it's somewhere everyone needs to see. Something everyone needs to experience. Apart from a couple small mishaps (maybe I booked a different hotel than the one I thought it was, and maybe I took us to the wrong airport... both ended up being ok, don't worry about it ;) the trip couldn't have been more perfect! Not even the blisters that I got on the first day lessened the greatness of the trip. Not even when they became infected and I had to go into work to have them debrided and drained and started on triple coverage antibiotics. The trip was just that amazing. I'd do the blisters again any day. In a heartbeat.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, that to secure these rights governments are instituted among men. We...solemnly publish and declare, that these colonies are and of right ought to be free and independent states...And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine providence, we mutually pledge our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor." 

- The Declaration of Independence

New York Revisited

Subtitle: A post about contradictions ...a glimpse into my messy mind... A LONG post.

I've been thinking since I got home. Thinking about how to quantify what New York is to me. How to put it in words. I don't know. New York was me, it is me. It transformed what I am, who I am. From the first moment I stepped into the city on vacation six short years ago. There aren't really words for what I felt. I was fixed, I was transformed. Something changed, something clicked on that I didn't know existed. I didn't realize it had clicked on for a while either. The weeks after we got home were a new experience for me. All of a sudden New York was everywhere. It was on commercials, tv shows, movies. It was in posters and in books. And I felt the most strange longing sort of ache in my gut that I had never felt before in my life. I missed it instantly. I missed it every day. A part of me knew that I was meant for that place. I'd be back. Six months after we returned from my inaugural trip I graduated with my second college degree. Eight months after that I was packing my bags and saying tearful goodbyes to family and friends as I prepared to leave the only life I'd ever known for a land three thousand miles away from the nearest thing or person I knew. It wasn't a conscious decision I made; it wasn't a thought of, 'I loved that place when I was on vacation, I should go back, I must live there.' It was more magnetic than that. Almost as though there was no conscious thought on my part. It was what it was. Every time I saw a plane fly overhead I yearned to be on it, bound for wherever it was going. I loved my home, I loved my family. There are no words for how much I loved them, and that's only gotten stronger now. I love and miss them more than I can say. But I was destined for adventure. I craved it with every fiber of my being. So when I decided to enter the world of travel nursing, New York was of course where I would go. There was no other option. Being new in the travelling aspect of nursing, the closest I could get was a hospital in Patchogue, NY on Long Island.

So, early that morning my sister, my car, and all my belongings set off on a very long drive. The first few hours were filled with hysterical sobs, terrifying fear of the unknown, and the terrible terrible ache of loneliness I already felt from leaving my parents. My sister was my only lifeline. My only saving grace. And she would be leaving me three days after I got settled in my new apartment on the east coast. But I had her for then, and that meant the world to me.

While living in Patchogue, I spent every spare moment I had in the City. I took the Long Island Rail Road in every chance I got. Each time we'd approach the city and the skyline would come into view chills went up and down my spine and an exhilarated smile crept onto my face like a reflex. I was completely giddy. Every time. Not one ounce of it faded the entire three months I lived there. I remember the last time leaving the city to go back to Patchogue to drive back to the west coast and on to my next assignment. My friend Danielle had flown out with me, and I just stood on the train, facing backward, a steady stream of tears running down my cheeks as I watched my skyline fade from view. There was a conscious knowledge this time that I wasn't done. That I'd be back.

Fast forward through two travel assignments, and my sister is with me again in Seattle as all my belongings are packed, and I'm saying tearful goodbyes to my friends that felt like life-long friends already. We headed east on the drive home and I cried again. There was only one time in my entire life that I've ever cried that hard (and I've done a LOT of crying), that was when I left home that first time. My poor sister had experience with my racking sobs this time. This time as we drove away, I felt my heart being ripped out of my chest. It had stayed in Seattle, and eventually when the strings to my heart broke, they elasticized back to the heart that owned them in the city of it's possession. They got mangled and bruised and bloody from the trauma. Falling in love messed me up. It broke me. But I knew that I was making the right decision. Although nothing in my life had ever been so painful. Even now as I write the memories, tears well up in my eyes and stream down my cheeks. The pain is still there, although fleeting and numbed over time. As we drove away though, there was a deep black empty aching throbbing hole in the center of my chest that I didn't know what to do with. So I filled it with cement, heavy and secure, determined to ignore it until it went away.

As my plane landed at Kennedy International Airport, the giddy feeling I had left behind on that LIRR train a year ago found me. I grinned the entire way into the city, all the way to my pre-war building apartment on West 34th Street. I had arrived. I was in the big city, and it was mine to conquer. I delved into life as a New Yorker and loved it with all my might. I saw it all, I did everything I wanted to do, and more things I hadn't realized before. I loved it until I didn't. It was all very strange. This was where I belonged after all. This was my mecca. This was my life. And yet, as I hugged my mom goodbye after a visit she had come for, I sobbed and heard myself say, "I hate it here!"  I hadn't realized it until that moment. And I still don't know that I hated it there, but I hated something about my life. I was miserable. I was homesick for Seattle. Homesickness was an interesting feeling for me, as I had not experienced it before. Ever. I miss my family, and I miss my home, sure. But I had never been homesick. Somehow while I was living my dream, I realized that Seattle had become my home.

When my contract ended at St. Luke's everything fell into place for me to go back to the hospital I work at now. Despite my best efforts to land in Florida.  It wasn't meant to be. I came back to Seattle, and it's stuck. I'm not sure why. I lament the fact that no hospital is as good as St. Luke's, no one does things as efficiently. I have moments that sometimes last for days when I miss New York like you'd miss breathing. I'm miserable here too at times. But that's life I think. I'm also blissfully happy here at times. When I was in New York, I was without a heart. Now that I'm in Seattle, I'm without my soul. It remains in New York. The very heart of who I am will always be there perhaps. But my heart is here, as am I. For the last three years. Three years I've been here, and finally a week ago I went back to visit my soul in what is still my favorite place on earth.

My plane landed at Kennedy International Airport. I met my former college roommates (as well as a hockey player who needed to use my phone... In retrospect, I should have investigated that further. It might not have ended so boring-ly) and we loaded into the shuttle that would take us into Manhattan where we were to celebrate Jill's birthday.  This time as we approached the city, there was no giddiness. What was there was the calm, quiet, supremely confident spirit of a New Yorker that I hadn't met in a while. There was an involuntary half-smile, but this time it was because I missed the way New Yorkers drove. We approached the city and the skyline came into view as Jay-Z's Empire State of Mind came on the radio. It was very poetic, and yet... different. The things that used to bring my such giddy excitement had become common place. I was relieved to be back, don't get me wrong. I could breathe easier, and I noticed that even standing in the baggage line my entire posture shifted to my New York self. But the things that made me blissfully happy to be back are not the touristy things. It was the thought of food in the East Village. It was the prospect of a quiet stroll through Greenwich Village, brunch in Chelsea. It was the very LIVING there that I missed. It was the food trucks, the smell of the subway, the veer of a taxi-cab, the pulse of the city that gets inside you. It transforms who you are.  And when I left, I left. It wasn't good or bad ...it just was. It was weird. I'm not sure what to make of it. Did I enjoy my time there? Without a doubt. Will I go back? Absolutely, as soon as possible. Do I still love it there? A resounding yes. But it's no longer what it once was. I don't know how it changed, or why, or what it has become to me now, I still love it every bit as much as before, perhaps more-so. And yet, I could leave.

Now, here I sit trying to quantify my feelings. I'm watching RENT and eating spekuloos with a spoon, creating my own NYC in my living room. It is still my favorite place in the world. I don't want to live there again. I don't know that I want to live here in Seattle anymore. Maybe it's that unrest that has me feeling out of sorts. I don't know what my next adventure will be. What of myself will I leave there? Or perhaps, what of myself will I find there? I can't make sense of the mountain of feelings I have right now, so I'm just sitting with them; just feeling them. They'll make sense of themselves in due time. What I will leave you with though is pictures of the two things I had never done before that we did on this most recent trip. We walked across the Brooklyn Bridge (or at least halfway ...at least I did... it was really cold and windy, but I was determined to do it) and we took pictures by the raging bull on Wall St. (which is not actually on Wall St., it's on Broadway about a block and a half south of Wall ...just in case you were wondering).

Oh... one more fleeting thing... When I last left New York, ground zero was still a giant hole in the ground surrounded by construction vehicles. Over the last three years, they have actually completed the 9/11 monument, and it's amazing.

Which reminds me. Also, last time I left New York, the new Yankee Stadium was nearing completion, and the old one still stood in all it's grandeur. The last time I was on that hallowed ground was for the last Yankee-redsox game played in the old stadium. Where that stadium once stood is now a public park. And the new building is immaculate and amazing.

Oh!!!  And one more thing I had never done before. I went to Staten Island!  Jill's sister had never been before and of course wanted to see the Statue of Liberty. So on our last night there we took the Staten Island Ferry. (for those of you keeping track ...this means I have still not been to Ellis Island)

And... just so you know, some things never change. (and really, if you're still reading this at this point, you deserve more pictures, just for a break ;) )

The most important thing that never changes is good friends. I love you Jill and hope you had the most wonderful of wonderful birthdays. Thank you for bringing me back here, and most of all, thank you for being one of the best friends I've ever had, and one of the greatest people I've ever known!