A friendly visit

 

Last week, our friends Kirsten and Craig came to stay with us and explore the city. Instead of a two-day visit, we enjoyed an extended visit Tuesday-Saturday, thanks to the horrible weather (major snow storm followed by ice storm) in Seattle. They couldn't fly home, so these good friends were trapped here with us in San Francisco. Intern and I were pretty gleeful in regards to their two days of flight cancellations, and we didn't even try to hide it.

Kirsten and I met in 1992, when we both played softball (it was tee ball really) with the Alcott Allstars. We were in 2nd grade, the league didn't keep score, and our uniforms were marigold and boxy. We went to the same elementary school, but Kirsten and I didn't reunite again until late high school, and had some dubiously amazing experiences together during a high school trip to Italy. We were close friends through college, where there were more (and better) visits to Italy together. Now many apartments, cross-country moves, and years later, we're back on the same coast, if not the same state.




We had a few good meals, a couple false goodbyes, lots of pajama coffee and tea breaks, long talks, cat-talks (all of us, turns out, are exclusively cat-people) rounds of bananagrams, and I didn't take a single photo of us together. Not one. I forgot all about that documenting-the-crap-out-of-everything thing that I do sometimes.

We've had a sad record these past few years of only seeing each other once every 12 months. Thanks to the state of emergency in Washington, we were able to get good and caught up in each other's lives last week. I was almost sad to hear Kirsten and Craig were finally able to get on a flight to get back to Seattle, but I know Kirsten has chickens to feed, and an herb farm to plan. Oh, and Craig, is amazing and has a robe better than any other robe I have ever seen.