Thursday dinner and Friday lunch

After all the good news Thursday afternoon about Mojo, we headed back to our old neighborhood. Much has changed. Tysons Corner has grown quite a bit. Several houses in our old neighborhood have changed dramatically, with substantial new additions, the addition of new garages, new paint colors, etc. I suspect the new Architectural Review Board has been either quite busy... or quite lax.

Our old house hasn't seen any changes. The new owner is about 35 yrs old and this is, obviously, his first house. Still the same color, still the same entry, etc., but the photenia bushes are overgrown, there is ivy growing up one side of the house, and the bushes in the back look like they haven't been touched in 7 years. Oh.. and my sheers are still hanging in the two-story glass entry. It's almost as though he's moved in and hasn't done anything! It was almost sad.

But that's not my problem anymore! Yea! So we drove over to Patty & Bobby's - good friends of ours and Scouting parents from the boys' old troop. They drove to dinner by way of more new construction - incredible growth around there. We went to Chevy's, one of our favorite Tex-Mex restaurants. Had a great dinner. Good food, wonderful company.

Last week Patty asked us whether we wanted to join them on their next cruise. We checked it out and decided over dinner that we would! Frank has already booked it. We'll be leaving from Ft. Lauderdale on October 12 on the Crown Princess for a week in the Eastern Caribbean.... Princess Cays (the cruise line's private island), St. Thomas (USVI), St. Maarten (BVI), and Grand Turk. We all had such a blast the last time we went together that I'm really looking forward to cruising with them again.

Today I had lunch with a friend I worked with 30 years ago at Motorola. We've kept in touch through a lot - moves, job changes, losing friends and parents - yet we're still pretty much the same people. His favorite adage, "We are where we are," was much in evidence at lunch as we caught up since we saw each other last, 4 years ago. He'll probably retire in the next 2 years and he and his wife of 42 years are thinking of returning to Europe. While we talk only occasionally, and rarely email, I shall miss the contact.