A Visit to OUR Hometown

My new friend, with whom I have a long history, and I decided to get together for lunch and take a virtual stroll through San Pedro today.  We'd visit old teachers and places, and find memories that we'd each forgotten.  We decided we'd meet and grab a drink from Starbucks and a sandwich from Quizno's two doors down.  That way we could sit outside to eat and visit and Katie could go along.  Sounds like a plan, huh?  As my priest keeps saying, "nothing's simple."

We got to Starbucks / Quiznos.  Oh yeah, Quizno's isn't here anymore.  Where else can we go, grab a sandwich and sit outside?  Let's go to Raley's, order a sandwich at their deli, a drink at Peet's, and we'll go to the park.  Jumped in the car and drove to Raley's.  Went to the Deli, and after taking forever to make up our minds, the fun began ... "Can I have the Sonoma sandwich?"  "I'll check, sorry we're out of those."  Ooookay!  After a few minutes, "Can I have ---- this other sandwich?"  Mmmm, we're out of those too."  "Well then," after some thought, "how about the turkey wrap?"  "We don't do wraps anymore.  There are some pre-made wraps by the cheeses."  During all this, friends have walked in and are watching this show we're putting on and they're laughing and having a grand time and darned if she doesn't say "Can I have ...?"  Only to be told, "I'm sorry ..." you know the rest.  I will say, getting the drinks was much easier, even got a dollop of whipped cream for Kate.  I'll probably stick with Subway in the future, however.

Having finally obtained our lunch, Cathy and I jumped back in the car with Katie and took off for the park.  We took our lunches, some memorabilia, and yearbooks.  What a fun time we had.  Went through the books and picked out teachers we both knew (they were considerably younger when I knew them) and we each had stories about some of them, we looked at pictures of places we'd both hung out in or at least been to and remembered others and more stories.

For a short while she had the same doctor my mother had.  We lived maybe a block away from each other once or twice.  My brother and her brother were firefighters in the same place at the same time.  We'd known some of the same people, just at different times.  We talked about how, why, and when we made the transition from beach to mountains.  We laughed - a lot!!!  The similarities in our lives just kept coming.  It was a great afternoon!  And ... we have a traveling companion (companions if you count the dogs) when we decide to take a car instead of a virtual visit to OUR hometown.