Cheers!

On Sunday night, the local weather forecaster told us there was a chance of showers on Monday, but that any precipitation would likely remain to the north of us. Good news for me and my friend Lisa, since we had a road trip planned for the day. As usual, though, whenever a person has plans, the weather forecaster seems to get the weather wrong. Monday morning, I woke to a light drizzle that increased to showers, and the showers lasted much of the day.

Luckily for Lisa and me, our planned road trip took us south and out of the rain, although cloudy skies followed us all the way to Modesto. Our destination? Vintage Gardens where we planned to meet friends for lunch.

That's Vintage Gardens. That's where we DIDN'T have lunch after all. Why? Because the restaurant decided to close today to take care of some repairs, believing that a Monday would be a slow day. While we were waiting in the parking lot for all of our friends to gather, we saw the restaurant turn away at least 10 to 15 customers--and that was just in the space of about 20 minutes!

Before long, we settled on another restaurant, Appetez.

It was a really fun gathering. All together, there were five of us; originally we met through our husbands who had been close friends since their teens, if not before. Oh, the stories we've heard of their exploits! Given all the crazy stunts those "boys" got up to, it's a wonder they lived to turn 30! At some point, though, they met and married us. As we settled down to raising our families, we all moved away from San Jose. Lisa and her husband and Hubby and I moved to Sacramento and the other three couples moved to Modesto, an hour and a half south of us. Over the years, I ran into two of the Modesto gals a couple times in passing but we lost touch as we all had kids and families that took priority in our lives. Now that we're older and our kids are grown, we all have a little more time and expendable income. We hope, now, to meet for lunch every few months and plan get togethers with our spouses too--after all, it was our husbands who brought us all together to begin with.

After a long lunch filled with talk about the past and the paths our lives had taken as well as plans for the future, we said our goodbyes and went our separate ways. Returning to Sacramento meant returning to rainy skies and traffic accidents--everywhere, it seemed! At one point, about 20 minutes outside the city, traffic on the freeway was completely stopped. And you know when you see truckers get out of their rigs to chat with one another that no one's going anywhere soon. As it turned out, though, Lisa and I ended up stopped just before a freeway exit, and we were able to detour off and wind our way through farming country; eventually we made it home, safe, sound, and relatively dry.

Being able to spend time with old friends is a gift, isn't it? Cheers!