Welcome to the Urbana Jungle

I'm currently stuck in Urbana, Illinois dwiddling my thumbs until tomorrow when I get to work a career fair. I'm actually not looking forward to the career fair. There's nothing wrong with it, but this time of year for the last 4 years I've been in Monte Carlo working on a yacht...so clearly these two experiences: Hampton Inn, Urbana IL v Yacht in Monte Carlo so the same. Yes, I am a snob.

I had an old friend come in town for a night to visit. I used to teach English as a Second Language with her in Japan. I hadn't seen her in 7 years. All I kept thinking was, "how do you lose 100 pounds in 3 days?". Sadly that did not occur, but happily I was able to catch up with Jaime. Isn't it funny when you see someone after so long and you communicate via email, you forget what they know v. what you think you told them? At times I know we both felt like we were dropped into a conversation we knew nothing about. Too funny.

And since I was on such a role with old friends, on my drive from Midway airport - seeing as how I had nothing to do and frankly corn fields get old after the first one, I called up my old roommate from NYC, Kitty. Kitty is married with 2 kids.

I have 4 very good girlfriends: DD, Kitty, Lisa and Jaime. All but me and Jaime are married with kids - but Jaime is pretty much on her way to the same fate. Soon it will just be Crazy Aunt Leslie with 40 cats. It is so challenging to keep in touch seeing as how none of live in the same place any more, but when I lost my job back in July, they all reached out, which was so nice. The type of friends that you may not speak every day, but you know you could count on when your life falls apart.

2 of my other fantastic friends are former vendors, Sally and Shari. Both of these ladies are such class acts and have been so supportive of me I can't say enough about them. I really miss working with them as we were so much more than work friends and now I don't get to chat with them nearly enough.

So over the last few months of being on the receiving end of some serious love from so many as I was going through so much with losing my job, I've found that although I may have a job I hate with a passion now, I am blessed with so much love and support in my life. And after feeling alone for so long, this is nice.