Speaking of Blasts from the Past...

I had to leave for Cody this weekend and decided to leave a day early to stay in Casper with some very good, old friends I hadn't seen in years.

What a great decision that was.

Jeff and Linda, and Paul and Carrie are a hoot! It's been about six years, I would guess, since I've seen J & L, and about nine for P & C! Incredible. One of the best things about these friends is how seamless it is to get together and have fun with them. It's as if all that time had never passed.

We made dinner, drank wine, sat up 'til past midnight and got caught up...it was so fun. And so worth the extra day!

The next morning we went to breakfast at my favorite little restaurant in Casper - The Cottage. It's an old house turned restaurant and it's just so cute, and quaint, and the food is so good! I had a double stack of the triple berry pancakes...and they have these little bowls of cinnamon apples... Can I just say, yum. I haven't been to The Cottage but maybe once since I moved from Casper. It was a happy reunion.

Then I drove by my old apartment, which I really loved. It was fun to see it and it brought back lots of good memories.

I'm about to have one more blast this week. As I mentioned, I'm in Cody, Wyo., for work and I'm planning to meet up with my old friend Sam. This will be a treat, and I'm really looking forward to getting caught up with him. He's another one where time has passed since seeing him, so very quickly, without realizing it.

We'll have blast-off in:

5...4...3...2...

Blasts From My Past

I’m discovering there are more people I know living in Cheyenne than I ever would have guessed, and the number keeps growing.

People from my past keep popping up everywhere. I run into them at restaurants, at meetings, and mostly I hear about others through the grapevine, “Did you know so-and-so is living here too…?”

Last week alone I had two blasts from my past.

I was at lunch for my boss’ birthday. When we got up to leave a girl from the table beside us stopped me. “KIM!! How are you?!”

Oh no. I knew I knew her. I just could NOT place her. This was terrible.

It took me a few minutes of talking to her to figure it out – she used to work in D.C., for the other Wyoming senator, but left several years ago for the Peace Corps and nobody had heard from her, to my knowledge anyway.

She was completely out of context for me in Cheyenne and placing her took me a few. We exchanged cards and have emailed a couple of times with plans to meet for a drink or coffee sometime soon.

The very next day I had a similar exchange. I was at a meeting of public information officers and we had to go around the room and introduce ourselves. There was a girl I knew I had gone to college with. She had been in several of my communication classes and I thought for sure I remembered her name. I was right!

After the meeting she came over to chat. Once again, we left with promises to meet up.

It’s so strange and fun to see people here I knew mostly from D.C. And it’s strange and fun in a different way to run into people I knew in college and haven’t seen since.

It’s mostly nice to know there are more folks than I thought living in town who I can count as friends, buddies, acquaintances, whatever – even if I haven’t seen them in ages.