The Highlands

I'm coming to the end of 4 days in the Highlands. No, not the Scottish Highlands, the Highland Park area of Five Points South in Birmingham, although, there was a guy actually playing a bagpipe outside the church on Sunday morning. He was wearing a green plaid kilt and everything. The bagpipe music being played on a beautiful fall morning outside a grand old historic church in the middle of the square behind the fountain surrounded by trees in full fall colors was breathtaking. That experience alone was worth the trip.

I stayed at the Hotel Highland, formerly the Pickwick Hotel. Five Points is one of my favorite places in Birmingham. The whole area feels like a park, especially in the fall when all the leaves have changed color and it is gorgeous. One of these days I'm going to buy a "real" camera so I can have my own photos of it. My room had a great view.

Speaking of "colorful" I met some interesting people on this trip. I met a successful young, black enterpreneur while I was outside in the courtyard. He's self-made, energetic and reminds me of an up-and-coming Donald Trump. He invited me to dinner that evening and we had sushi at Surin West. (I don't normally "like" sushi unless it's tempura but both the super crunch and the crunchy shrimp were to die for. (I also never say "to die for" but sometimes you just run out of adjectives.) He just randomly stopped and said hello and introduced himself because, he said, he could tell I had a good heart, which is cool. I didn't read anything into it. If he was trying to pick me up he was going to have to be a LOT more obvious than that. Engineers are dense (ok, stupid....we're stupid) when it comes to reading people. I can't believe how many people don't know that!! Plus he has a fiancee he's been dating for 15 years who is very successful and very wealthy. 15 years????? That is one patient woman.

I've been trying to work on my "harmless as a puppy approachability". I had just finished watching the movie "10 Things I Hate About You" and that girl, Kate, was me in high school: smart, sarcastic, and with a shield of invincibility; possessing an odd combination of frailty and venom so that you weren't sure if I was going to start crying or punch you. Most stayed away but the few who were brave enough to try became bosom friends. I should have suspected something about myself years ago when I saw the original "Taming of the Shrew" at the Shakespeare Festival and wondered why everyone was so hard on Kate.

Follow-Up to this post: Thursday, Nov 29th:
Last night when I wrote the phrase "bosom friends" I was specifically thinking of my friend Jenn. She was the first person to ever use the term to describe our friendship. She chose it because when we met in 1999 we bonded over the fact that almost 30 years ago as children we'd both loved "Anne of Green Gables" (long before the series became popular in the mainstream). In the story, Anne Shirley and her friend Diana were bosom friends. I haven't heard from Jenn in a year. We lost each other when I moved here and eventually changed cell phones. I had written down all the numbers from my old cell and I'd been adding them one-at-a-time to my new cell as I called people. But when I called Jenn her cell had changed too. We'd both disappeared into the void. Guess who called me this morning at 8:00am? You guessed it....Jenn! She got married and moved to a different state. She said she'd been missing me so she called a mutual friend who then called another mutual friend. I've missed her too, but I didn't think of the words "bosom friend" till last night. I have no doubt that it was a shared thought between us. I only wonder which one of us thought it first.