Heading to St. Louis!

This picture was taken in July of 2010—incidentally, a solid year before I even knew Frank existed. I was a rising senior in college. That's me on the left there, and Lillian on the right. And the girl right next to me, the one with the chic dark pixie cut, that's Serena.

This picture was taken at an ISI conference in Annapolis. You know how I mentioned ISI and the awesome connections it's brought Lillian and me (namely, our husbands)? Well as it turns out, my husband wasn't the only awesome connection I made through ISI.

When I did the Honors Fellowship three years ago, luck and serendipity gave me Serena as my roommate. Serena was a rising senior at UDallas. We shared a love for the great books and a passion for late-night intellectual conversations, but more importantly, we shared an inability to wake up on time (possibly related to the love for late-night conversations).

Every morning, without fail, the two of us would dash down to breakfast 5 minutes before our first lecture of the day, and spend the lecture gulping coffee while trying to stay awake. After a few days of this—the evening conversations and the morning struggle-fests—we realized we were meant to be friends. I mean, books and conversations and sleeping in; could there be a better foundation for a friendship?

When the conference was over we went back to our respective schools in Texas and Indiana. We tried to stay in touch, but as the school year passed it grew harder, and we were just about to let our friendship slip into that sad-but-sometimes-unavoidable realm of "friends you only talk to on Facebook" when graduation rolled around. I was getting ready to move to DC and start my first job when I found out Serena would be starting grad school and moving to DC too! Cause for celebration! We were joyously reunited and embarked on a regular regimen of sleepovers, movie nights, mani-pedi dates and pretty much any other fun thing we could think of.

Like hanging out at the National Basilica

Anyway, the point of this whole story is this: Serena is getting married to wonderful Anthony in September, and she's asked me to be her bridesmaid. I was thrilled. I mean, getting asked to be a bridesmaid (or in my case, a bridesmatron) has to be just about the greatest honor a friend can bestow, you know? And just to give you an idea of how awesome of a bride Serena is... her bridesmaid dresses are going to be from Shabby Apple, my favorite dress source ever. I'm already itching to get mine in the mail so I can start wearing it to Sunday Mass!

Today Serena's having a bridal shower in St. Louis, where her fiance's family is from. How lucky am I that her shower is out in the Midwest, where I can actually attend it? In fact, I wrote this blog post on a Megabus to St. Louis for the shower. (And given the shaky state of wifi on this bus, I'm really proud of myself for finishing it and even putting pictures—small triumphs :)

When I moved to Chicago to get married, I thought our days of sleepovers and late-night conversations were at an end. But nope, here we are—our sleepovers have just moved, from Annapolis to DC to St. Louis. Somehow we always find ourselves back here: talking about books late at night, solving the problems of the world ... followed by a struggle to get up the next morning. At this point it's tradition.

Here's to a perfect Saturday bridal shower for my dear Serena. I'm so glad I get to go, and Frank and I already looking forward to the wedding!