verbingnouns

I Get By With a Little Help From My Friends

I sat down to write about my trip to New Orleans, but I can't possibly do that without first writing about my travel companions.
Jill was my roommate during my junior year at New St. Andrews. She was a freshman at U of I and though we hardly new each other, Elizabeth, who was supposed to live with us too, knew us both, so that's how we ended up together. Jill, Liz and I lived together for about a month before Liz moved out to live with her brother. That turned out to be a good thing because I think if the 3 of us had lived together all year, at least one of us would have gone crazy.

Well, Jill and I weren't really friends while we lived together. We got along okay, but we didn't really hang out together. She had her friends and I had mine and we kept it that way. Actually, it was through some rather unpleasant circumstances that we became good friends and we have been ever since. It's amazing how mutual sadness can bring people together.
Though we didn't live together my senior year, we became even better friends, seeing each other several times a week: Monday night dinners, playing cards until the wee hours and weekly (or more) visits to the Daily Grind...those were the days.
Jill is one of the few college friends that I stay in constant contact with. She is more fun than a barrell of monkeys (even live monkeys) and I wish I could be more like her. She exudes self-confidence...not in a snobby way at all. She knows what she wants and she goes for it. Whenever I have to be braver than I want to be, especially if I have to speak in public or something like that where I would rather be shy, I just act like I'm Jill. It sounds weird, I know, but it works. For Jill, the world is a stage. Everyone's watching? No worries.
After she finished her internship with Senator Craig last year, she was asked to join the Senator's staff. Though I still wish she was living here, I know she's loving life in D.C. and I'm sure she's making an impression on the nation's capitol. Hopefully, she will eventually move down here and go to grad school, but in the mean time, I hope she'll just keep visiting. Karaoke is so much more fun when Jill's here.
Jill and I were joined on our vacation by Jacqueline, Jill's sister. Jackie and I don't have the history that I have with Jill, but she's an amazing person too, and a fantastic travel companion. The greatest thing about Jackie is that she tells it like it is...not in a mean way, but she's not going to let you live in a dream-world without giving you a dose of reality. For example, when I say things like, "I think I would make a good doctor's wife," other people take me seriously, but Jackie just laughs at me, like I should be laughed at. I'll admit, her propensity to say what she thinks used to intimidate me, but once I got to know her better, I found it refreshing. She helped make our trip so much fun. She and I have very similar taste in music (a little bit of everything...if it's music, there's a chance we'll like it) which made for great travel music. She also has a great sense of humor. I never realized just how funny she is, but she kept me cracking up all week. She's smart and perceptive, as well as a great driver: despite what the state troopers might say, she never made me nervous while we were driving in the city...and that's impressive. I'm so glad she used part of her vacation time to join us on our New Orleans excursion. It wouldn't have been nearly as fun without her...because "Jackie only laughs when it's funny."
Next year: Vegas, baby!