Mademoiselle Simone

She's short and chubby, always in good spirits and she laughs at my jokes. She says Lumberjack's my "booboo" and keeps track of my crazy traveling. She calls me miss Sandrine and I call her miss Simone. We officially became friends tonight.

In this haze of crazy work days which I am afraid are to become the norm, Simone (she said it's spelt Samone but it can't really sink in) brings me back to a sunnier place. This crazy 21-year-old Californian, who got her huge tatoo in the neck on a whim this month, adores a puppy who won't let her sleep and is friendly to everybody coming in and out of my office building, is the one person in my daily life I feel comfortable chatting away with.

So tonight after my volunteering (an experience which will no doubt provide material for many future posts!) I stopped by her booth and spent a while there, discussing the dress I'll wear at my Texas wedding this weekend, what it takes to make a trip special and how hard it is to make friends in Washington. I got updated on the puppy, found out about the nearly two hours it takes her to get home and heard stories of her Internet chatting with what turns out to be freaks.
A few late workers went by. So did a few buses. There was nowhere I would rather have been than this building lobby.

When I was 18 (don't remind me how old I am now) my close friend Gégé and I traveled to Crete for a week of interesting adventures that could only have happened to a naive and insane pair like us. One day a local guide, on the grouchy side but who didn't resist the French charm for long, declared he had found the perfect nicknames for us: little smile and big smile (I bet you know exactly which I was.)

It looks like I've found my big smile partner here. It's certainly no Crete, nor even a place where you can picture yourself sipping ouzo. We may never do together all these things we deam to do with the friends we don't have yet. But it's much better than a day without sun.