Old friends and togetherness
When Katie and I moved to Seattle, on our drive, we had planned to meet up with a highschool who was now living in Washington. It was the last day of our drive and I was over it, and as much as I wanted to reconnect with Jessica, I was also VERY eager to get to our place and be done with the roadtrip. So, we skipped meeting up and booked it for Seattle.
Jessica was a high school classmate of mine. She is a brilliant woman. She works with "Black Owned Social Services" a Co-op dedicated to growing businesses for POC in the renewable and solar industry. From BOSS's about page:
BOSS is the largest community of African American professionals working in the solar photovoltaic (PV) space. We are entrepreneurs, financiers, veterans, attorneys, engineers, contractors, developers and other peer partners. We possess deep knowledge, experience and strategic access to the multi-trillion dollar, emerging solar and clean energy technology marketplace that is fast reshaping sustainability, infrastructure resilience and livelihoods in our country and across the globe. We have established roots and relationships in all communities, and particularly those disproportionately impacted by climate change —in the United States and abroad. Our collective efforts are making communities more resilient, sustainable and economically powerful.
The mission of BOSS is to combine and leverage our collective power to lead actionable solutions for sustained access to equitable opportunities in clean energy production, distribution and storage for Black-owned businesses. BOSS was launched in the Fall of 2020 after an inaugural Solar Equity Summit (SES) on September 29, 2020. A common theme throughout the SES was the importance of policy in shaping markets to enable accessibility for Black-owned businesses to thrive in the clean energy sector. Energy equity is a key policy enabler to manifesting the mission of BOSS and plays a critical role in our endeavor to highlight unfair practices and provide recommendations for common actions to address them.
Our trip to Washington was nearly twelve years ago (!) and while we have chatted countless times online during that span, we haven't managed to actually see each other. She lives in Vancouver, Washington, with her husband which is basically Portland's other side across the river which is the state border, but that is only a few hours away - a very doable drive.
Well, a few weeks ago, Jessica messages me asking about hotel recommendations around Burien, another Seattle suburb. Turns out she was going to be in the area for a work event. Katie and I immediately invited her to stay with us.
So, Friday, she arrived and we spent a lovely evening together. Catching up, reminiscing, and just enjoying the connection of old friends. I smoked ribs for us, and Katie made a delicious cake which uses angel food cake, pineapple, strawberries, pudding, and cool whip.
After she left Saturday morning, we had already been planning to make our way down and see the event she was working. But also we realized we hadn't taken any photos together. So, when we did meet up with her at the event, we made sure to commemorate the gathering with a "ussie."
While there, we also got to run into her brother, another old school friend, James. James is a fellow D&D fan, and we stood there talking about stuff for probably close to thirty minutes. He also lives in the state. And Jessica grabbed this ussie.
Great times. It truly was like no time had passed and we just enjoyed the togetherness. We're not going to wait fourteen more years to see each other again. And it's probably our turn to travel south.