Weekend in New England

Just came back from outside of Boston, MA this evening where I had dinner with my old Audit Director that I worked with at Fleet Mortgage. Peter left Columbia in the fall of '99, and I had not seen him since the winter of 2000 although I had kept in contact with him frequently. Since I am in Rhode Island, I emailed him this week to say hi, and they invited me to dinner at their house tonite. It was only about a 45 minute drive to their house in Massachusetts as they live between Providence, RI and Boston.

We had a great time catching up on old times and it was so much fun to see his family. I really do miss working for Peter. I learned so much from him and enjoyed the challenging times that we worked through. I drove home and on the way traveling I-95 South passed two cars with SC license plates - how funny. I'm also in a rental and am really looking forward to driving my Celica when I get home. The one awesome thing about this rental is the Sirius satellite radio. That thing rocks and I want one!!!

I also miss working with Ed Santos. Ed was the General Auditor at Fleet Financial (the bank that owned the Mortgage Company) and Peter reported directly to Ed. I really respect Ed and Peter both and they are both working together again at a bank up here in New England. Am very wistful for those old days when I was learning tons of really good career building stuff. I can honestly say I have not had the pleasure of working for anyone as talented as Peter and Ed in the past 8 years. It has been a very long time since I had a real mentor and that was Peter. How few and far between it is to find someone you just click with and how depressing it is to think that I am going back to the hum drum world tomorrow instead of the really awesome cool world I was once lucky enough to be a part of.

To think that I almost did not take that job and would have missed out on the opportunity of a lifetime - scary. Here's to New England and to Peter and Ed - cheers!!!