Dinner last night with women friends, both professional women. One is in sales and marketing for a corporation with headquarters in the Northeast and the other is a government relations exec for a San Francisco Bay area company.

They were both clients, years ago. Interesting, vibrant, alive, smart: I liked them both a lot, and we made the transition to friends pretty easily. We don’t see one another as much as we’d like.

Give or take a decade, we’re generally in the same age group. But you know, women are women. By the time we’re past our 30s, we have the same concerns and issues.

Some months ago, the two ended up on an airplane together heading to different business meetings, started talking about my story and the next thing, we were all texting back and forth about venues for weddings and bar mitvahs.

The two of them got to their hotel and sent me a comprehensive analysis of every venue in the Tampa Bay area that they had written for me on the plane. I am not kidding. (“Women in business,” I always say. “They kick ass.)

Anyway, one’s engaged, with a gorgeous ring whose centerpiece is her mom’s emerald. What a warm family memento! The other one is getting ready to send her oldest to college (how did this happen? I remember when she was 12) and get her youngest bar mitvahed (M. & I will definitely come back for that event)

We talked: kids, college, weddings, careers, real estate, Walmart, the corporation we are all familiar with, marriage, menopause, steroids, integrative doctors, aging.

But all of these topics came up in unusual ways. Such as: “If you had it to do over again, knowing what you know now, would you have picked the same college?” or “What college do you think is right for your daughter?” “At what age will your memoir begin?”

Even the woman at the table next to ours joined in the “peopleofWalmart.com” conversation.

Before we knew it, more than two hours had passed.

Another reminder of the really great life I have in Tampa and how much I’ll miss it. I know that will see them both after our move, especially the one who comes to the Bay area often. And maybe even see more of them, in that funny way that happens after a move. After all, we have a guest room. And who doesn’t like the Bay area?

I’m really blessed.