nolly woke up about 930, and i supplied her with coffee while i finished breakfast. we got ready (she reminded me to bring knitting, thankfully) and off we went to our high school.i skipped my senior's five year reunion, as well as mine - for theirs i was in utah and broke, and for mine i was in cali and just not up to coming out for it - so i wasn't sure what to expect. when i got there, one of the girls from our little group of friends was standing out in front of the school - pregnant again, too, her first kid is really cute - and we chattered at her a bit, and more and more people started showing up. some people i'd seen fairly recently - a whole bunch of us crashed the first girl's wedding, on invitation (email to the couple of folks she'd actually invited: "well, i don't know how to find anyone else, but if you know where are they, please, bring them along!") and i'd seen a fair number of folks then. but that was probably five years ago, at this point - i think it was before we left for Utah. some of the rest i hadn't seen since my class graduated, which, of course, they all showed up en masse to.
at any rate, most of our bunch (herd? it certainly felt like a hurd, sometimes - thirty or so people that were constantly around each other) showed up, and we moved over to the lawn, where the folks who had elected to eat the catered barbecue did so, and the rest of us stared at them and debated the merits of going over and buying a ticket for the bbq versus going off and getting something else. :) eventually, a small group of us wandered up ninth street to International Delights (mmm, baba ganaouj and baklava). we came back and tried to catch one of the tour groups, and ended up just walking ourselves around.
they've put in this big glass front entrance to Bryan Lobby - it looks like this really nice hotel entrance now. and they've cleaned out the old Sun lab on first Bryan - it's about twice the size, and it's actually clean and stuff. that was distinctly odd. after we passed there, though, things were pretty much the same. it even smelled the same walking into Watts Hall. we went and found our graduation pictures hanging up on the wall and found ourselves in them (and i found my sister in hers) and then wandered back through the tunnels to Beall (running into some students along the way who said "oh, wow, you're alumni!" and then ducked into their hall. yes, children, you will live through this place, even if it doesn't seem like it at times. we tried to get onto Third Beall, the hall that a bunch of the subgroup we were walking around with lived on, but failed. we eventually found the rest of the herd, in the Hurd Room, so named after a friend of ours from their class that died my freshman year of high school. there was more talking and eventually the group broke up until the slide show, with a plan to return there afterwards to make plans for dinner.
every year, at the end of the year, the day before graduation (at least, this is how it was both of my years, i've no idea if things have changed, but i hope not) they have a big assembly and show a slide show with pictures from the whole year. (i think that's also the assembly where they announce who won the Director's Cup, if memory serves me correctly. though now i'm not feeling so sure.)
[tangent: the Director's Cup is the intramural trophy. halls won it through a combination of actually winning games and participation. for some reason, my hall started getting on top of the heap for it my junior year, and decided that we wanted to win. we were, without a doubt, one of the least athletic halls in the school, and had some of the more misfit people in a school of misfit people. nonetheless, we won, by less than a point. that day was definitely one of the highlights of my time at the school.]
anyhow. so, at the reunion yesterday, they showed the slide show they showed the day before my seniors graudated. there were still tons of pictures of my class, of course, and it was odd to see all of us on the screen, ten years younger. there was a picture of me moving in, walking beside my daddy. (damn, i was fat. and that's not feminine whackiness talking; i was seriously, horribly fat. ask anyone who was there. i'm heavy and round now, but i was fat then. i will never be like that again.) there was also a shot of me blatantly falling asleep in class - if i had to guess which one, i'd say English.
tyche, did you move anyone in in the fall of 94? i swear you were up on the screen, grinning at us.the slide show was nice. after that, we all wandered back down to the Hurd Room, and debated what to do, and ended up wandering up Ninth Street (again) looking for dinner options. half the group ended up at Elmo's, and the rest of us went to Cosmic Cantina, and got amazingly good and cheap burritos and such for dinner. then there was Francesca's, for ice cream and cookies and more talking. part of the group peeled off at the point for the official party. the rest of us boycotted it, on the grounds that 1) there was no way it was $40 worth of good and 2) the folks from my class weren't invited. quite a bit more discussion later, we ended up crashing the house of one of the guys in the group who had just brought a house walking distance from the school. we sat around and talked and talked some more. eventually the folks from the official party showed back up at ours. about 12:30, everyone started to realize that they were getting tired (partly prompted by the fact that i was falling asleep sitting up) and we all went home.
it was a good day. it was great to see everyone - it didn't matter that ten years were gone. things weren't awkward, and there was plenty to talk about, even once we got past the "so, what are you doing now?" stage. i'd forgotten that i went to school with some scary, brilliant people. amazingly brilliant. (this doesn't mean that all of us managed to finish college; i'd say a bit less than two-thirds did, the rest didn't, and a decent chunk of those of us who haven't are back in school again. the school loves to tout the fact that ninety-nine percent of us go to college; i'd love to see stats on how many finish. wonder if the school has those.) i was talking to one of the girls last night - she actually went to high school with me back home before we both went off to NCSSM - and we were talking about that fact that back home, we were the stuff... and then we went off to science and math, and we were so not the smartest people in school anymore. not even close.
we all left with some promises to get together for dinner and such (for the folks who are local) and general promises to stay in touch better. it was a good day.
and now...
nolly the-sleep-deprived is off at church, then she's going to do some wandering around ninth street and such before coming back here and getting her stuff and saying bye and getting to the airport. i need to do homework and stuff. i'd like a walk, but after all the walking and such yesterday, i'm feeling kind of creaky. maybe a bath is in order first...