bryiarrose | "...and we celebrated, hallelujah/like we often do..."

so i'm at mondays, where they have shiny new wireless access, and i'm 100% more jittery than usual after a large iced mocha on top of my ritalin. plus it's cold in here. and so the work continues. *sigh*
on the good end of that though, this past weekend was fantastic. if i'd had the concentration i would have written about it earlier (and probably should have for what it's worth), but here i am attempting to write about it now.

carleton has it's reunion the week after graduation every year for the classes which have hit a multiple of 5 mark. that means that this year was reunion for both my father's class of 1969 and the class of 1999, who i went to college with for two years. my father refused to come down, just as he had five years ago when i last tried to convince him, so i dropped in on his class in his place and made small talk. his usual excuse is that he's "old and fat and no one wants to see [him]." to which the reply is obviously, everyone else is old and fat too and so what. but alas. i have hopes that i'll be able to make him attend the big 50th anniversary knights reunion that he claims is set to take place next summer. i suppose we'll see.

the more accessible part of the weekend for me was the class of '99 reunion. i spent part of friday night and most of saturday running around with people i hadn't seen in years (with a few exceptions, like townie), talking, drinking, generally having a blast. it was surreal in how normal it felt, like taking a big step backwards to when we would have all been partying in evans lounge five or six years ago. then again, adding to the overall strangeness was the fact that i not only knew a good chunk of alums, but also the reunion staff of current students. for the most part this was only a good thing since it meant twice as many people to party with, even if it was sometimes confusing trying to combine the two worlds.

in attendance were former members of exit 69: roger, lisa marie, missy, and naylor... it was great to see all of them though roger couldn't quite get used to my hair and didn't understand why i asked him about his mom. (it's roger's mom! i mean really, how do you forget people insulting your mother on a regular basis?) i also ran into the few theatre-type people who were there-- sam ahern, virginia pedicord, and mike gibson... (there was no bin, sadly) sam's engaged to a darling wonderful girl with good musical taste of whom i totally approve. spent a bunch of time talking to jeremy nelson, who i always knew peripherally as a friend of scott's from volleyball, as cute as ever and fun to talk to on top of it. there were loads of other people i used to vaguely know or didn't know at all who were good conversation and fun to hang out with. i think a lot of it might have been something in me going "people my own age! wow!" simply because i notice more and more lately the age difference (or maturity difference? or something) between current carls and myself. not that i don't love those i know that are younger than me, but i tend to feel socially out of place sometimes. this was one weekend where i didn't feel that kind of out of place that i have been. so i took advantage of it. talked, drank, danced, and flirted to my heart's content. had the best time being out and about socially that i've had in ages. and boy was it ever welcome (and probably needed). plus, it all served to make me even more certain that living outside of northfield this fall is the right decision.

one of the nice and surprising things that kept happening at reunion was that i'd be talking to people i'd never really known well and they'd come out with something like, 'you used to sing didn't you?' i guess i forget that this was one of the classes that knew me as the "frosh sensation" i was once constantly labeled as. honestly, the first few months of carleton after playing the nsw talent show it seemed like whenever i met someone new and introduced myself i got 'oh, you're rose... i've heard about you.' and that carried over to present day and it was really nice. the second question that kept coming up was whether i still sang and was doing music etc. so i had ample opportunity to babble on about my music and the band and my hopes for the next year, with nothing but positive responses and requests to be kept up to date as i go. which means i really should get off my ass and pull together a demo and a website like i've been planning.

this is probably just disjointed babbling for the most part, but hopefully it gets across what a fantastic couple of days it was. saturday night was by far the highlight. martin zellar and the majority of the gear daddies played the bell field tent, there was a "gimme some luvin'" party in the evans lounge, and i finally got to sleep around six in the morning after more beers than i can remember and having watched people carry kegs back to their rooms over their shoulders. i walked around campus so much and danced so hard that my body wasn't happy with me for at least a full 36 hours afterwards. not to mention the hangover which accompanied it... but it was all worth it. i haven't danced like that in ages, especially with people drunk enough to compliment me on my skillz ;) and well... yeah. it's not something i'm going to forget anytime soon, despite bits of it being a bit blurrier than others. and i just sit here thinking, if this year was so fun, what will the next couple be like?

the ongoing debate for me will be which reunions i show up to. the name tag i made for myself read class of 2001/2004 and 1/2, because well. yeah. (i'm taking a page out of

nicepersonality's book after browsing through an old yearbook in the wellness center one day.) luckily for me class of '05 (which i'll technically be a part of) and class of '00 will have reunions together making that one year i'll definitely be at, seeing how most of my good friends and exes are '00... i'll definitely be there next summer. then there's class of '01 which i should have been a part of, so i suppose i'll go to that. and the couple of years after that... well. we'll see when i'm in mn and when i'm not as the years go by i suppose. but in some ways i can't wait to see some of those kids. go figure.

at any rate, my battery died and monday's closed, so i'm home now and ready to go back to work now that i've written the longest entry ever. amazingly enough, i still have other things i want to write about, but they'll wait for later. point of it all, this weekend made me happier in a general way than i've been in a long time. and that, is a terribly good thing.