Lots of little things

This had most of Casey's people in it--they were taking cake pictures.

This has been a crazy few weeks...or maybe it was just this weekend.

Daryl came into town on friday night and stayed at my place friday and saturday. Anne and her mom went up to the really big Grulke family reunion (Anne's mom's side--it is cool but I had to miss it).
Saturday morning-afternoon, Daryl, Randy, Colin, Bobhari, Jason/Andrea, and I helped Sal move from his Maumee apt to a smaller place in BG (on S. Prospect only a block or so from where Anne and I lived) . It is a pretty decent place. We are all really excited for Sal to get started with grad school. I know he will do so well that they will hardly know what to do with him in the CS department. I hope Sal visits Gerry a bunch--he is just up the street.

Then the big news. The 10-year high school reunion. This was quite interesting. Casey/Jannelle, Greg/Steph, Daryl, and I went in there knowing that we may not have known well or want to have known well all of the people there. There was mild sporadic apprehension about what it could be like. It was actually very cool. The night was not as awkward as I had expected at all. Outside of the fact that it seemed like the majority of the class consumed a lot of alcohol, it was really neat. Any given person would wonder through the room of 75 or so classmates...stopping anytime it looked practical to do so and talking. I had conversations with those who I did not even talk with in high school. I had "beyond small talk" conversations with several people and exchanged a pleasant 2-3 minutes with many more. The most soothing and wonderful thing about the experience is that even when there was NO substance to the conversation (i.e. small talk), I was able to see through body language and such that there was a general acceptance and peace among the group. In other words, we were all recognizing one another as peers who were travelling along that life journey. It was uniting, in a strangely nice way. Perhaps it was the contrast between this peace and unity and the 10-year-old sense of anxiety and seperation felt so nice. Perhaps this sense had nothing to do with the individual identities of those in the room, but rather it just exposed a beautiful aspect of the human journey.

After this experience of universal human joy and trandcendence we went to Fat Jack's bar and got slobberingly smashed.

Well, it looked like most people did. Nevertheless, I saw no stereotypical repressed fighting/"gettin' it on" or de-repression erupting in a crying fit. There were quite a few wonderful people who I loved hearing about and asking about their life journeys/adventures.

Arriving back home from that scene, my darling wife and child were already in their respective beds and sleeping. 7 hours later, Daryl, Casey, Randy and I went discgolfing in BG. It lightening-stormed after one hole enough to cause us to pick up Sal and go to Kermits restaurant for some breakfast. It was great just hanging-out and talking. It was especially cool and fun to be able to spend some substantial time with Daryl throughout the past few days.

Dang, this was a great weekend. I feel invigorated. Life makes a bit more sense than it did previously and framing the world with friends and classmates really did make the journey make more sense. The world does not seem like a rosy ball of peachy keen-ness, but it seems more valid and real.

Now I have to clean myself and the house. My hair probably still smells like FatJack's bar.

By the way, does everyone know about Anne's blog?