Preunion (Or, There Will Be Babies)
What a week it has been! Everyone in my office is gearing up for Insights, which is basically two days (tonight and tomorrow) for alumni volunteers who will celebrate a reunion either in 2009 or 2010 to come together to start planning their reunions (if that seems like planning things way too far ahead of time, just keep in mind that Reunion 2009 will have a tropical theme, and it takes longer than you might think roll all of a fully-grown camel's hair into dreadlocks). Compounding the chaos is the fact that the Board of Trustees and the Alumni Board of Directors are both here and that this week we're holding the annual Dinners with 12 Strangers for students, alumni, faculty, and staff, so the sheer number of VIPs, VVIPs, and NNVIBSPIPs (Not Necessarily Very Important But Still Pretty Important People) that are around is a little staggering. However, it's a great opportunity to really energize all three groups, so I'm glad that everyone is here at the same time....
....Speaking of multiple Conn people being in the same place, my good buddy and classmate Laura "What can Laura Brown do for you?" Brown (she's very helpful) is moving to New London! Last week she started a great new job at the High Hopes Therapeutic Riding center in Old Lyme. She likes Old Lyme but feels that it is too expensive and not young enough for her (it's a good place to raise a family, but she's looking for a good place to raise a ruckus), so instead she'll be living here in the lovely Whaling City (city motto: Juventus Sine Pecunia). Since she is a small, blond 23-year-old woman (represent), she asked me to accompany her on her apartment search, which I was happy to do since I'll also be looking for an apartment later in the spring (plus I find it flattering that she thought I would be at all intimidating to potential swindlers/rapists). Over the last few days, we've seen some of the best and the worst that New London has to offer, and surprisingly the best and the worst both cost pretty much the same. Laura got frustrated that she couldn't find anything in her price range that she liked, but her hopes were buoyed by learning that my current apartment is quite nice yet inexplicably inexpensive; I suspect that my low rent is a result of having what some people might consider a "bad address" (I live at 666 Poltergeist Terrace). Fortunately, there were a few places that she did like, so I'm sure she'll be able to find something that fits her budget and her aesthetic sensibilities.
While Laura transitions to a new job and a new home, seemingly countless other people in my life are approaching a different life milestone: having a baby. For example, one of the Annual Fund's wonderful, youthful, magnanimous assistants (they read the blog), Nancy "Jean Luc" Picard, welcomed a brand new granddaughter to the world a few weeks ago, and let me just thank sweet gentle Jesus that this kid is adorable, as perhaps my greatest character flaw is that I am terrible at pretending that non-cute kids are cute. Another one of my coworkers and fellow alum, Beth "Swimming" Poole '00 (that joke is funnier when you consider that she was on the swim team when she was a student at Conn), is pregnant with her first baby. Obviously this is a very exciting time for her and her husband, but what makes me the most excited is that there is very good chance that the kid will be born on Floralia, and since Beth's husband Andrew is also an alum, that means that there is also a very good chance that their child will go to Conn, and that means that it is entirely possible that he or she will celebrate his or her 21st birthday on Floralia! What could be better?
Okay, with all that stuff out of the way, it's time to get to what really matters: last night's episode of Lost! Oh my clucking gourd, that show is BANANAS (that sentence contains 20% of your recommended daily intake of fruits and vegetables). I don't want to spoil anything for anybody (that's Nate's job), but I will say that it had possibly the biggest reveal in the history of the show (the biggest reveal in my own history was probably the time that I bent over to pick up a bag of peanuts at a Milwaukee Brewers game and my butt crack ended up on the Jumbotron). Also, I'll once again advise anyone out there who doesn't watch Lost to go immediately to the video store, buy the first three season on DVD, watch them all, get up to date on this season at ABC.com, and prepare for what I'm sure will be a mind-blowing episode next week (that sentence has a secret joke in it that only Lost fans will be able to detect; non-Lost fans, e-mail me if you want a different joke unrelated to Lost to make up for it).
Okey doke, time to wrap this motha up! I'll catch y'all next week with an update about Insights and all dat bidness.
Comments
Hey, if you're a REAL Lost fan then you should have been glued to the TV; no spoilers here, just theories and rhetoric.
Posted by: Nate | March 1, 2008 02:31 PM