reunion

The donuts were delish! I had a regular glazed. It was as big as my head, and very tasty.

I spent the weekend in Portland. If this does not interest you, don't read the foregoing.

The production of "The Music Man" I attended on Friday night at the Lakewood Center for the Arts was AWESOME!!! I hadn't seen a live performance of this musical in years, and it's my favorite musical, and I played in the pit orchestra for it my senior year of high school. Suffice it to say, I was fairly overstimulated and DELIGHTED the entire time. A classmate of mine reprised her lead role from that high school production and she is AWESOME. Her name is Jennifer Gill--she has a beautiful, mellifluous voice, classically trained and she's just incredible. It was a great production overall, but she just stole the show. Well, maybe someone in the lead can't steal the show. She MADE the show. "The Music Man" is playing through October at the Lakewood Center for the Arts in Lake Oswego, OR. I highly recommend it! I also highly recommend Le Bouchon, the French restaurant where K and I ate prior. Amazing food, hot blue-eyed French waiter. Easily better-looking than any French male I saw while living in France for five months. Seriously. Either they export the good-looking ones when they come of age, or a Frenchman in France really is like Superman on Krypton.

The next morning I took a quick run up the hill to the Washington Park Rose Garden. The sun was up but the streets were deserted and the air was pleasantly nippy. After a delicious and surprisingly affordable lunch at the Heathman Hotel restaurant, I met K2 and we did some shopping. MSH had given us the green-light to purchase him a nice, but jeans-coordinating shirt. We had to ask some straight customers in the store for their input--we had a pretty good idea they were straight because they were out shopping in Downtown Portland in athletic shorts and T-shirts with the sleeves cut off--but the deed was soon done at 30% off.

Later, we met K2's mom and my sister at Starbucks. I brought my sister a Calphalon pan I got for $5 at a garage sale. She brought me some free swag--sunglasses and a cute pink running cap--from a globally branded athletic wear company. Which she may or may not work for on a contract basis. We do this ritual exchange of gifts at each meeting, and the goods are never full-price.

We later had lunch at...Frick, I forget where, but they put this gorgonzola on my salad that blew my MIND.

Skipping ahead so as not to bore you, and to get this post up that I've been working on for three days--The reunion! Was great. I was glad I went. While I admit that it isn't a compelling reason to go, it's true that you talk to people you never did in high school, and they are unbelievably cool and you have great conversations. You also have great conversations with the people you did hang out with and have kept in touch with! It was a lot of fun, and after the reunion shut down, we went here for the pizza, here for the doughnuts (where it was imperative that I buy a pair of underwear emblazoned with sexually suggestive phrase--I'll let you guess which phrase,) and then here where our fellow alumni had migrated en masse when the official reunion venue shut down. It was pretty intense, a room filled with faces most of which when you saw them popped up stories into your head that you hadn't thought of in years. At one point I surveyed the room and J asked me "Are you freaking out?" I answered, "It's blowing my freaking mind!" My overwhelming impression, though, is that with few exceptions everyone is happier, more comfortable in their skin. Kinder, wiser.

Now, here were the problems with the reunion:
-It was held upstairs in a chain Irish bar. Which, to me, negates its Irishness somehow.
-It was run by a big ol' reunion company who grossed around $30,000 but stuck us with a cash bar. I realize it's a lot of work tracking everyone down, but maybe we can just hang onto these little books they got us with everyone's address and do it ourselves next time. With hosted kegs and whatnot. And Virgos will be in charge!!
-There wasn't enough space for all of us--we were crammed into three little rooms and you couldn't SEE everybody.
-Most importantly, the music was turned WAY up so you had to shout to be heard--except in the corner "conversation" room, which you didn't know existed because no one told you about it and you couldn't see into it through the crush of people. I guess the music was so we would dance, but frankly, f*** that, we'd like to talk. Thanks. Not that there's anything wrong with dancing, Ren.
-Like thirty people I wanted to see did not show up.

It was a good experience. I encourage you to go to yours. But I'll understand if you don't.