Homecoming 2019, part 3: Reunited, but I'm not feeling much of anything
The post-game festivities!
After the game ended and the band-type people dispersed, I walked back to the hotel. (I will go into the hotel itself in a separate post.) It was about 5:30 when I got to my room. This is how much of a dork I am: I made sure to do a Duolingo exercise so I got in at least one that day--gotta keep my streak going! I'm at 1250+ days, and who knew what the evening would bring? I still should have had plenty of time to get ready, but my lack of sleep the night before made me lose focus at times, so I dawdled a little, and while I'd meant to leave by 6:30, I left later than that...then realized when I was most of the way down the hall to the elevator that I'd left my ring in my cosmetics bag (put there for safe keeping during my shower--I'd normally put it on the counter at home), realized it would bother me if I didn't wear it, and turned around to go back. I'd texted Avery...because I could :P...to say I'd planned to be at the reception between 6:30-6:45; it was more like 6:50. Oops. But I made it.
Upon arrival, I was told my table number. I was also handed a little box--have a luggage tag with our new logo on it! Um, great. Yeah, so, this new logo. I'd seen it on the concert program, noticing it right away. It looks dated already. (Dr. K said, nobody really likes it. So it's not just me.) It's this sans serif font where the school name is dark, and its year of inception is in gray. To the left is the tower logo, stylized, and it's just...blah. The prior logo was classy, where the tower had definition and the lettering was more in the classical, traditional style. With serifs. I should mention that the tower is based off one of the towers of Old Main, the original campus building, so it's long been the symbol of the college. (It was during my time in college, back in 1997, that Old Main was renovated and the towers connected. Before then, if you wanted to go from one tower to another, you'd have to go down five flights of stairs, walk through the building, then climb another five flights of stairs--no elevators. It was quite the ordeal. Mind you, the radio station had been up on the fifth floor of the south tower of Old Main until the reno, at which point it moved to a one-story building near the stadium. Our radio station has won numerous Marconis, so imagine how dedicated those students had to be back then to regularly climb all those stairs.)
Avery had spotted me and walked over to show me the way to our table. The front half of the tables were for alums; on the other side of the dance floor, the back half was for current students. There were at least 70-something tables, with 10 per table, so we're talking about 800 people were due to come. You had long lines of three rows of tables, then an aisle, and then another set of three rows of tables. Avery's friend Kristi had told me at the game that she's been to several of these--her 15th reunion was the year before--and they would group tables together by year. Well, that wasn't actually the case with us. When I'd checked the reunion website two weeks earlier, seven people were listed: Me, Avery, my band friend Dave and his wife Lydia, plus three more people--Kim, who's now a dean at the school, plus Jeremy and his wife Michelle. I believe Kim and Jeremy had been our class' outstanding man and woman of the year. Well, Kim and Jeremy (and presumably Michelle) were seated at a completely different table that was across the large aisle from us. I have no idea who else was with them. Kim did come over to say hello to the people she knew, including Dave, but it was strange to not have them near us. I did know, or at least recognize, two of the other people who sat with us, and Avery realized who the third was. I should mention that when I got to the table, there was a guy by himself, two empty chairs, then Avery's seat. I misheard what she'd said and nearly sat to her right, where the two chairs were; those were actually Dave and Lydia's seats. Oops. So I sat to Avery's left. Then came four people, including one in a wheelchair; his name is Mark, and he looked familiar, but I didn't think he'd been in a chair when we were in school. He'd had one of the fancy name tags and lanyards, which was on the tray of his chair, so I looked him up when I got home--about a decade after getting out of school, he was paralyzed in a diving accident and rendered quadriplegic. Oh, wow. He'd been a swimmer back in the day. He was there with his wife, and the two other women were Amanda, who'd gone to high school with me as well as college, and a woman whose name I didn't catch but I think it's Leah. (Even though we sat next to each other, Amanda and I really didn't speak, but she was always quiet that I recall and didn't say much to anyone that night.) Rounding out our table were Paige and her husband Bryant. Paige was in band with Dave and me, but also a swimmer so she knew Mark too. At some point this guy came over, dressed really casually; I think his name was Matt. I feel like someone texted him to say, what table are you at? His reply was, "The pool table at the Lantern." He stopped by for a bit and talked to the people he knew at the table, then left. After I got home, I looked up the Class of '99 reunion list, and that's how I think they one girl is Leah--there were more people listed than when I last checked, and I knew she wasn't at least one of the other women on there, so by process of elimination, I was left with her. The list was interesting, as it must have shown everyone from '99 who'd signed up to do anything official. Matt, my choir friend, was on there even though he only went to the concert, for example. My friend Jason was listed, too, and I never saw him, so I don't know if he was at the other table or if he only went to other things. He works in town, too, so it's not like he has far to travel. As for Jacob, he looked like your typical computer science/engineering kind of guy. However, Avery realized who he was--he was the guy who always performed at the campus coffee house. His posters were so ubiquitous that he'd get mentioned in the campus humor magazine. (He was also the guy who would hijack the discussions in our Rock & Roll Culture class. Luckily no guitars were involved at our table in any way.) Our table, by the way, was number 42, leading me to wonder if ours was the only table populated by people the age of the table number. Our class's other table was number 17, for the record.
The whole of the reception was five hours long. Cocktails and appetizers from 6-7, Hall of Fame inductions and dinner from 7-8, then dancing from 8-11. I missed most of that first hour but that likely wasn't a big deal for me. Besides, I was perfectly happy to have gone to the game beforehand; that's become my tradition and I wouldn't have wanted to give it up, even if it meant a tight squeeze between activities. At 7, the inductions were first, with five people going into the regular college HOF (the athletic one is separate). Due to the weather, and his flights getting canceled/postponed/redirected, one inductee was unable to make it and he flew back to California. Instead, his daughter, who is also a grad, ended up accepting the award on his behalf. Otherwise everyone was there, including the most recent grad, a gal named Alyssa, who is probably at the bare minimum amount of years away from school to be inducted--she was celebrating her 5-year reunion. This is the girl who sang with the jazz combo at the HC concert for four straight years. She's gone on to become a professional singer. It's still nice to have someone else sing at the concerts, though. Right after that, they went into the rebranding, how exciting! They talked about showing a video about the rebranding of the college, and the new logo, then went into a short video that went over the several logos the college has had in the past 50 years. I was unaware that the logo used my freshman year of college was from 1978. The most recent logo came about in 1996--remember, that was the classy one they've just done away with. Okay, well, that video was short and painless; let's have dinner. But no--then they went, and now it's time for the rebranding video! Sigh. It's probably related to the semester change and all that. I'm not sure anybody truly cared. Oh well; as Avery said, somebody felt they had to make their mark.
Dinner! Eventually, there was food. I will say there were water glasses and salads already on the table when I got there. The salad was fine but came with dressing, which Avery prefers on the side so she didn't eat hers. While we were watching one of the HOF videos, a cherry tomato flew from somewhere behind Dave and Lydia and hit Leah, which was bizarre. We don't know what happened there. Just before we were called to get food, I spotted a bread basket on the table between Leah and Amanda's plates and had them pass it to me. Yum, pretzel rolls! I'd taken a small bite out of mine, then left it on my salad plate to go get food, served buffet-style. When I returned, my plate was gone. My roll! Damn it! That was annoying. I was fully planning on eating it, so now they've wasted food by not just leaving my plate and assuming I was done. That made me cranky. I was already cranky because of what was served and how they'd done it. The main buffet tables had mashed potatoes with several toppings, like shredded cheese and bacon bits; green beans (gross); and two meats, chicken or beef. I always go beef in this case. Then there was a separate table set up with, I don't know, crudités, perhaps? There was a taller platform in the middle with suspicious, weird-looking stuff that I refused to touch, then these large round wooden boards with vegetables on top, roasted perhaps. I spotted carrots and mushrooms. I took the one pair of tongs on my side (there was another round board on the other side of the table, on the other side of the tall platform) and grabbed some carrots, but when I went to grab the mushrooms...they're whole. They're round. They roll. The large round wooden board was so large as to overhang the table, and there was no edge to it to catch anything that might fall off. Can you see where this is going? Yep, I had some of the mushrooms roll off the platform onto the floor, so now I'm picking them up so nobody steps on them, and I'm still holding the one set of tongs for my side of the table so I'm holding up the line, and dinner should not be this frustrating. I then went to put my dinner plate down and discovered my roll was missing, and I left to de-mushroom my hands and freshen up a little. I'd ended up giving my floor mushrooms to some poor member of the waitstaff, who seemed perfectly okay with taking them and not having me deposit them directly in a wastebasket. The food itself tasted okay, though I suspect the beef was medium rare; I'd prefer medium. I'm not used to there being blood left on my plate after I'm done eating. Desserts were cupcakes--oh, look, I get some tonight--and there were full-size ones or smaller ones. I grabbed a couple mini ones so I could have a little variety. Again, they looked suspiciously like the ones Rita has had at her gatherings. When we left, and Avery picked up her coat from the coat check, we spotted a Smallcakes box on a shelf behind the coat check person. Aha! Wow, that must have cost a fortune. I'm surprised they didn't have something similar to the dessert reception at the concert--as in, made in-house.
It was pretty amazing how many people dispersed at 8 o'clock. I mean, following dinner, we did a group picture with our table. Dave decided to do a selfie with all of us, and someone walking by said she could take the picture, which was nice. Okay, so, how to get the pictures from Dave to the rest of us? Anyone with an iPhone did an air drop or something similar. Yeah, sorry, I don't have an iPhone. Okay, so he could text me a link to them. Great! So, for the second time in 24 hours, I gave someone my cell number. I think I might need to sit down. So he texts me the link...and my browser didn't support whatever he sent. I couldn't view the pictures. Rats. Finally he picked a couple and texted them directly to me, and I shared those with Avery, so at least we both got them. And then everyone left. Our table was a ghost town. Well, we're a couple of single ladies and we came to dance, so we did. For the most part, we were the oldest people on the dance floor, though at times other alums joined in, which was kind of cool. It was mostly current students or recent grads, though. There was a live band, MixTape, and they were really good, playing an eclectic mix of stuff from the '60s/'70s to current music. I was kind of amazed at what Avery did and didn't know musically--the stuff from our era, she drew a blank, but some of the more current stuff, she knew. Also, she's a dance teacher, and she knows how to dance to choreographed stuff, but freestyling is not her thing. It was interesting. Hey, it was still fun, and we spent about half the time dancing and half the time talking. My voice was starting to go by the end.
We lasted until about 10:40; it went 'til 11. Avery had had a long day and her leg was starting to hurt. She'd taught that morning, then spent a few hours at the dealership getting her car fixed, so I could see on her face that she was starting to fade. She'd already offered me a ride back to the hotel, so yeah, I'm good to go. I will say that I was surprised that I never heard any true slow songs to dance to. Not that I had anyone to dance like that with, and not that it stopped the ones who wanted to slow dance, but yeah. That would have bummed me out if I'd had a dance partner. (Also, we were amused to see conducting as a dance move. We totally spotted a couple kids conducting along to the music at one point.) Another reason I'd parked where I did was so I wouldn't have to worry about finding a closer spot, figuring it would be packed in that area. Avery managed to find a spot in the annex lot next to Res/Rec. Sweet. I was concerned she'd have to park blocks away. However, she didn't remember where the exits to the lot were and ended up having to drive around again; I told her I'd get her out of there, and I did. (I've parked there for band camp so I've been there in recent years.) Then, on the way to the hotel, we're going down Chicago and the car in front of us is stopped to turn left into the strip mall. This was where I figured she was really tired, because I did not feel the car slowing down at all, like she thought the car was just coasting until it got into the left turn lane up ahead and didn't realize it was actually stopped, so I was going stop stop stop! She did stop and all was well, but that was a bit of a scary moment. Otherwise I got to the hotel safely, and looks like she got home safely, as I texted her happy birthday on Sunday and she was fine. Overall, it wasn't anything special, but I don't regret the experience as a whole.
...Now, the hotel, that's another story, which is why it warrants its own post.
After the game ended and the band-type people dispersed, I walked back to the hotel. (I will go into the hotel itself in a separate post.) It was about 5:30 when I got to my room. This is how much of a dork I am: I made sure to do a Duolingo exercise so I got in at least one that day--gotta keep my streak going! I'm at 1250+ days, and who knew what the evening would bring? I still should have had plenty of time to get ready, but my lack of sleep the night before made me lose focus at times, so I dawdled a little, and while I'd meant to leave by 6:30, I left later than that...then realized when I was most of the way down the hall to the elevator that I'd left my ring in my cosmetics bag (put there for safe keeping during my shower--I'd normally put it on the counter at home), realized it would bother me if I didn't wear it, and turned around to go back. I'd texted Avery...because I could :P...to say I'd planned to be at the reception between 6:30-6:45; it was more like 6:50. Oops. But I made it.
Upon arrival, I was told my table number. I was also handed a little box--have a luggage tag with our new logo on it! Um, great. Yeah, so, this new logo. I'd seen it on the concert program, noticing it right away. It looks dated already. (Dr. K said, nobody really likes it. So it's not just me.) It's this sans serif font where the school name is dark, and its year of inception is in gray. To the left is the tower logo, stylized, and it's just...blah. The prior logo was classy, where the tower had definition and the lettering was more in the classical, traditional style. With serifs. I should mention that the tower is based off one of the towers of Old Main, the original campus building, so it's long been the symbol of the college. (It was during my time in college, back in 1997, that Old Main was renovated and the towers connected. Before then, if you wanted to go from one tower to another, you'd have to go down five flights of stairs, walk through the building, then climb another five flights of stairs--no elevators. It was quite the ordeal. Mind you, the radio station had been up on the fifth floor of the south tower of Old Main until the reno, at which point it moved to a one-story building near the stadium. Our radio station has won numerous Marconis, so imagine how dedicated those students had to be back then to regularly climb all those stairs.)
Avery had spotted me and walked over to show me the way to our table. The front half of the tables were for alums; on the other side of the dance floor, the back half was for current students. There were at least 70-something tables, with 10 per table, so we're talking about 800 people were due to come. You had long lines of three rows of tables, then an aisle, and then another set of three rows of tables. Avery's friend Kristi had told me at the game that she's been to several of these--her 15th reunion was the year before--and they would group tables together by year. Well, that wasn't actually the case with us. When I'd checked the reunion website two weeks earlier, seven people were listed: Me, Avery, my band friend Dave and his wife Lydia, plus three more people--Kim, who's now a dean at the school, plus Jeremy and his wife Michelle. I believe Kim and Jeremy had been our class' outstanding man and woman of the year. Well, Kim and Jeremy (and presumably Michelle) were seated at a completely different table that was across the large aisle from us. I have no idea who else was with them. Kim did come over to say hello to the people she knew, including Dave, but it was strange to not have them near us. I did know, or at least recognize, two of the other people who sat with us, and Avery realized who the third was. I should mention that when I got to the table, there was a guy by himself, two empty chairs, then Avery's seat. I misheard what she'd said and nearly sat to her right, where the two chairs were; those were actually Dave and Lydia's seats. Oops. So I sat to Avery's left. Then came four people, including one in a wheelchair; his name is Mark, and he looked familiar, but I didn't think he'd been in a chair when we were in school. He'd had one of the fancy name tags and lanyards, which was on the tray of his chair, so I looked him up when I got home--about a decade after getting out of school, he was paralyzed in a diving accident and rendered quadriplegic. Oh, wow. He'd been a swimmer back in the day. He was there with his wife, and the two other women were Amanda, who'd gone to high school with me as well as college, and a woman whose name I didn't catch but I think it's Leah. (Even though we sat next to each other, Amanda and I really didn't speak, but she was always quiet that I recall and didn't say much to anyone that night.) Rounding out our table were Paige and her husband Bryant. Paige was in band with Dave and me, but also a swimmer so she knew Mark too. At some point this guy came over, dressed really casually; I think his name was Matt. I feel like someone texted him to say, what table are you at? His reply was, "The pool table at the Lantern." He stopped by for a bit and talked to the people he knew at the table, then left. After I got home, I looked up the Class of '99 reunion list, and that's how I think they one girl is Leah--there were more people listed than when I last checked, and I knew she wasn't at least one of the other women on there, so by process of elimination, I was left with her. The list was interesting, as it must have shown everyone from '99 who'd signed up to do anything official. Matt, my choir friend, was on there even though he only went to the concert, for example. My friend Jason was listed, too, and I never saw him, so I don't know if he was at the other table or if he only went to other things. He works in town, too, so it's not like he has far to travel. As for Jacob, he looked like your typical computer science/engineering kind of guy. However, Avery realized who he was--he was the guy who always performed at the campus coffee house. His posters were so ubiquitous that he'd get mentioned in the campus humor magazine. (He was also the guy who would hijack the discussions in our Rock & Roll Culture class. Luckily no guitars were involved at our table in any way.) Our table, by the way, was number 42, leading me to wonder if ours was the only table populated by people the age of the table number. Our class's other table was number 17, for the record.
The whole of the reception was five hours long. Cocktails and appetizers from 6-7, Hall of Fame inductions and dinner from 7-8, then dancing from 8-11. I missed most of that first hour but that likely wasn't a big deal for me. Besides, I was perfectly happy to have gone to the game beforehand; that's become my tradition and I wouldn't have wanted to give it up, even if it meant a tight squeeze between activities. At 7, the inductions were first, with five people going into the regular college HOF (the athletic one is separate). Due to the weather, and his flights getting canceled/postponed/redirected, one inductee was unable to make it and he flew back to California. Instead, his daughter, who is also a grad, ended up accepting the award on his behalf. Otherwise everyone was there, including the most recent grad, a gal named Alyssa, who is probably at the bare minimum amount of years away from school to be inducted--she was celebrating her 5-year reunion. This is the girl who sang with the jazz combo at the HC concert for four straight years. She's gone on to become a professional singer. It's still nice to have someone else sing at the concerts, though. Right after that, they went into the rebranding, how exciting! They talked about showing a video about the rebranding of the college, and the new logo, then went into a short video that went over the several logos the college has had in the past 50 years. I was unaware that the logo used my freshman year of college was from 1978. The most recent logo came about in 1996--remember, that was the classy one they've just done away with. Okay, well, that video was short and painless; let's have dinner. But no--then they went, and now it's time for the rebranding video! Sigh. It's probably related to the semester change and all that. I'm not sure anybody truly cared. Oh well; as Avery said, somebody felt they had to make their mark.
Dinner! Eventually, there was food. I will say there were water glasses and salads already on the table when I got there. The salad was fine but came with dressing, which Avery prefers on the side so she didn't eat hers. While we were watching one of the HOF videos, a cherry tomato flew from somewhere behind Dave and Lydia and hit Leah, which was bizarre. We don't know what happened there. Just before we were called to get food, I spotted a bread basket on the table between Leah and Amanda's plates and had them pass it to me. Yum, pretzel rolls! I'd taken a small bite out of mine, then left it on my salad plate to go get food, served buffet-style. When I returned, my plate was gone. My roll! Damn it! That was annoying. I was fully planning on eating it, so now they've wasted food by not just leaving my plate and assuming I was done. That made me cranky. I was already cranky because of what was served and how they'd done it. The main buffet tables had mashed potatoes with several toppings, like shredded cheese and bacon bits; green beans (gross); and two meats, chicken or beef. I always go beef in this case. Then there was a separate table set up with, I don't know, crudités, perhaps? There was a taller platform in the middle with suspicious, weird-looking stuff that I refused to touch, then these large round wooden boards with vegetables on top, roasted perhaps. I spotted carrots and mushrooms. I took the one pair of tongs on my side (there was another round board on the other side of the table, on the other side of the tall platform) and grabbed some carrots, but when I went to grab the mushrooms...they're whole. They're round. They roll. The large round wooden board was so large as to overhang the table, and there was no edge to it to catch anything that might fall off. Can you see where this is going? Yep, I had some of the mushrooms roll off the platform onto the floor, so now I'm picking them up so nobody steps on them, and I'm still holding the one set of tongs for my side of the table so I'm holding up the line, and dinner should not be this frustrating. I then went to put my dinner plate down and discovered my roll was missing, and I left to de-mushroom my hands and freshen up a little. I'd ended up giving my floor mushrooms to some poor member of the waitstaff, who seemed perfectly okay with taking them and not having me deposit them directly in a wastebasket. The food itself tasted okay, though I suspect the beef was medium rare; I'd prefer medium. I'm not used to there being blood left on my plate after I'm done eating. Desserts were cupcakes--oh, look, I get some tonight--and there were full-size ones or smaller ones. I grabbed a couple mini ones so I could have a little variety. Again, they looked suspiciously like the ones Rita has had at her gatherings. When we left, and Avery picked up her coat from the coat check, we spotted a Smallcakes box on a shelf behind the coat check person. Aha! Wow, that must have cost a fortune. I'm surprised they didn't have something similar to the dessert reception at the concert--as in, made in-house.
It was pretty amazing how many people dispersed at 8 o'clock. I mean, following dinner, we did a group picture with our table. Dave decided to do a selfie with all of us, and someone walking by said she could take the picture, which was nice. Okay, so, how to get the pictures from Dave to the rest of us? Anyone with an iPhone did an air drop or something similar. Yeah, sorry, I don't have an iPhone. Okay, so he could text me a link to them. Great! So, for the second time in 24 hours, I gave someone my cell number. I think I might need to sit down. So he texts me the link...and my browser didn't support whatever he sent. I couldn't view the pictures. Rats. Finally he picked a couple and texted them directly to me, and I shared those with Avery, so at least we both got them. And then everyone left. Our table was a ghost town. Well, we're a couple of single ladies and we came to dance, so we did. For the most part, we were the oldest people on the dance floor, though at times other alums joined in, which was kind of cool. It was mostly current students or recent grads, though. There was a live band, MixTape, and they were really good, playing an eclectic mix of stuff from the '60s/'70s to current music. I was kind of amazed at what Avery did and didn't know musically--the stuff from our era, she drew a blank, but some of the more current stuff, she knew. Also, she's a dance teacher, and she knows how to dance to choreographed stuff, but freestyling is not her thing. It was interesting. Hey, it was still fun, and we spent about half the time dancing and half the time talking. My voice was starting to go by the end.
We lasted until about 10:40; it went 'til 11. Avery had had a long day and her leg was starting to hurt. She'd taught that morning, then spent a few hours at the dealership getting her car fixed, so I could see on her face that she was starting to fade. She'd already offered me a ride back to the hotel, so yeah, I'm good to go. I will say that I was surprised that I never heard any true slow songs to dance to. Not that I had anyone to dance like that with, and not that it stopped the ones who wanted to slow dance, but yeah. That would have bummed me out if I'd had a dance partner. (Also, we were amused to see conducting as a dance move. We totally spotted a couple kids conducting along to the music at one point.) Another reason I'd parked where I did was so I wouldn't have to worry about finding a closer spot, figuring it would be packed in that area. Avery managed to find a spot in the annex lot next to Res/Rec. Sweet. I was concerned she'd have to park blocks away. However, she didn't remember where the exits to the lot were and ended up having to drive around again; I told her I'd get her out of there, and I did. (I've parked there for band camp so I've been there in recent years.) Then, on the way to the hotel, we're going down Chicago and the car in front of us is stopped to turn left into the strip mall. This was where I figured she was really tired, because I did not feel the car slowing down at all, like she thought the car was just coasting until it got into the left turn lane up ahead and didn't realize it was actually stopped, so I was going stop stop stop! She did stop and all was well, but that was a bit of a scary moment. Otherwise I got to the hotel safely, and looks like she got home safely, as I texted her happy birthday on Sunday and she was fine. Overall, it wasn't anything special, but I don't regret the experience as a whole.
...Now, the hotel, that's another story, which is why it warrants its own post.