I hope you all had nice weekends. The weather here in NY was beautiful -- high 70's and barely a cloud in the sky. It was perfect. Marred only by the slight runny nose the boy child had. Slight runny nose for the little portable germ warfare factory translates into near death experience for me. I have a sore throat, runny nose, head ache, extreme tiredness and am whiny and feeling sorry for myself. The boy, of course, seems fine.
We had a mini reunion this weekend. All four of us who lived together in college for all four years got together this weekend at my house. R has moved himself out to the middle of Indiana where, for like six bucks and a collection of old bottle tops, got 14 acres of land and build himself a palace of a house. He came for the weekend without wife or children. M lives in New Jersey in a very tony suburb. He came with wife and two children. We took them all to the beach to watch the kids run around and ooh and aah over the dead jellyfish.
It was interesting to see how, 15 years after graduation, my friends have changed. None of the important things have changed. They are both the same fundamentally decent guys they always were. R has become more satisfied with himself. He is a lawyer in a small city in Indiana and does mostly personal injury work, not the kind of work that is necessarily intellectually stimulating. Also, living in a smaller more homogeneous place has left him without any of the daily challenges to his world view and value system that life in NY throws at you where you may have a dozen different languages and cultures in your face on any given day. He's happy, I think I'd find it stultifying. He showed us a video of the house though and that was like a playhouse gone wild: 6500 sq. ft., a wine cellar, an office with a smoke eater for his cigars, a fire pole down from his office to the second floor, a gym, a full bar next to the entertainment center with a massive big screen television. And I swear, in comparison to NY, he got the thing built in exchange for three packs of chewing gum.
M is someone I see regularly, actually. Not as regularly as I'd like, but still regularly. He's an up and coming executive type at a major life insurance company. His wife is charming and their kids are beautiful and smart. He works too hard but he's got the whole package. He is also the nicest guy I've ever known.
After the beach, we all adjourned to my house for the kids to nap together and the adults to drink some wine. At least we managed to drink the wine. The two little girls played in my daughter's room instead of napping. I believe that copious amounts of old Easter candy were consumed. Wrappers were discovered later. But they got along like two peas in a pod, which augurs well for future time together. I really wanted them to get along. It makes things easier for us all.
We all went out for an early dinner. Indian food is not readily available in R's corner of the world. My daughter fell and cut her lip during dinner. She was very brave and let me hold and ice cube to it to cut the swelling down. Then she noticed that she had gotten blood all over her shirt. She wanted to get down off my lap then and go show "Mr. R" and M her shirt. For some reason, she decided that R should be called Mr. R. Maybe because he's over 6 foot 5 inches tall. Either way, she walked over and stood between R and M and showed them her shirt and they made all of the appropriate noises about how brave she was and she just stood there and gleamed. It was an interesting and kind of odd feeling watching these two guys, people I've known in all sorts of stupid situations, interact with my daughter. It was kind of surreal. But very sweet.
Eventually, of course, all tired children melted down, we cut things short, over tipped and left.
Other than being sick today, it was a nice weekend all around.
Posted by Random Penseur at June 14, 2004 08:07 AM