For Friday night, my lab planned a dinner in honor of my successful defense a couple of weeks back and we all agreed to meet at a local Thai restaurant. I was completely shocked (and hopelessly confused) to go to the restaurant with Deano and find Geb and Di, two of my best girlfriends from Minnesota. You know the weird things that go through your mind when you see someone totally out of context? Here's what I thought when we walked in and saw those two sitting at the table:
Wow, those two girls look just like Geb and Di. And they're staring at me like I know them. Oh my God, that is Geb and Di! They came to Tampa and didn't tell me, and happened to come to the same restaurant as us. This is going to be awkward when they try to explain why they are here without telling me. Oh wait! They came for ME! They came to hang out with ME!
Ridiculous, right? Needless to say they got me good. They had been in touch with Deano, my parents, even my lab mates to pull off this feat. And the predictable subsequent collision of worlds ensued how you might imagine with the girls telling my lab mates and Dr. Hari about the wild college days when my reputation as a robust drinker preceded my intellectual prowess. And so, being reminded of those days, and since I am still the same person after all, I decided it was perfectly reasonable to drink the way I did in college. Never mind the fact that age and an adult lifestyle have seriously eroded my tolerance, not the mention my ability to bounce back from a wild night.
I blame the girls. They force me to party every single damn time. Except this time Geb is preggo, which is totally awesome because not only do I get to be an honorary auntie in a few months, we also got a designated driver for the weekend.
Dinner at the Thai restaurant was excellent and I had a lot of fun watching my girlfriends and my co-workers mingle. Especially when one of my lab mates tried out her best Minne-sooo-tan accent on my friends. After an extended dinner and a couple of cocktails, half the lab went home to their spouses and families. The party continued (with Dr. Hari!) at the bar next door for a little while where we shared some pitchers and listened to Dr. Hari reminisce a little about his own college days.
Later, Deano, the girls, and I hit the neighborhood bar at the end of our street where things got out of hand very fast. We ran into some fellow grad students (a couple of "lifers") who took it upon themselves to hit on my friends. We also played a rather mean game of "who has the best drinking story". I got pretty emotional as it is a rarity to have my husband and my best friends with me (usually the husbands tend to step back a little in the wake of the force that is us girls) but I know they wanted him to hang out with us since they hadn't seen him in a few years.
Things got blurry after several rounds and the last clear memory I have is the clock reading 2:00. After that there are fragments of the remainder of the night including a not-so-great toilet-hugging session, but it was worth it to have an evening with my friends in my neck of the woods. Girls night in Tampa was a success.
Saturday we went to Clearwater. We ate lunch at Frenchy's and then headed to the beach where we recovered from our hangovers under a cabana among the sounds of the waves and seagulls, the smell of the saltwater and the beach eye candy that we realized for the first time was way too young for any of us. But it didn't stop us from looking. Or commenting.
In the evening, we just watched sappy chick flicks with candy and more junk food, reminisced some more and said our good byes until the next time we meet up, when Geb will either be big as a house or even a mom and I'll likely call some place else home. They flew back yesterday morning, and I resumed life as normal.
Thanks, ladies, for planning your trip down to Florida in a completely covert fashion, surprising the bejesus out of me and showing me a fantastic time, as usual. After 10 years, we still know how to have a totally kickass time.
Showing posts with label Good Old Days. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Good Old Days. Show all posts
Monday, April 21, 2008
Thursday, August 23, 2007
Girlfriends
My college roommate, Amanda, found this gem of a picture the other day and sent it out asking, "I have no idea where this is from. Any ideas?"
It's hard to tell exactly because the four of us in the photo have been friends for close to ten years. They are my girls. We don't talk every day or every week but when we get together it is as if no time had passed. Maybe it's because we know what's important and what's not. We are a support network who have been there through bad boyfriends and worse break ups. Through losing loved ones and at times our own minds. We come from different backgrounds and went into different careers, but after all these years we still know how to have a good time.
Even if a good time is a little more painful than it used to be.
The general consensus was that the first picture was taken about five years ago. We were experimenting with the auto-picture feature which explains the funny alignment. The "shot" sequence was taken last month during Girls Night, Summer 2007. For the record, I woke up drunk the following morning. Ouch.
It's hard to tell exactly because the four of us in the photo have been friends for close to ten years. They are my girls. We don't talk every day or every week but when we get together it is as if no time had passed. Maybe it's because we know what's important and what's not. We are a support network who have been there through bad boyfriends and worse break ups. Through losing loved ones and at times our own minds. We come from different backgrounds and went into different careers, but after all these years we still know how to have a good time.
Even if a good time is a little more painful than it used to be.
The general consensus was that the first picture was taken about five years ago. We were experimenting with the auto-picture feature which explains the funny alignment. The "shot" sequence was taken last month during Girls Night, Summer 2007. For the record, I woke up drunk the following morning. Ouch.
Wednesday, August 01, 2007
In the Beginning
e.b. suggested that I write a post about my first date with Deano. While our first date was memorable, in my opinion it is worth it to preface the date with just how we got there…
Dean and I met in August of 1998 when we were both sophomores at the University of Minnesota. I had just moved in to my first apartment in Dinkytown with three other girls. I had met up with Amanda in freshman composition class and we are still very close almost ten years later. She needed a roommate and we seemed to really hit it off. As for the other two we picked up along they, that’s a different post entirely. Similarly, Dean had just moved into a large house with eight other guys. My roommates already knew Dean from the dorms, where they all shared the same circle of friends (in fact Amanda was dating one of the guys in the house). As a group, us girls would often go to the house and hang out with the guys. You could count on it to get rowdy and out of control and still some of my favorite memories are of those times. In general, I look back so fondly on my college days (much more so than high school), but unfortunately I don’t have time to address everything today. For some reason, I always gravitated towards Dean at those get togethers; he was always so sweet and funny. He never brought any girls over, and despite my sporadic and failed relationships, I rarely mixed the guys I saw with the boys I liked to just hang out with. Maybe because I felt more comfortable with those guys than any of the guys that would try to be my boyfriends. And the few times I did, I received unbearable flack from my “protectors”. So on the evenings when we would all just hang out, towards the end of the night when people would pair off, Dean and I would sit and flirt and drink and talk about baseball and music and life.
This casual friendship continued for well over a year. Things changed in December of 1999. I clearly remember having all the guys over to our apartment for the Vikings-Packers game and getting a phone call from the guy I was sort of dating at the time. I was sitting in my room talking to him on the phone with my door open so I wouldn’t miss any of the game or any of the social action. (In retrospect, it was pretty obvious I wasn’t into this guy.) But as the phone call continued I was paying more attention to Dean and Amanda, who were deep in conversation. I was feeling a little indignant because Dean usually had these introspective conversations with me. Not her. But they kept looking in my direction I can’t even tell you what my then-suitor and I were talking about, I just remember the looks on Amanda’s and Dean’s faces while they were talking.
Later, Amanda pulled me aside and told me what she and Dean had been discussing. She told me that Dean had confessed to her that he had feelings for me, but he worried I didn’t feel the same way. Very honestly, the thought had occurred to me, but I was frightened I would break his heart. I was very unsure of exactly what I wanted out of anyone and Dean wasn’t someone whose feelings I could take lightly.
I spent the next several days agonizing over that conversation with Amanda. I ditched the boy on the phone that night. And I decided I wanted to kiss Dean at midnight, during Amanda’s New Years Eve party. Her parents had everyone over for a celebration and at 11:54, I asked Dean if he would kiss me for New Years. And at midnight, he did. While everyone else celebrated the new year, we pondered what this meant for us. A couple minutes into 2000, he asked me on a date. And I said yes.
So after that story, our first actual date doesn’t seem quite as romantic, but I owe it to e.b. to share what it was. On January 5th, we went to the Gopher basketball game. I was alone in the apartment on winter break and it had snowed all day long. Neither of us had a car on campus, so he picked me up on foot in a parka and together we trudged through the six or so inches of snow through Dinkytown to Taste of Manhattan pizza on Washington Avenue. We had slices of pizza and each shared memories of when we had been to New York. I was wearing a dark blue v-neck sweater and jeans. He wore his trademark button down plaid shirt and khakis. Then we walked up 4th Street to the Barn and watched the Gophers beat the Wolverines. Even then we knew it was much more than a first date, we knew it was the start of a long journey together. I don’t think either of us could have predicted where it would take us, just that we wanted to do it together.
Now almost eight years later I was happy to think about the early days of our relationship again. There are so many things that we do that just kind of blend in with the other ordinary memories but it’s amazing how we remember the most monumental moments of our lives, the ones we knew would change everything.
Dean and I met in August of 1998 when we were both sophomores at the University of Minnesota. I had just moved in to my first apartment in Dinkytown with three other girls. I had met up with Amanda in freshman composition class and we are still very close almost ten years later. She needed a roommate and we seemed to really hit it off. As for the other two we picked up along they, that’s a different post entirely. Similarly, Dean had just moved into a large house with eight other guys. My roommates already knew Dean from the dorms, where they all shared the same circle of friends (in fact Amanda was dating one of the guys in the house). As a group, us girls would often go to the house and hang out with the guys. You could count on it to get rowdy and out of control and still some of my favorite memories are of those times. In general, I look back so fondly on my college days (much more so than high school), but unfortunately I don’t have time to address everything today. For some reason, I always gravitated towards Dean at those get togethers; he was always so sweet and funny. He never brought any girls over, and despite my sporadic and failed relationships, I rarely mixed the guys I saw with the boys I liked to just hang out with. Maybe because I felt more comfortable with those guys than any of the guys that would try to be my boyfriends. And the few times I did, I received unbearable flack from my “protectors”. So on the evenings when we would all just hang out, towards the end of the night when people would pair off, Dean and I would sit and flirt and drink and talk about baseball and music and life.
This casual friendship continued for well over a year. Things changed in December of 1999. I clearly remember having all the guys over to our apartment for the Vikings-Packers game and getting a phone call from the guy I was sort of dating at the time. I was sitting in my room talking to him on the phone with my door open so I wouldn’t miss any of the game or any of the social action. (In retrospect, it was pretty obvious I wasn’t into this guy.) But as the phone call continued I was paying more attention to Dean and Amanda, who were deep in conversation. I was feeling a little indignant because Dean usually had these introspective conversations with me. Not her. But they kept looking in my direction I can’t even tell you what my then-suitor and I were talking about, I just remember the looks on Amanda’s and Dean’s faces while they were talking.
Later, Amanda pulled me aside and told me what she and Dean had been discussing. She told me that Dean had confessed to her that he had feelings for me, but he worried I didn’t feel the same way. Very honestly, the thought had occurred to me, but I was frightened I would break his heart. I was very unsure of exactly what I wanted out of anyone and Dean wasn’t someone whose feelings I could take lightly.
I spent the next several days agonizing over that conversation with Amanda. I ditched the boy on the phone that night. And I decided I wanted to kiss Dean at midnight, during Amanda’s New Years Eve party. Her parents had everyone over for a celebration and at 11:54, I asked Dean if he would kiss me for New Years. And at midnight, he did. While everyone else celebrated the new year, we pondered what this meant for us. A couple minutes into 2000, he asked me on a date. And I said yes.
So after that story, our first actual date doesn’t seem quite as romantic, but I owe it to e.b. to share what it was. On January 5th, we went to the Gopher basketball game. I was alone in the apartment on winter break and it had snowed all day long. Neither of us had a car on campus, so he picked me up on foot in a parka and together we trudged through the six or so inches of snow through Dinkytown to Taste of Manhattan pizza on Washington Avenue. We had slices of pizza and each shared memories of when we had been to New York. I was wearing a dark blue v-neck sweater and jeans. He wore his trademark button down plaid shirt and khakis. Then we walked up 4th Street to the Barn and watched the Gophers beat the Wolverines. Even then we knew it was much more than a first date, we knew it was the start of a long journey together. I don’t think either of us could have predicted where it would take us, just that we wanted to do it together.
Now almost eight years later I was happy to think about the early days of our relationship again. There are so many things that we do that just kind of blend in with the other ordinary memories but it’s amazing how we remember the most monumental moments of our lives, the ones we knew would change everything.
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