Random Thoughts; Or, My, It's Been a While

I received an invitation this week from a couple of my old friends from California. (Well, they're not exactly old, but I've known them for a long...well, you know...) They're having a reunion of sorts for all of us from the Orange Stake--those who grew up in the Orange Stake from the, oh, early '90s until the turn of the millenium--at the Holiday Skating Rink.

It's an interesting venue choice. I loved the Holiday Skating Rink when I was in the 6th grade, but my interest really tapered off after that; I think it was something about all those partner-skating sessions, where you were supposed to find true love and skate with it around and around and around while listening to "Eternal Flame" by The Bangles, all accompanied by the smell of ancient nacho cheese ground into the industrial carpet. Yeah--not my cup of herbal tea. As memory serves, random girls would come up to me, ask me to skate, and I'd mumble something about not dating until I was sixteen and roll away to play another round of Terminator: The Invasion. Joy?

Anyway, so I got the invitation, and it's too bad, because it looks like I won't be able to attend, and I really would like to see everyone. The real thrill, then, became seeing everyone's email addresses and, in the case of one person, a blog address, which led me to the blogs of many of my friends (and their spouses, which, in most cases, are also my friends, since Steve Bitter and I were, like, the only two guys from the stake who didn't marry girls from the stake; Kelli Salter nee Harris is the only girl that comes to mind that married outside the stake...). My, my friends are doing well. It's amazing, really, that such a cluster of talent existed in one stake. There's Riles, who's on his way to becoming CEO of Cisco; and Toddie, who's pushing the limits of modern technology at MIT; and the aforementioned Kelli, who will soon unseat Anne Geddes as the most famous female photographer (and thank goodness for that, since I'm sick of the Geddes-produced nudity that confronts customers upon entering Barnes & Noble), and the list goes on and on. The mere fact that Steve can survive summers in Arizona is enough to qualify him as superhuman, in my humble opinion.

It also saddens me, of course, because I've lost contact with most of these good people. Perhaps, in a way, that's for the best. In high school, I could be slightly odd; now, given my absence of a few years, I can emerge at some reunion and act properly and people might forget about all the times that I stuck my fingers into their birthday cakes.

Sorry about that, Dan. But it was delicious.

(NOTE: When I began writing the preceding paragraphs, I misspelled "Holiday Skating Rink," saying, instead, "Holiday Staking Rink." Now THAT would be interesting--instead of a couples' skate, they would have...never mind.)

Okay, well, here are some other random thoughts, since it's been a while since I blogged:

1. All of my PhD applications are in. Pray. Pray hard.
2. I really need to change my "About Me" picture, since I don't have hair anymore.
3. Speaking of that, I promised Melanie not to wash my cut hair down the bathtub drain anymore, since we had to have maintainence come out and plumb the thing out. Whoops.
4. Melanie's sick right now, but she still went to give a conference presentation in Mesquite. Wow. That librarian should get a medal.
5. Holy cow, this winter has been harsh. It's sunny today, thank goodness, but man. Lots of snow, though, which is nice; if it's going to be cold, it might as well snow.

Okay, well, that's it for now.