I can hardly believe this weekend is over. Pretty much every Sunday night I'm left thinking that weekends are too short, but on yesterday I actually woke up and thought "Ugh, thank God I still have one more day to sleep in. NO. WAIT. IT'S ALREADY SUNDAY. AUUUGHGHGHGH!" What I wouldn't give to be a morning person. I think that on second thought, being able to sing like Mariah Carey wouldn't be as great as being able to pop out of bed at 7am ready to take on the world. Or just not sleep at all. So I'm back to being a non-somniac for my superpower.
This weekend went by quicker than most for a couple of reasons. First off, it was Homecoming weekend, and since I still live in Baltimore, I have no excuse not to attend at least some of the festivities. Especially because one of my good friends from school just got a job in Utah, and this weekend was his last weekend on the East Coast for who knows how long.
So our friend was staying with some other people who live across town, and got into Baltimore on Friday night. His friends are fun people (unlike me, their bodies did not reach the lifetime limit for alcohol consumption at age 20, so they are not cursed with sobriety due to massive hangovers) and they were out bar hopping BEFORE hitting up the "young alumni" tent on campus. Joel and I were going to meet him and his entourage at a bar in midtown, halfway between our house and the campus. We arrived first, and we snagged the last table and ordered some dinner. The others had already eaten, so we figured we weren't being rude by not waiting.
Our friend arrived about 10 minutes after we got there, and ordered a drink, but before he even got to finish it, the girls he was with decided they wanted to go to the tent, and he got dragged along. Which was no big deal, and we would also have been happy to leave had we not just gotten our food. And paid a $5 cover to get into the bar (which, I am fairly sure, was the first time I've EVER paid a cover in Baltimore). So we told him we'd just meet up with him in the tent in a little while.
Fifteen seconds after they left, a former classmate of ours (I hate the word "classmate" but I can't think of a better way to say it without using at least 5 words) came in and sat down with a group at the table directly next to us. Neither of us actually knew him or had ever even talked to him, so we did the proper thing and pretended like we hadn't seen him come in. We were almost done eating.
A few minutes later, a couple, also former classmates, came in. And because I am making a sincere effort to get over my "bitterness" and let the past go, the only description I'll give of this girl is that she was roomates with someone I hated, and who hated me, and so she hated me also, by association. Needless to say, this was more than a little awkward. I didn't know Joel at the time that all this hating was in its prime, so all he knew about the situation was that he recognized these people as Hopkins grads, and I was looking queasy all of a sudden. We finished our food, paid, and ran out of there, where I told him the long and dramatic story of why this girl and I are not friendly as we drove my car that has no brakes up to campus. I couldn't help thinking how it would be karmic retribution if my brakes gave out while I was thinking mean thoughts about people I still hated after so many years, but apparently the universe thinks I am sufficiently over the whole ordeal, because we arrived at the tent safely.
Or, I should say, we arrived at the tent location. There was no tent there. We were totally the losers who got told the wrong address for the party. Once I checked my cell phone messages and found out where the tent really was, we moved the car and headed to the complete opposite side of campus. I'm just happy that the Hopkins campus is pretty small. And that Joel has a parking pass for the athletic center parking lot.
I don't know why I was expecting the tent to be fun, since I've been before and it's always been an overgrown frat party. This year was no different, except that instead of having multiple bars with long lines, this time there was only one. ONE. BAR. We waited on line for forty minutes, and by "in line" I mean "in the mass of people pushing and spilling their various drinks on me." I HATE crowds, especially drunk, pushy crowds. Which is another reason why I am no longer a fun person: I get claustrophobic in crowded bars. When I finally pushed my way up to the bar, I spent another 10 minutes having the obnoxious sorority girls (my ex-sorority, ironically) alternatingly shove their hair and boobs in my face as they snatched all the drinks the bartenders offered up and passed them back to all their drunk friends, spilling most of them on me. There are times when I love being short, like on long airplane rides when I have plenty of legroom. And then there are times when I hate being short. This was one of those times.
When I finally forced myself to be assertive enough to grab two of the drinks, it was BEER. I pushed my way out of the burgeoning crowd with my two cups of BEER, which Joel and I nursed for the rest of the night because neither of us wanted to go back up to that bar. In case you missed that, I drank BEER. I hate beer. The only beer I can drink without gagging is Resurrection Ale from The Brewer's Art. Needless to say, they were not serving microbrews at this tent, although for the price they were charging, they really should have been. So I'll say it again: I HATE BEER. And I really hate beer that I spent $20 cover (each) and had to fight to get. At that point I would have preferred to just dip my solo cup into a garbage can filled with jungle juice. If you're going to have a frat party, at least get the logistics right. Maybe throw in an ice luge and some jello shots. You'll never see people at a frat party WAITING for BEER. I think that what pissed me off most about the whole situation was my own stupidity. A few years ago, I not only would have snuck into that tent and avoided the exorbitant cover charge, I would have been sure to tote along my own water bottle filled with vodka. Honestly, sometimes I wonder if grad school is actually making me less smart.
The other problem with this reunion tent is that I sort of hate reunions. Well, I shouldn't say that. I don't hate reunions. I hate reunions that turn into crowded, overpriced, wannabe-frat parties that can't figure out that 200+ people are going to require more than one bar and three bartenders. I also hate reunions that include people that I didn't like in college, and don't like now. And most of all, I hate reunions where I am forced to repeat, over and over, that I still work for Hopkins and I still live in Baltimore and I am getting a Masters in Liberal Arts. Yes, I said Liberal Arts. Yes, you can get a Master's in that.
From all that whining, you'd probably think that I had a terrible time at this tent/frat party, but actually, I had kind of a good time. We did see several people that I haven't talked to since this time last year, at the tent that had FOUR BARS, and it was good to see them. After several phone calls, we found our Utah-destined friend, and we got to spend most of the night with him. I saw my old housemates and some friends of Joel's, one of which kissed me on the forehead. He had remembered to bring his own bottle of vodka, apparently. We left shortly after that, because this tent also closed at midnight. Another good lesson they could learn from frat parties: don't close at midnight. Duh.
But it was good that they closed at midnight, because it made us look less lame for leaving at 11:45 and going to sleep. Joel left the house at 5:30am for a race on Saturday morning, and I woke up bright and early at 11am and was at the library by noon -- which would be reason #2 that the weekend went by so quickly: I spent SEVEN HOURS in the library on Saturday. I'm dry heaving just typing those words.
It makes me so sad that I spent the whole afternoon (and most of the evening) in the library, but it was necessary. I got a lot of work done on my damned flaneur paper, although I am not sure that I enhanced its quality at all. I know that I've said this before, but this time it's really true: this is the worst paper I"ve ever written. I've stretched it to the limit, replacing phrases with other phrases that mean the same thing but are one word longer, and it's still 3 pages short of the minimum. For the first time since I can't even remember when, I am going to resort to using Book Antiqua 12 point font to reach the 20-page minimum. I feel so ashamed. And to make it worse, a good 1/3 of the paper is not even on the flaneur. It's about tourism in 1860s Paris, which was my topic before I realized that there was not enough information to write even a 10-page paper, let along a 20+ page one. But I'd already written about 5 pages before I scrapped the topic, and I'll be damned if I"m going to let that work go to waste. Another 1/3 of the paper is still in red type, because that signifies the portions that I copies directly from the textbook and still have to rephrase. Like I said, WORST. PAPER. EVER. But I'm through caring. At this point, I just can't wait to hand it in and never think about the damn thing again.
My Maya astronomy paper, on the other hand, is beautiful, if I do say so myself. I've just put the finishing touches on it, which includes different colored paper for the different sections and a nice binder that I found in the supply closet at work. And THIRTY FOUR pages of my own writing. 34! It's the longest paper that I've ever written, and I am thinking of attaching a not to my flaneur paper saying something like "I wrote a really awesome paper for my other class and I didn't have any brain power left to work on this one. Sorry."
I can't end this post without mentioning the highlight of the weekend: on Sunday the Penn-State trio and I, after having put in a hard day's work at the library, went to the Blue Jay 5k, our team's fundraiser event. Hil and Sarah ran it (and were awesome) and Laura and I watched, because apparently hamstring injuries are contagious and Laura has now contracted it from me. During the race I did a headstand to show off my yoga skills and then I accidentally rolled forward and hurt my neck. But that was not the highlight. The highlight was when one of the younger alumns told me that Bobby, our illustrious and incestuous coach, is on MySpace. And oh, is he ever. That made the fact that today is Monday today A-OK, because I could use the fast internet to peruse Bobby's profile, which is filled mostly with his hot female friends that are under 21. Some things never change.
A close runner up for the highlight of the weekend: I had pepperoni pizza for 4 meals in a row (dinner-breakfast-lunch-dinner, if you must know) and also managed to fit in a screening of the Lizzy McGuire movie. My arteries hurt. And so does my neck. Happy freaking Monday.
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