What's up?

[Rommie]

An exhausting 4th of July week for me as well. We held our 35th High School Reunion. In addition to basically 4 days in a row of reunion activities, I pull the float in the parade. So the previous 2 weeks were spent getting the truck and wagon cleaned up, detailed and ready to go. By Friday night, our semi formal party, I was ready to go to bed. We still had all the clean up Saturday, then a buddy's birthday bar crawl. Then Sunday I had to get regular stuff done that I'd been ignoring. Feel a little better today. Still blowing off my workout tonight for chores and laundry. (And maybe some couch time...)

Well I guess now we know our exact age difference, because my 15th high school reunion is coming up this fall. I do think I will try to go, because while I didn't make many long friendships in high school, they are nice women I wouldn't mind chatting an evening with (I feel like reunions are made for people like me). The only thing a bit weird about it is most alumnae don't like the direction the school has taken in the past few years, so I suspect meeting up in a bar on the Friday night would be more fun than whatever official thing happens on the Saturday.

[Thumper]

What's a newspaper?

It's non-fake news...

[Thumper]

my 15th high school reunion is coming up this fall. I do think I will try to go

I'd encourage everyone to go to their reunions even if they didn't have a great time in school. Or even if they were only there for a year or two. We have people come to ours that didn't graduate with us, because they moved away or changed schools. But all are welcome. I know high school wasn't a great time for everyone, but we're not 15 anymore. I've seen bullies and bullied reconciled, I've seen catharsis. I've seen new friendships made, and old one's rekindled. Regardless of your experience, those people were the ones you were around in your formative years.

Our school doesn't have anything to do with reunions, it's all us. So we don't have to worry about those kinds of politics. 35 years after playing, my football coach runs up to my truck in the parade to shake my hand and say hi. Maybe we have a special school and a special community, but that was nice. Well worth the exhaustion.


OMG Rommie's over 30...

[pumpkinpi]

An exhausting 4th of July week for me as well. We held our 35th High School Reunion. In addition to basically 4 days in a row of reunion activities, I pull the float in the parade. So the previous 2 weeks were spent getting the truck and wagon cleaned up, detailed and ready to go. By Friday night, our semi formal party, I was ready to go to bed. We still had all the clean up Saturday, then a buddy's birthday bar crawl. Then Sunday I had to get regular stuff done that I'd been ignoring. Feel a little better today. Still blowing off my workout tonight for chores and laundry. (And maybe some couch time...)

Well I guess now we know our exact age difference, because my 15th high school reunion is coming up this fall. I do think I will try to go, because while I didn't make many long friendships in high school, they are nice women I wouldn't mind chatting an evening with (I feel like reunions are made for people like me). The only thing a bit weird about it is most alumnae don't like the direction the school has taken in the past few years, so I suspect meeting up in a bar on the Friday night would be more fun than whatever official thing happens on the Saturday.

My 25th is this fall!

I went to my 10th and had a great time, because a lot of my close friends were there. I couldn't make the 20th, but based on Facebook posts it seems it was mostly a group of people I didn't hang out with. It looks like the same thing will happen for the 25th so I probably won't go. I had a fabulous group of friends in high school, and we still keep in close contact on facebook, so if we want to get together we'll just arrange it ourselves.

[Thumper]

Many of the people I hang out with at the reunion activities, or that end up on the organizing committee were not my close friends back then or now. Actually some of my favorite moments of either the reunions or the meetings is getting the different perspectives of events we went through; Hearing about things I didn't know about specifically because I didn't spend alot of time with them.

[SciFiFisher]

What's a newspaper?

Kids these days.

[Rommie]

Well, my graduating class had 41 kids in it (no joke) so we were all fairly close even if we weren't friends, if that makes sense. I also happen to know the current alumni rep aka organizer for our class married an astronomer (hah!) so I'm sure I'd have something to chat about if I went.

[geonuc]

Being a military brat, the idea of high school reunion really doesn't resonate. I was at my last high school for only one year. Yeah, I had friends but I didn't grow up with any of them, not even close.

[Thumper]

Yeah, growing up, that was very foreign to me. I lived in 5 states by the time I made it to 5th grade. I learned later that my Mom kind of put her foot down and said that move was going to be our last until my sister and I graduated from high school. Spent 8 years in Bexley. The first couple were very fish out of water because my classmates had been friends since birth, as were many of their parents. Took me a while to fit in. 40 years later, I've almost got it.

[Rommie]

Yeah, well in my case we lived in the same house until I went off to college, and the only switch that ever happened was from the local elementary school to the private all girls school in 6th grade. Seeing as I had no friends with the kids in the elementary school, I was pretty ok with leaving them behind.

It's a bit strange with the house though because my parents sold it in the fall in 2011 when I moved to Amsterdam (unexpectedly- turns out a neighbor on the street wanted a bigger house), so while I was expecting to go home at some point my parents packed up everything while I was living in Europe. I still have many a dream in that house where in my dream mind my parents sold it but are still renting it or something, and each time I'm there for the "last time." They're a bit annoying as dreams go, but decided to not dwell on it because I do enjoy "visiting" the old house overall. I'm certain those dreams will never fully go away anyway.

[Thumper]

It's a little bittersweet, the only house I ever spent much time growing up in: 8 years of high school, and then college until I got married, got paved not long after that. Alot of memories in that house and it is literally a parking lot now. Many times I thought how I would have loved to visit it.

[SciFiFisher]

That's similar to the high school I graduated from. It was torn down and where it was is now part of the parking lot for the bigger school they built to replace it. My school experience was odd in some ways. We moved frequently but we also kept coming back to roughly the same area so I wound up graduating with almost the same group of kids I started grade school in. It was a small high school graduating class of 50. It was funny because the kids would say "remember when this happened?" and I would be "No, I wasn't here" Them: "Dude, you had to be. We know you grew up with us!" Except they forget the years I missed between 1st and 5th grade and 6th to 9th grade.

[Thumper]

Whoa, slow down guys. I can't keep up with all the new posts and PM's...

[SciFiFisher]

Whoa, slow down guys. I can't keep up with all the new posts and PM's...

Hello retired guy!

[Thumper]

8 hours to go.
Today is going to be a weird day.
Thanks, Man.

[pumpkinpi]

I missed this! I hope you had a great 8 hours and are enjoying your first week of freedom.

[pumpkinpi]

I like to listen to podcasts when I'm getting ready in the morning. If I'm wearing pjs/clothes without pockets, I put on a ratty old apron I got on our honeymoon almost 12 years ago in Portugal.
This morning I walked in to work, and I was 20 minutes into my walk, almost there, when I noticed I still had the apron on! It's actually not that ratty, it has a nice pattern. But it completely clashes with my outfit. I'm so glad I got if off before walking in. Not that anyone would have cared!

[SciFiFisher]

I like to listen to podcasts when I'm getting ready in the morning. If I'm wearing pjs/clothes without pockets, I put on a ratty old apron I got on our honeymoon almost 12 years ago in Portugal.
This morning I walked in to work, and I was 20 minutes into my walk, almost there, when I noticed I still had the apron on! It's actually not that ratty, it has a nice pattern. But it completely clashes with my outfit. I'm so glad I got if off before walking in. Not that anyone would have cared!

In some cases, they may not have noticed.

[Sigma_Orionis]

I like to listen to podcasts when I'm getting ready in the morning. If I'm wearing pjs/clothes without pockets, I put on a ratty old apron I got on our honeymoon almost 12 years ago in Portugal.
This morning I walked in to work, and I was 20 minutes into my walk, almost there, when I noticed I still had the apron on! It's actually not that ratty, it has a nice pattern. But it completely clashes with my outfit. I'm so glad I got if off before walking in. Not that anyone would have cared!

In some cases, they may not have noticed.

Yup

[Thumper]

I missed this! I hope you had a great 8 hours and are enjoying your first week of freedom.

So I am completely a creature of habit. I woke up (and continue to do so) at 4:45 am. I don't know when to take my vitamins, when to eat my fruit, when to drink my water. Heck, I didn't know where to get cash. (My credit union and their ATM are in my building.) Heck, I don't know when to shower, and it was late last week before I realized I hadn't checked in here.

It has and continues to be a transition. But I haven't been idle. I've helped my mother-in-law a bunch cleaning out her property in preparation of a move. And I've helped two different buddies in their home remodeling businesses. But it continues to be weird. The biggest plus is I'm starting to see a slight trend of calming down.

[SciFiFisher]

Did you mow the lawn? Did you yell at kids to get off your lawn? Have you started telling younger people "When I was your age..."

[Rommie]

I like to listen to podcasts when I'm getting ready in the morning. If I'm wearing pjs/clothes without pockets, I put on a ratty old apron I got on our honeymoon almost 12 years ago in Portugal.
This morning I walked in to work, and I was 20 minutes into my walk, almost there, when I noticed I still had the apron on! It's actually not that ratty, it has a nice pattern. But it completely clashes with my outfit. I'm so glad I got if off before walking in. Not that anyone would have cared!

What podcasts do you listen to? Nah, never mind, I'll start a new thread on it, we need new subjects lately anyway.

[Thumper]

Did you mow the lawn? Did you yell at kids to get off your lawn? Have you started telling younger people "When I was your age..."

Yes mowed the lawn once. But it's gone mostly dormant due to no rain in the last month.

I have had a couple "Back in my day" moments.

[pumpkinpi]

#TFW when you get all the appointments scheduled that you've been putting off for too long. And I mean TOOOO long! Nala's vet appointment was due the end of August, last year.......no excuse for letting that slip!
And then both my kids need orthodontic evaluations. Buster had one already, 2.5 years ago, when he was 7.5. They basically said yup, he'll need braces, come back in 9 months for us to look again. So I didn't. This summer the dentist recommended that they both go, so I finally scheduled it.
When I was a kid, it wasn't until middle school and you actually had most of your adult teeth until you got braces! Buster doesn't even have his two teeth outside of this upper front teeth all the way in, and Rooster just lost her second upper front tooth! I'm sure there's good reason to go in earlier now. But I hope it's more for the kids' teeth, and not so much for extra income.

My dentist (extra cleanings too), my checkup, my two specialists, lab tests they order, extra tests I need now that I'm getting older, the kids' checkups, two cleanings each year, Nala's appointment.....then there's non-health related things, like we got a ac/furnace tuneup this summer and learned we need a new furnace, so we have two consultations scheduled and will have to schedule the install. And I got into a very minor accident a couple weeks ago, I was rear-ended with just scratches on the bumper, but I need to take the car in to make sure there's nothing else wrong. (So no, I don't have all my appointments scheduled yet.) It's not just that I hate talking to people on the phone. It's also such a pain to figure out when is least convenient for me to miss work for all of these appointments every year. Fortunately the kids' dental cleanings, Nala's vet, and the car estimate can all be on the weekends. But everything else is during the week.

Whoa, this turned into a BMR even though I came to celebrate some accomplishments!

[SciFiFisher]

I love trying to make appointments. I usually have to do it when I have my work calendar and my personal calendar are in the same room.