Hello again! I jsut got back from a lovely lunch where I was sitting with some Lexingtonian ladies who told me all about their quilting guild and master gardener's club and other such activities. Lexington seems like such a lovely place to retire.
Well the past week or so has been really nice. I have come to find out that the AC participants are (with few exceptions) unbelievably sweet and adorable. They're just such genuinely nice people. Yesterday Danielle and I got a knock on our suite door and we opened it to this woman who had been with the program for two weeks in a row, and while standing in the hall she launched into this entire story about how she knows we're not allowed to accept gratuity but she just had to get us something so she bought all the RAs cookies from Coco Mill. It was such a kind gesture, we were all so excited. If we thought the people last week were old, well they're even older this week. The theme is Verdi and Vino, so we have about 65 opera and wine lovers to tend to. They're a little more demanding and needy than past groups but they're very nice and fun to chat with. I drove the golf cart yesterday, which I've decided I really enjoy doing because people are so grateful for it. They may ask for a lot but they're also quite appreciative when we do it for them. We did have one resident this week who left today because of health problems. He collapsed during dinner the other night (I must have been really engrossed in my table's conversation because I completely missed the incident) and was taken to the hospital. He stayed in all day yesterday but still wasnt feeling better so he went home. Scary...I'm really hoping I don't walk into one of my rooms to take out the trash and find a dead person or something. We're all a little scared of that I think.
Now, I'm pretty tired today because last night Stephen and I (along with Danielle, Mike, and half of Lexington's youth) went to Lexington's own R/C State Cinema 3 to watch the midnight premier of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince! It was thrilling! The movie itself I thought was pretty good. It definitely diverted a lot from the book but that's to be expected. I thought it was hilarious and relatively well-done. Definitely worth seeing. I want to be Ron Weasley's best friend. But probably the most entertaining part of the night was sharing the theater with a large group of angsty lexingtonian high school kids. First off, they were waiting outside the theater by 8:00. I think my group showed up at around 11:25 and we still managed to get perfectly fine seats. Whenever people would drive down Nelson St past the theater these kids would yell and scream and wave. Many were dressed up. One of our favorites was this girl wearing a full-on cloak and carrying some kind of extremely strange stick. We think it was supposed to be a wand? But it looked more like a tree branch. Next to her was a girl who was wearing an extremely flowy flowerypatterned concoction that i'm guessing was supposed to be a costume for some identifiable character. But then again, maybe she just dresses in the medieval hippy style for kicks? Her bright gold scarf in her hair was kind of a distraction as well. I really wanted to take a picture of these kids for posterity so Julia Miglets (whom I was sitting next to) graciously offered to lean out into the aisle so i could attempt that awkward "Oh look I'm taking a picture of you while really its the people behind you that i want to capture on film" kind of thing, but I generally fail at such subtlety. So the flash of course goes off really obnoxiously and the girls (smart cookies, they were) call me out and say in an unearthly annoying voice "Oh my gosh you just took a picture of us!" First reaction: ignore them, darn narcissists. "You did didn't you!" Second reaction: turn around embarrassed and deny it. "You can take another one. Here get one of me and my friend" Third reaction: just ignore. The girl was wearing an obscene amount of eye liner and to be perfectly honest I was kind of intimidated. For the rest of the night every time I turned around to talk to Samara and Beth who were sitting behind me, the girl was staring at me. Not okay. So I turned my attention to other people in the theater. My eyes fell on this one chick a few rows infront of me who was dressed perfectly normally, with really cute clothes actually, but she was wearing an eye patch. I'm sorry...is this the midnight premier of Pirates of the Caribbean? No, i don't think so. Maybe she's a hardcore mad-eye moody fan? Too bad he wasn't even in this movie. Other interesting characters included little nerdy 15 yearish old boy in glasses, a harry potter t-shirt, and leather shoes who kept turning around to look at Julia and myself. I think he was sitting alone. Julia thought he was special. He looked like a nice boy. Then there was the obnoxious group of kids to the side and infront of us who kept running back and forth and switching places and flirting with eachother...the early teenage hormones were rampant. They kept yelling out countdown numbers (OMG 13 minutes everyone! TWO MINUTES LEFT!) which prompted Julia to mutter "Chill out, it's not the second coming of Jesus Christ". Now, I was just as excited as the next person for this movie to come out but I think these kids overcaffinated themselves in preparation for the big night. It also probably didn't help that they kept going out of the theater and coming back with huge bags of candy.
Anyway, that was the harry potter experience, which I feel made it lots more of an experience. The air conditioning kept coming on and off in the theater during the movie, making a very very loud rumbling noise, which kind of added to the suspense of the film, I feel. Way to go Lexington. I'm proud of you for being legit enough to have a midnight showing of Harry Potter. I'm glad I went to it. Even though I'm tired today.
Well that's it for now. I'm off to Campus Kitchens and Stephen is off to pick up his lost swipe card from Wendy's. How it got there, don't ask.
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Bah Humbug
Here is my update. Short and sweet.
Alumni College is fun. I'm warming up to Rob and Suze and Tracey officially has a place in my heart. She is probably one of the eclectic, hilarious people in this small town. Life in Lex is as great as ever.
Otherwise, I found myself "contemplating my place in the universe" when I went tubing with Mike and Tyler. I've decided that tubing is a far better occasion for contemplation than stargazing is.
Shiri is right, these people are old.
Sorry Emily and Youval. Stop complaining.
Our apologies for failing at updating this thing. Once we got into the swing of alumni college there was much much less free time, but now I've got a few moments so I'll give you a quick recap of the past week.
Last week's program was on the Vietnam War so we had lots of really interesting alumns who were all somehow involved in the war--most of them were actually on the ground. Their stories were incredible and I know I learned a ton about what it was like over there and how they've dealt with the aftermath. Our oldest alumn graduated from W&L Law in 1949 (you can do the math to figure out his age) and our youngest was from the class of 2007 (it was refreshing to have some young blood and a guaranteed fun time at all the cocktail parties). So there was quite a range of ages, but most graduated sometime in the '60s. There were definitely some characters in the group. I wont use their real names but I'll give you the rundown on some of the most odd.
There was Mr. BB who I sat next to at dinner one day. I made the mistake of asking him what kind of work he does (he went to VMI then W&L Law) and he responded with an approximately 33 minute long detailed account of this one case he had worked on (he's an insurance lawyer). I think I understood the first 5 minutes, then kind of zoned out, then was so lost that I only grasped about one out of every 17 words for the rest of the story. I sat there nodding, "okay"ing, "oooh really?"ing, and otherwise making noises and body language insinuating that I was interested in what was going on. He went on through the salad, main course, and half of dessert. When he was finally through we joined back in to listen to the table's conversation. Someone mentioned something about owning a house in New Jersey, and he leaned over and said to me "You know, I had this case in New Jersey once..." and proceeds to tell me about the case. Good Lord. Eventually he leaves (thank goodness) and the man sitting on the other side of me leans over and says "You'll get your purple heart tomorrow morning for sitting and listening to that whole thing". Ohhhh Mr. BM, you're my new favorite. It was pretty funny.
Mr. AC was probably everyone's favorite person to talk about because he was just so odd. He's the kind of person who would repeat stories over and over again but they were not funny or interesting the first time (graduated W&L in 1962. He also had an interesting sense of style. He showed up to a cocktail reception one night wearing some kind of tunic-type wear that screamed "Discuss amongst yourselves from which region/time period this attire springs forth!" After the RAs and '07 grad discussed the matter, we concluded that it was either African Tribal garb, traditional Mexican, or Aztec. We should have asked. I'm sure he would have given us a lengthy description of whence it came, what it represents, from which plant the dye for each color of the fabric comes, and anything ese we asked. He was an interesting fellow to say the least. Nice, nice guy, but a bit of a handful at times.
Mr. BD was everyone's favorite person to talk TO because he was just legit. He was a star football player for W&L, fought with the Marines in Vietnam, was big in the magazine business, drives a beautiful Jag, and now lives in Palm Beach, FL. He was so cool. The RAs would fight with each other for who got to sit at his table for meals. Danielle and I were really into playing matchmaker with him and one of our bosses....they had "struck up a friendship" a few years ago and we were all about rekindling the friendship and allowing it to flower. Gosh, he was so cool.
Stephen loved Mr and Mrs H, they hooked him up with some connections in Africa and South Carolina. I loved Mr. and Mrs. L who were just the nicest most awesome people ever from Charleston, WV. There were also these three musketeers from New York who drank a lot and were really intimidating but hilarious. There was a guy from Little Rock who knew more about baseball than anyone I've ever met. Basically there were lots of really cool people. We were pretty sad to see them go.
This week, there are some other characters. The average age of the participants has increased about 20 years. We have some grads from class of 1950, our youngest is from 1970. They're definitely up there age-wise. Let's just say there are a lot more golf cart passengers this week. Speaking of golf carts, as I was loading people on yesterday to drive them from lunch to the classroom to watch a documentary (When the Moors Ruled in Europe, actually quite interesting, surprisingly enough) I heard this clank. One of the passengers was Mrs. H from St. Louis who drives herself here every year all the way for Missouri and carries her own bags and is remarkably self-sufficient considering her ancient age. After the clank, she squeals and yells to me "Wait! Don't go anywhere, dear! I dropped my cane!"
Ohhhh Alumni College. I'll give you more info on this week's events soon enough but now i'm off to watch Michael Jackson's memorial service and facebook stalk the W&L Class of 2013 by way of their facebook group, then i'll go hang out with some cool kids at the Lexington Office on Youth (I have to get some youth in my life after dealing with 70+ year olds all day). Here's hoping there wont be as much time between posts next time.
Last week's program was on the Vietnam War so we had lots of really interesting alumns who were all somehow involved in the war--most of them were actually on the ground. Their stories were incredible and I know I learned a ton about what it was like over there and how they've dealt with the aftermath. Our oldest alumn graduated from W&L Law in 1949 (you can do the math to figure out his age) and our youngest was from the class of 2007 (it was refreshing to have some young blood and a guaranteed fun time at all the cocktail parties). So there was quite a range of ages, but most graduated sometime in the '60s. There were definitely some characters in the group. I wont use their real names but I'll give you the rundown on some of the most odd.
There was Mr. BB who I sat next to at dinner one day. I made the mistake of asking him what kind of work he does (he went to VMI then W&L Law) and he responded with an approximately 33 minute long detailed account of this one case he had worked on (he's an insurance lawyer). I think I understood the first 5 minutes, then kind of zoned out, then was so lost that I only grasped about one out of every 17 words for the rest of the story. I sat there nodding, "okay"ing, "oooh really?"ing, and otherwise making noises and body language insinuating that I was interested in what was going on. He went on through the salad, main course, and half of dessert. When he was finally through we joined back in to listen to the table's conversation. Someone mentioned something about owning a house in New Jersey, and he leaned over and said to me "You know, I had this case in New Jersey once..." and proceeds to tell me about the case. Good Lord. Eventually he leaves (thank goodness) and the man sitting on the other side of me leans over and says "You'll get your purple heart tomorrow morning for sitting and listening to that whole thing". Ohhhh Mr. BM, you're my new favorite. It was pretty funny.
Mr. AC was probably everyone's favorite person to talk about because he was just so odd. He's the kind of person who would repeat stories over and over again but they were not funny or interesting the first time (graduated W&L in 1962. He also had an interesting sense of style. He showed up to a cocktail reception one night wearing some kind of tunic-type wear that screamed "Discuss amongst yourselves from which region/time period this attire springs forth!" After the RAs and '07 grad discussed the matter, we concluded that it was either African Tribal garb, traditional Mexican, or Aztec. We should have asked. I'm sure he would have given us a lengthy description of whence it came, what it represents, from which plant the dye for each color of the fabric comes, and anything ese we asked. He was an interesting fellow to say the least. Nice, nice guy, but a bit of a handful at times.
Mr. BD was everyone's favorite person to talk TO because he was just legit. He was a star football player for W&L, fought with the Marines in Vietnam, was big in the magazine business, drives a beautiful Jag, and now lives in Palm Beach, FL. He was so cool. The RAs would fight with each other for who got to sit at his table for meals. Danielle and I were really into playing matchmaker with him and one of our bosses....they had "struck up a friendship" a few years ago and we were all about rekindling the friendship and allowing it to flower. Gosh, he was so cool.
Stephen loved Mr and Mrs H, they hooked him up with some connections in Africa and South Carolina. I loved Mr. and Mrs. L who were just the nicest most awesome people ever from Charleston, WV. There were also these three musketeers from New York who drank a lot and were really intimidating but hilarious. There was a guy from Little Rock who knew more about baseball than anyone I've ever met. Basically there were lots of really cool people. We were pretty sad to see them go.
This week, there are some other characters. The average age of the participants has increased about 20 years. We have some grads from class of 1950, our youngest is from 1970. They're definitely up there age-wise. Let's just say there are a lot more golf cart passengers this week. Speaking of golf carts, as I was loading people on yesterday to drive them from lunch to the classroom to watch a documentary (When the Moors Ruled in Europe, actually quite interesting, surprisingly enough) I heard this clank. One of the passengers was Mrs. H from St. Louis who drives herself here every year all the way for Missouri and carries her own bags and is remarkably self-sufficient considering her ancient age. After the clank, she squeals and yells to me "Wait! Don't go anywhere, dear! I dropped my cane!"
Ohhhh Alumni College. I'll give you more info on this week's events soon enough but now i'm off to watch Michael Jackson's memorial service and facebook stalk the W&L Class of 2013 by way of their facebook group, then i'll go hang out with some cool kids at the Lexington Office on Youth (I have to get some youth in my life after dealing with 70+ year olds all day). Here's hoping there wont be as much time between posts next time.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)