Carrrrrrrrrrrrrnival
Wow, lots of people. I can't believe I'm not overwhelmed yet after what feels like months of deprivation from the world of being Deanna.
Started off the day mostly by going to campus to get lunch with![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ag5j and sundaygray, both of whom are former roomates of mine (several times, even, though not both at the same time. You know, there are 25 people I lived with during my time in Pittsburgh from a quick mental count). We ate at the O and just talked like a bunch of goofballs for an hour or so. Aiton gave me a print of a photo he had from like, tenth grade or so, of us standing in the kitchen of his house back in Lower Merion... I'm wearing my shirt from the GWHS production of West Side Story in 1991, even. Just, craziness. The funny part is I showed the picture to a bunch of people today and they've all been like "You look exactly the same."
Anyway, Aiton and I walked to Wean, and I ended up catching up with a bazillion people right by the front door of it.klari and gwillen and soong and err, pgunn? and rbraun for a little bit and then eventually bn29 and jccw came by. I had actually caught Bryan on PP for about five seconds earlier in the day and said "find me when you get to campus! whee!" I ended up standing around outside Wean talking to the aforementioned folks for quite a while. Yay. We were all talking about heading off to Stehlikfest at 3pm, and eventually Mark Stehlik himself came by Wean, so we were like "hey, Mark, are you going to Stehlikfest?" and he was like "Well, yeah, I think I *have to*, y'know?"
I also saw Clintron on the way down to Wean, and also, gwillen looks like Mike Breen but shorter, it's quite scary.
So we all wandered up to Stehlikfest, where I also sawtaoflaherty and her son, who is a pretty cute little kid, and I also saw old people like Dale Newfield, and Sam Greenfield, and even JONATHAN BETZ THE LAST STARFIGHTER, and assorted other more recent people like Andrew Dubois and garzahd and all, and blk showed up after a bit as well. Also ran into my old boss Mike Horowitz, and the rest of the Stehlik clan (well, Mark's wife and daughter, I didn't see his son anywhere). Stehlikfest basically consisted of wandering around and eating cookies and talking to other alumni and signing a card and eventually Mark gave a speech and we took some big group pictures with him which were pretty silly.
The Kiltie concert overlapped with Stehlikfest, so I snuck out of it with Matt who had to return to work, and I wandered down to Midway about 15 mins late for the concert and sat withmg4h and klari, after nodding hi at dkoes, who was in the back. Marybeth and Kirstin and I were singing along to "Ode To a Fallen Comrade", aka "He Is Dead". I guess some traditions never die -- Rob Harris would probably be proud. Pretty much every song I heard the band play was one that I'd played at some point, although they did one new song, which apparently only had 2 measures for the baritones to play -- and they stood up to play them, which we didn't realize later was because it was a protest of the sparse scoring of the piece. I saw Dan Fernandez, and Bob Rost, and my old stand partner Kathryn, and other than that, I don't think I really recognized anyone in the band this year. It was weird. Caught up with Ross Knepper and Jenae Lowe (or is she Melissa again these days?) afterwards for a bit, then found jccw again, and we wandered around Midway, wandering into various and sundry folks such as mcreegan and sk4p and all. There was also a guy pushing the SNS show, which was kind of funny.
We went to the KGB booth -- apparently this year's theme of Carnival is something like "another time, another place" so KGB did Roanoke -- with zombies. The plot seems to be something to the effect of, "Well, there were all these settlers in Roanoke, right? And they just disappeared, right? So, we think they were EATEN BY ZOMBIES ZOMG BRAAAAAAAINS!" The booth even has this staircase full of zombie arms which you can walk through. Of course, the "zombie" in the booth when I went through wasaleffert so he was just like "GRAAARARARRGRGGGHHHH" and I was like "Oh hey Akiva, what's up?"
Anyway, we ran intonickjong shortly after that and I was getting sick of the bright sun burning me more, so I convinced Nick and James to come with me to the UC or somewhere else. We stopped in Entropy to get drinks and then went into the courtyard to sit down, at which point we were shortly afterwards joined completely randomly by estuckey. (Man, the weird coincidences abound here -- seriously -- and while I pointed out many of them in real life, something I realized I didn't point out later, is that the reason I know mdf356, who Nick also knows in Austin, in the first place is because he went to Cornell with James. I also had to make the Austin connection for Eric and Nick, and then as well, the Edinburgh connection... whee.)
Nick left, and a bit laterbk3c joined us, and then I saw puuj and adubois and jweisz walking by so I pretty much jumped up and ran over and tackled Justin -- well, not really, but he was like "OMG DEANNA! HUG!" and I was like "OMG JUSTIN! HUG!" I had thought he was leaving for SIGCHI before today, so I was so sad I hadn't caught him before he went, but he hadn't left yet, so yay! So we stood around talking and catching up for a while. I didn't know that Mike From Duquesne had actually ended up going to UW, so I'll have to catch up with him at some point in Seattle hopefully, even though neither of us play DDR anymore. Wheee. Sigh, I miss Justin. On the other hand, he was telling me how I should play WoW so he could have more of a chance to hang out with me online, and I told him there was no way that'd happen. Andrew was like, "But you can get other people to get you items and level up a character so you can play with your friends! Really!"
Anyway, I came back to the table, Ben left, but thenmj2q showed up (thank gosh -- I was really worried I wouldn't catch him) and then Ben came back with red_haired_girl and rsbdeadman and jgs in tow, so we pulled over a whole bunch of chairs and by this time our table had, from my left: Rob, Jen, Ben, Eric, James, Regan, Mark, and me. Yay, lots of alumni from my time period. It was cool. We hung out and chatted until it was time to go to dinner at the McKnight Mad Mex.
Mark gave me a ride there, and our whole group ended up being 15 people (17 after Mauricio and his wife showed up) at two tables. My table wasarashink, ladysephiroth, mj2q, me, es5f, georgejas, and dgr. It was good to catch up with everyone and I'm glad I caught Bayani and Kate and George and Chris and everyone after all. Plus I got to talk about volleyball and movies with Eric which is always fun too. Yay. So that was good, and we got our traditional Mad Mex food, or at least, I did. Mmmmmmburrito.
After I came back here, Carl and I watched two more episodes of the second season of Gokusen, so we have done 4 of them. No, we won't finish the series while I'm in town but it's fun to watch together.
Tomorrow, mobot (if it doesn't rain), and hopefully Italian food. I'll hopefully run into people and find stuff to do, if nothing else we'll go see City of Angels, I think. Yar.
Started off the day mostly by going to campus to get lunch with
ag5j and sundaygray, both of whom are former roomates of mine (several times, even, though not both at the same time. You know, there are 25 people I lived with during my time in Pittsburgh from a quick mental count). We ate at the O and just talked like a bunch of goofballs for an hour or so. Aiton gave me a print of a photo he had from like, tenth grade or so, of us standing in the kitchen of his house back in Lower Merion... I'm wearing my shirt from the GWHS production of West Side Story in 1991, even. Just, craziness. The funny part is I showed the picture to a bunch of people today and they've all been like "You look exactly the same."Anyway, Aiton and I walked to Wean, and I ended up catching up with a bazillion people right by the front door of it.
klari and gwillen and soong and err, pgunn? and rbraun for a little bit and then eventually bn29 and jccw came by. I had actually caught Bryan on PP for about five seconds earlier in the day and said "find me when you get to campus! whee!" I ended up standing around outside Wean talking to the aforementioned folks for quite a while. Yay. We were all talking about heading off to Stehlikfest at 3pm, and eventually Mark Stehlik himself came by Wean, so we were like "hey, Mark, are you going to Stehlikfest?" and he was like "Well, yeah, I think I *have to*, y'know?"I also saw Clintron on the way down to Wean, and also, gwillen looks like Mike Breen but shorter, it's quite scary.
So we all wandered up to Stehlikfest, where I also saw
taoflaherty and her son, who is a pretty cute little kid, and I also saw old people like Dale Newfield, and Sam Greenfield, and even JONATHAN BETZ THE LAST STARFIGHTER, and assorted other more recent people like Andrew Dubois and garzahd and all, and blk showed up after a bit as well. Also ran into my old boss Mike Horowitz, and the rest of the Stehlik clan (well, Mark's wife and daughter, I didn't see his son anywhere). Stehlikfest basically consisted of wandering around and eating cookies and talking to other alumni and signing a card and eventually Mark gave a speech and we took some big group pictures with him which were pretty silly. The Kiltie concert overlapped with Stehlikfest, so I snuck out of it with Matt who had to return to work, and I wandered down to Midway about 15 mins late for the concert and sat with
mg4h and klari, after nodding hi at dkoes, who was in the back. Marybeth and Kirstin and I were singing along to "Ode To a Fallen Comrade", aka "He Is Dead". I guess some traditions never die -- Rob Harris would probably be proud. Pretty much every song I heard the band play was one that I'd played at some point, although they did one new song, which apparently only had 2 measures for the baritones to play -- and they stood up to play them, which we didn't realize later was because it was a protest of the sparse scoring of the piece. I saw Dan Fernandez, and Bob Rost, and my old stand partner Kathryn, and other than that, I don't think I really recognized anyone in the band this year. It was weird. Caught up with Ross Knepper and Jenae Lowe (or is she Melissa again these days?) afterwards for a bit, then found jccw again, and we wandered around Midway, wandering into various and sundry folks such as mcreegan and sk4p and all. There was also a guy pushing the SNS show, which was kind of funny.We went to the KGB booth -- apparently this year's theme of Carnival is something like "another time, another place" so KGB did Roanoke -- with zombies. The plot seems to be something to the effect of, "Well, there were all these settlers in Roanoke, right? And they just disappeared, right? So, we think they were EATEN BY ZOMBIES ZOMG BRAAAAAAAINS!" The booth even has this staircase full of zombie arms which you can walk through. Of course, the "zombie" in the booth when I went through was
aleffert so he was just like "GRAAARARARRGRGGGHHHH" and I was like "Oh hey Akiva, what's up?"Anyway, we ran into
nickjong shortly after that and I was getting sick of the bright sun burning me more, so I convinced Nick and James to come with me to the UC or somewhere else. We stopped in Entropy to get drinks and then went into the courtyard to sit down, at which point we were shortly afterwards joined completely randomly by estuckey. (Man, the weird coincidences abound here -- seriously -- and while I pointed out many of them in real life, something I realized I didn't point out later, is that the reason I know mdf356, who Nick also knows in Austin, in the first place is because he went to Cornell with James. I also had to make the Austin connection for Eric and Nick, and then as well, the Edinburgh connection... whee.)Nick left, and a bit later
bk3c joined us, and then I saw puuj and adubois and jweisz walking by so I pretty much jumped up and ran over and tackled Justin -- well, not really, but he was like "OMG DEANNA! HUG!" and I was like "OMG JUSTIN! HUG!" I had thought he was leaving for SIGCHI before today, so I was so sad I hadn't caught him before he went, but he hadn't left yet, so yay! So we stood around talking and catching up for a while. I didn't know that Mike From Duquesne had actually ended up going to UW, so I'll have to catch up with him at some point in Seattle hopefully, even though neither of us play DDR anymore. Wheee. Sigh, I miss Justin. On the other hand, he was telling me how I should play WoW so he could have more of a chance to hang out with me online, and I told him there was no way that'd happen. Andrew was like, "But you can get other people to get you items and level up a character so you can play with your friends! Really!"Anyway, I came back to the table, Ben left, but then
mj2q showed up (thank gosh -- I was really worried I wouldn't catch him) and then Ben came back with red_haired_girl and rsbdeadman and jgs in tow, so we pulled over a whole bunch of chairs and by this time our table had, from my left: Rob, Jen, Ben, Eric, James, Regan, Mark, and me. Yay, lots of alumni from my time period. It was cool. We hung out and chatted until it was time to go to dinner at the McKnight Mad Mex.Mark gave me a ride there, and our whole group ended up being 15 people (17 after Mauricio and his wife showed up) at two tables. My table was
arashink, ladysephiroth, mj2q, me, es5f, georgejas, and dgr. It was good to catch up with everyone and I'm glad I caught Bayani and Kate and George and Chris and everyone after all. Plus I got to talk about volleyball and movies with Eric which is always fun too. Yay. So that was good, and we got our traditional Mad Mex food, or at least, I did. Mmmmmmburrito.After I came back here, Carl and I watched two more episodes of the second season of Gokusen, so we have done 4 of them. No, we won't finish the series while I'm in town but it's fun to watch together.
Tomorrow, mobot (if it doesn't rain), and hopefully Italian food. I'll hopefully run into people and find stuff to do, if nothing else we'll go see City of Angels, I think. Yar.
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glad you're having fun.