Weekend with some High School buds

This weekend Tamara and I and the kids all went to a downtown OKC hotel for a dinner and movie night put together by some old friends from High School. I graduated from Putnam City West Sr. High in 1983 and hadn't seen some of the crowd since then.

The group started getting together when another friend, Brian Myers, came back into town from New Zealand. After this event we've been e-mailing around and adding the occasional person to the list. This was actually the 2nd event since meeting up with Myers but the first one I've been able to make it to. I do feel like I've done my part in spreading the "good news" of the event by passing the information to a friend in Texas, that would be you Lionel, who then came up for the shin-dig.

The evening featured two rooms; one for adults with an open bar and an R rated movie, and one for the kids with videos and no open bar. There was some debate as to what kids would find enjoyable so I offered to bring some movies and stuff. We brought some Wallace and Gromit, Howl's Moving Castle, Kiki's Delivery Service, Flushed Away and Meet the Robinson's. Duncan also brought his laptop to play some Runescape if there was any Wifi in the hotel. I also packed up the X-box with the portable LCD screen but left that in the van when Duncan forgot to bring any of his games for it.

We got the kids watching Wallace and Gromit while the adults looked at old yearbooks and compared notes on lost friends. There was eventually a catered dinner, a DVD presentation of old photos (set to mid-eighties music, of course), and the watching of the adult movie, Lucky Number Slevin.

Now I remember when this movie came out and I wasn't too impressed with the way it was marketed. It just didn't seem like it would be a very good movie. Well it was a fairly enjoyable film. There were lots of twists and turns that fall together in a mildly predictable, but not to much, way.

About 1/2 way through the movie one family had to bail as their young daughter was appearing in a student film and had to be on the set early the next morning. Tamara took this opportunity to pack up our kids (the only other chill'uns there) and head on out to the homestead.

With Lionel as my ride, I stayed to the bitter end. Actually not bitter at all. The whole thing was over by 11pm with lots of hugs, pictures and promises of future gatherings. There's even a yahoo group now to handle the listserv duties as more of the old crowd is brought into the fold.

I talked Lionel into joining me the next day at the Unitarian Church to surprise an old college buddy that goes there too. But wouldn't you know it, the person that never misses church, she's in the choir, was gone last Sunday. I thought she must be sick but she was just in Altus for the birthday of a relative. Lionel will be back up here around Thanksgiving, we'll plan something with Cheryl for that time.

So that was my weekend and now I've written about it. Yippee for me!