Month: August 2011

10 Year High School Reunion – Part 2 (The Event)

Ahh to be back and refreshed. Another beautiful Seattle day. Kinda like the day of the reunion. So I sit around and wait at the ferry. Meet up with my lovely company for the evening and I send out some texts to get a status check on everyone. Seems like everyone bailed for catching the 3pm boat out of Seattle to Bremerton.

So sitting on the ferry I am derping around on my iPad. The ferry begins to leave the dock and the doors are open allowing for a nice breeze to come into the cabin. It hits the back of my head and I get an amazing chill. I hear two women sitting behind me say “It just got cold in here I wonder where it’s coming from” I wanted to laugh because I had just said “Man that breeze feels amazing” I guess they don’t pay attention. Then one them started to play on their phone. It was making all kinds of beeping sounds. A woman sitting another bench back looks up at me because I am on my iPad and says “Is that you making all that noise?” I said no my iPad is on silent it’s the women behind me making all the noise. She went “Ohhhh” This woman didn’t seem to take shit from anyone and she said she told some girls dancing one time to knock it off. Silence is golden. She got up and moved a few minutes later. It always drives me nuts when people have alerts on their phone turned on. I keep mine on vibrate and don’t even bother with custom ring tones for anyone.

So we dock and hit up starbucks and then walk around Bremerton to find the hotel. Wanting to feel like a pimp for this I got the highest end room possible on the Bremerton waterfront. Shockingly this was only $170 for the night. Go Bremerton Marriott. Check in take a shower and get dressed for the evening. While we are hanging out waiting for Darin to get back from his afternoon with Kacey. We ponder where to go for a meal. Since Anthony’s is right there on the Bremerton waterfront we hit up the Happy Hour. The service was great for getting drinks and the meal was pretty darn good. The coolest part about this restaurant was the fact they have a TV above the urinal. So you are using the bathroom and you can watch TV. After this we take some pictures with Darin’s crazy camera and then head over to the reunion.

It was kinda cool to walk and start seeing people I knew and many faces that I didn’t. There was some food going around but I really wasn’t going to have any of it. I went and found an empty side of the room and people just started walking up saying. “Hello” and “How are you” got a few what have you been up to. But I was mostly trying to make conversation with everyone else. Ask about life the past 10 years. Most of the stories involved people working or having children. I didn’t hear anything like “Oh I went to India for 5 years and found a new way to build wells for local villages” But maybe I ask a bit too much. But would have been cool to hear. But basically everyone has been doing the same thing I had been doing. Trying to stabilize themselves.

It was interesting to observe the crowd I pretty much just spoke to the people I knew in high school but hadn’t seen since then. Which was pretty cool caught and so forth. But the night went on and tried to walk around and speak with everyone. But I really wasn’t feeling most of it. Had some drinks and noticed that everyone just kinda grew back into place. Everyone was doing the same thing I was doing. Just talking with the people they talked to in high school. I don’t regret going at all and had a really good time.

One of the best parts of the evening was when we left the building and went down the street and found a pizza place that left out all of the outdoor seating. Took a seat with a few buddies and chatted everyone up that went walking by. Got some kudos for putting together the site. We also got invited to some redneck bar to go have some drinks. But I was pretty tired fitbit said I logged over 13,000 steps that day which is pretty awesome. When everyone seemed to have vanished went back to the hotel and passed out and woke up early got some breakfast. Hopped on the Bremerton ferry back to Seattle on a lovely seattle drizzly day.

I apologize that this took so long to get published. I had forgotten to hit the publish button. But it’s out there now and I hope all is well with everyone.

 

 

10 Year High School Reunion – Part 1 (The Day)

Hello to my ignored blog readers. I always seem to find that I want to blog more but lack the time to do so. So I thought I would bust out my bluetooth keyboard and my iPad while sitting here during my lunch in the courtyard here at work. It’s partly cloudy and figured it would be a good scenario so lets hope I can get this out before lunch is over.

So last Saturday (July 30th) I went to my 10 year high school reunion. I couldn’t believe it’s been 10 years since I last walked out of the doors of my high school. In high school I really wasn’t much of anything. I was the nerdy kid who was friendly that it seemed like everyone knew existed but didn’t really know. I wasn’t the best student and by far from the worst. I was just Tristan Pipo the kid like every other finding a path in life.

Many months ago I got a Facebook request to join a group for the 10 year high school reunion that started out in an interesting fashion. It appeared that nobody had any real plan for this thing and nobody was exactly sure who was going to take charge. So there was a great deal of time spend wondering where and when. It seemed that almost every day there was a new message asking “Where is this going to be held and when.”

I did some things to try and help out a bit. I posted the video of the slideshow from when we were all seniors. Since it was one of the first videos I had used when I began the great conversion process of making all the old home movies into digital copies. Since YouTube doesn’t allow for long form videos. I got a Vimeo Pro account and posted it on the website. That was pretty cool to see that video again.

So lurking around the group on Facebook somebody mentioned that there should be a non Facebook page for this. So I used one of my free domain tokens I have collected over the years and bought a domain name and setup a wordpress blog similar to this one you are reading now. I put all of the details on the site and built some maps and all of that fun stuff for everyone to use. We will need to find a new purpose for the site. Right now I am working on collecting all of the pictures from the night.

So before the reunion happened I decided I need to look like a god damn pimp for this thing. I was thinking people are going to be asking what I have been doing all this time. So I had to get my facts in order since some people are fact checkers. Finished High School. Moved to Indiana for a girl. Went to school. Came back because girl broke it off. Worked in Grocery Store. Got internship. Life = Good. But needed some clothes to make sure life is good. So I went and got some dress shoes. Which is hard when you wear size 17-18 shoes. Some designer jeans a dress shirt and a sport coat. Felt kinda pimp.

So planning and clothing was taken care of. At this point needed to get a Hotel since this was in Bremerton. That wasn’t a big deal looked up on Kayak what Hotels are in the area. Did a comparison with Yelp. Found the hotel with the highest ratings. My buddy asked if he could stay with us. Got the largest hotel room the place had to offer. It was a 2 bedroom 1 bath suite it was kinda nice. Thanks to the Marriott in Bremerton for giving us a cool place to chill.

So the day of the reunion comes and it was a rather packed day. I get up at 6:30 and shower and get ready. Get dressed and hop on the bus to downtown. Downtown was rather busy at 7:30am because of the preparation for the Seafair parade. If you are not from Seattle Seafair is the yearly summer event when everyone seems to have a great deal of pride about the city. Then you wish you had a friend with a really bitching boat to go watch the Hydroplanes the weekend after the parade while the Blue Angels do their thing.

So I get downtown and head down to the Bus Tunnel to go down to meet Darin at the airport. I get there early and figure I got some time. Go fill up my water bottle hit up the restroom. Check my phone “Plane landed 10 minutes early” get a text “Hey I’m here. Meet you at 69 coins.” So I walk over to the restaurant which is really called 13 Coins and I wait outside. I see him walk up and give that weird Bro hug action. So we proceed into the restaurant and they tried to give us this dark hole in the wall seat. I wonder what inspires hostesses to that kinda thing. Why would anyone want that seat when you have a dozen plus booths open and ready to be consumed in. We catch up and talk about tonight and I order a steak and eggs he gets a sausage omelet. I have been trying to make an active effort to like eggs. Since I enjoy them in Phad Thai and things like fried rice I have been trying breakfasts with scrambled eggs. So far I have been doing okay. So we finish breakfast and hop on the light rail.

We get to Seattle and begin to think “Bwa ha ha the world is ours to command!” I look at him “So what do you want to do?” he says “I don’t know” last time Darin was in town we didn’t get to do a whole lot since it was raining and rather miserable. So this time we had to do all the things.

So we go check out Pike Place and everything that the town has to offer. When we look at the clock and decide that we need to get him to the ferry so that he can go see a friend of his. If you remember many years ago I talked about our friend Kacey and hanging out with her. I had to wait in Seattle for some people so we get him on the ferry and then I go walk over to Ivars and walk into the bar and hang out for the hour that I have. I am enjoying a Manhattan and get a text that I need to get over to the ferry. I do so and stop by the McDonalds to get a $1 Unsweetened Ice Tea.

For some reason I feel like this is a good place to stop on the brief summary of the day. I feel like this post has lost it’s humor as it’s just now a general outline of the day. I will write a 2nd post that describes the lovely evening that follows. Thanks for reading.