Party like it's 2009

This past weekend I attended my 20-year high school reunion. It does not seem as if 10 years has (or is it "have"?) passed since the last one (well, technically 10 years hasn't past, since our 10-year reunion was in the fall of 1999). But as we all know, time marches on.

Two things struck me about this reunion as compared to the last one.

1. I cared so much less what people thought this time around.

Ten years ago, I was focused on my appearance. For that reunion, I was hoping to drop a few pounds, since I was pretty skinny in high school. This time around, I figured this is who I am, and this is what I have weighed for almost 20 years now, so why be something I am not. I was also not so concerned about what I wore this time, but I decided to heed my friend Jennie's advice and make an effort on my appearance, something I rarely do.

Last time I also wanted people to think I was successful. In fact, as I probably have written before, I got my boss to agree to change my title from editorial assistant to editor, just in time for the reunion. In all fairness, I really wasn't an editorial assistant anymore, but, regardless, I just thought editor sounded more impressive. As you know, I don't have a job now. And yet, oddly enough, I really was not bothered by that. In fact, most people did not even ask me what I did. Mostly people talked about where you lived or how many kids you have. And in my case, at least a half dozen people found it necessary to ask why I was not going to have any more kids. (I will save that rant for another post.)

I am not in the same place as I was 10 years ago. Most noteworthy, I have a child who means the world to me. Almost everything else is rather insignificant.

2. Thanks to Facebook and a website dedicated to our class, most of us have kept up to date on one another.

This means I knew what most of my classmates looked like, what their marital status is, and what is going on in their lives. Last year, before I was on Facebook, I was so excited about seeing everyone, since I had not seen most of my classmates in 10 or 20 years. But a few months ago, I realized the evening probably would not live up to the hype, just because there were very few people I knew nothing about.

Fortunately, my mind is like a sieve, so I forgot about half of what I read about everyone. And for most people, pictures do not do them justice. But most importantly, seeing and talking to someone LIVE is totally different from online communications. You just cannot replace human contact. Plus you cannot dance with each other online!

I am glad I went. I had a good time. And perhaps not another 10 (or 20) years will go by before I see most of these people again. Regardless, it will be interesting to see how things have changed then.

Let's build something together!

That is one of my favorite slogan's (Or is that a tagline? Over a year removed from a design firm, and I can no longer remember). It belongs to Lowe's, although I am more of a Home Depot gal. But suffice it to say if someone handed me a $5,000 gift card to Home Depot (or Lowe's), I would be ecstatic. If I had $10,000 to spend, you could hear my shouts of joy from miles away. The things I could do with that money. Well, the things I could have Brian do with that money anyway. I love walking around Home Depot and admiring the fancy bathroom sinks and tubs. I look at the lighting and think about where I would put each fixture. I touch textured and colorful tiles and wistfully look at the fancy kitchen cabinets. I admire the various carpet styles and blinds. I look at the fancy front-loading washer and wonder what it must be like to have a steam dryer. I even look longingly at the vacuum cleaners because I can no longer buy a replacement filter for my eight year old mo...

If only I had taken pictures of my detoured drive

When I moved to the Burgh just over 14 years ago, I had a lot of anxiety about getting from "here" to "there." I found the city, which is triangular, and even some of the suburbs quite confusing. On top of that, a lot of the signs were of little help. Clearly they were put up by either natives who had no need for directions or people with a sick sense of humor who thought it would be funny to put signs in random places, leaving off important roads. At some point, I got over that fear of driving to a new building downtown. I don't recall when it happened, but eventually I just figured most of the city out; and when I had to head to a new place, I just drove around, no longer with a feeling of dread, knowing I would eventually get there. But on Sunday morning, that awful, long-ago feeling returned, thanks to the closure of the outbound Fort Pitt Tunnels. I had to pick my mother up from the airport, so there was no avoiding it. (For some reason, my family think...

Summer in review

This summer I made it a point to try to take at least one pic of Jordan whenever we went somewhere, which most often was a park. I wanted to capture all the great, fun things we did this summer, knowing that it was probably going to be my last summer not working for quite some time. So here goes. I have expressed my love of Frick Park, particularly Blue Slide Park, in other posts ; it really is one of our favorites. And this summer marked the first one I did not feel the need to follow J around like a little puppy dog. I actually let her run around and explore, though, admittedly, I would panic if more than three minutes went by and I had not seen her. In the pics above, J is at the end of the blue slide, and then hanging several feet above concrete (which scared the crap out of me). We also visited another section of Frick Park, the area on the corner of Braddock and Forbes, a few times. There is not as much to do as Blue Slide, but we go there to mix things up a bit. In the p...

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