Michigan

The last weekend in July I went back to Michigan for my high school reunion. It's been twenty years. Wow.

First of all, let me apologize to those people I didn't get a chance to see when I was back home. It was a short trip (arrived in the middle of the night Thursday and left again Monday afternoon). There were lots of things to do, lots of people to see and I just didn't get to all of them. Sorry if you were one of the people I didn't get to see.

Sydney and Anne didn't make the trip with me. It would have been very expensive and we wouldn't have been there long enough to have to put Sydney through a full day's worth of flying each way on either end of it. Regardless of how good she's been when traveling before we didn't think it would be a good idea.

So while in Michigan I stayed with my friend Victor. He was my best man at my wedding.



A lot of people attended the mixer on Friday night. Most of the people I at least remembered in the "oh, yeah" kind of way most people do at reunions. There were only a couple I didn't remember at all and there were several people I knew fairly well, having gone to school with them for the better part of our K-12 education.

Two of my best friends growing up were Tim and Keith. They weren't at the mixer on Friday but were at the dinner on Saturday.



Tim I went to elementary school together, though we really didn't become friends until fifth (maybe sixth) grade. In seventh grade we started junior high school (7-9th grades) and met Keith. Keith has the same last name as I do so we met in several classes we shared since we were sitting next to or in front of each other.

The three of us spent the better part of our youths playing role-playing games together. Tim and Keith eventually went away to college. I stayed home and went to community college, but then dropped out. Tim and Keith stayed close and were best man for each other at their weddings.

Here is Tim with his lovely wife, Marianne.



Anne and I got the pleasure of meeting Marianne just before we got married and about a year (I think?) before they got married. They took a trip to Vegas and we all got together. Even though I don't know her well it was good to see her again and know that she and Tim are doing well (and have two children).

They live in Chicago where Tim is an Assistant Principal at a high school. And I would like Mom (Grandma B) to know that we are partially to blame for Tim falling in love with Chicago. Although most of the blame goes to my Uncle Dave.

We went to Chicago in ninth grade. It was a birthday present for me. Mom took us there for several days over spring break. During the visit we saw Uncle Dave who was living there at the time. One of the most vivid memories Tim has of that trip is Uncle Dave driving down Michigan Avenue, swerving in and out of traffic and Tim thinking he was going to die in the back seat. We were going out for Indian food for dinner. (Tim told me to mention that, Mom. And Uncle Dave, if you see this. He still remembers great things about that trip.)

Here is a picture of Keith and his wife, Wendy.



This was my first time meeting Wendy. I kind of felt like I knew her (and their three children), though, since I keep up with the blog Wendy keeps.

While there were a lot of people it was good to see again at the reunion there was one other person I was very happy to see. This is my friend Michelle.



Michelle had a bit of a crush on me at one time, but mostly I just annoyed her. Anyone who knows my sense of humor will understand why. And since I knew she liked me and I could annoy her with my sense of humor I made that much more of a point to annoy her. In fact, one of our teachers was so amused by the situation she declared that we would be married within five years of graduation. (Sorry, Mrs. Miller, didn't happen. In fact, Michelle is still happily married to the man she was dating when we graduated.)

Even though we've barely seen each other since graduation Michelle and I still got along great and seemed like we barely missed a beat in all the years. (Though I tried not to annoy her.) She even said that she talks about me all the time. She has a 16 year old son who is struggling with Algebra, she said, and she is constantly telling him, "If my friend John was here he could help you with that."

On Sunday I didn't go to the Family Day picnic. Not much reason to since my family wasn't there and my two closest friends with family weren't going to be there. So instead I took a little road trip to Hell, MI.

I have an online friend who goes by the name of Oppiejoe over at the Museum of Hoaxes forum. (You might remember that we met Alex, the owner and Curator of the Museum when we went to San Diego in February.) He lives in Michigan and we wanted to get together to meet while I was there. A good "middle ground" that was interesting enough for us to get together was Hell. So we met there.



We met, we talked (though I was bit socialized-out after the previous two nights with old classmates), we shopped a little and we had ice cream. (It didn't melt as fast as you might think.)

Oppiejoe came with his lady friend, his daughter and her boyfriend. As we walked around we found the little "church" behind the store that is used for weddings in Hell (apparently). I managed to talk Oppiejoe and his lady friend to stand in front for a picture.



Since pink lawn flamingos seem to be a fairly common trope in stories over at the Museum of Hoaxes I found the Skel-A-Flamingo a funny item in the store. I had Oppiejoe hold it and snapped a picture.



When I got home I sent information about the Skel-A-Flamingos to Alex. He posted about them on his new "shared" website/blog, Weird Universe.

I think that's all I have for now. I have more to post, but that will be in a separate post (or two). I was going to try to get them up last night, but the site where I host my pictures was down. And I don't have enough time tonight so the updates will just have to be a bit slower than originally planned. But look for another one in a day or two.