20th Reunion Tonight

Well, today hasn’t gone exactly to plan, but I’ll try to make the best of it. Tonight is the “Pub Night” get-together for the Belmont graduation class of 1991, and the family BBQ is tomorrow at Luxton. The plan was that Brenn and Vaile would come and babysit the kids while Tammy and I made our way to the Crossroads Pub in Colwood. However, Ian woke up crying this morning, obviously out of sorts. A hug told us that he had a fever. He seemed to perk up somewhat with Tylenol in him, but when we headed into town to run our errands this morning, he unceremoniously barfed when we got to Admirals and the Old Island Highway. Once we cleaned up, we did the minimum (hand in our house insurance form) and then headed home. Ian cried all the way home with Tammy beside him in the back seat. So we cancelled the babysitters. But Tammy is insisting that I go tonight, so I will leave in a short while. Obviously can’t have any drinks since I’ll be driving, but hopefully I’ll have some fun catching up with people I haven’t seen in a long time. Also hopeful that Ian will be better tomorrow. He slept most of the afternoon away.

Update

So here’s the update, to be followed by a separate entry for the Picnic, which was the next day. The Pub Night was a lot of fun. I got there about quarter past 7, and there were already a pretty large number of cars in the lot, which I thought was a good sign. I walked in and there was a table stationed just inside for name tags. Karen, Allison and Andrea were manning it, and I took it as a good sign that they recognized me right away. I started circulating around and ran into a lot of people. Just like the 10 year reunion, it was interesting to see that everyone was happy to see everyone else no matter who you hung around with in high school. Obviously you might have more to talk about with those who were your friends, but I got a lot of handshakes and hugs from those who I really didn’t spend a lot of time with back then. Eventually, a fair crowd of those who I did hang around with coalesced and we ended up out on the patio where it was easier to talk. Here’s a pretty bad group photo. I’ll see if I can’t get a better one from those who had a “real” camera instead of a phone:

From left to right: Laura, Liesbeth, Jon, Chérie, me, Jackie, Gary, Julia, Theresa, Dale and Tracy. Jon, Gary and I were all in the IB Diploma together, Laura I knew through high school and she and Julia and her now-husband Bruce and I double-dated a couple of times back in the day. Liesbeth (now calling herself “Ocean”) was Jay’s girlfriend in Grade 12. Theresa and Chérie were always joined at the hip and were a part of our circle of friends. Dale I’ve known since Grade 2, but never really talked with after elementary school. Tracy was in some of my classes, and friends with Dale and Theresa and Chérie.

So given all that, who did I spend the most time yakking with? Dale, Liesbeth and their husbands. Go figure. I really liked Dale’s husband, Trevor and we talked a lot about games and things.

I ended up leaving about quarter past ten, which was much earlier than things ended up wrapping up. There were tales the next day of the reunion crowd closing the Crossroads at 2 am and then proceeding to another pub until 4.