Bodleian Reminiscence

Wheeeee! This weekend, Julie, my dear friend from the days of the Land of Eng, dropped by for a visit...for the first time in six years! Last time we saw each other she had just graduated from college and I was giving tours of the Capitol. Now she is a fancy-pants lawyer, and I am...still giving tours of the Capitol. (Okay, that's not completely true, I'm not sure you'd want a Missy Tour these days, I'm a bit rusty.) Needless to say, she brought her scrapbook from Oxford, and I laughed so hard when I realized that the first three or so pages of our scrapbooks were basically identical. And that's nothing to having the exact same pictures all the way through the book. Yeah, we spent a lot of time together there.

Jason, Jules and I slept in after a late-night pick-up and Dulles, then checked out Operation Spy at the Spy Museum. Then we met up with other "local" (aka within about a tank of gas) Oxford folks for dinner. We started at 6 at Mama Ayesha's, then regrouped at our place for strawberry shortcake and tea, and finally closed the door on the last guests at 12:45 a.m...and THEN Jules and Andrea (who stayed over) and I were up until at least after 2. Apparently that is what I do with these people--talk until late at night about very real things.

I don't need to reiterate what I said here and here and here and here about how I feel about getting together with Oxford friends. Let's just say that while I was getting the tea on, I looked over and saw the other six of them gathered around the counter, laughing about pictures in Julie's scrapbook, and it made me very happy. I don't mind being the Monica Gellar of the group if it gets me moments like that.

Jason, Laura's husband John, and Zack's girlfriend Kristina were good sports, as it turned into a major trip down memory lane. We ended the night by plugging in the VCR and watching a home movie I made back in 2000. There were some really funny moments (Vic, Ryan, Mike, and Josh as the Backstreet Boys...Zack's vacuum games...Andrea and Jesse dressed up as Keble College mascots), and some really horrid ones as well (apparently we felt the need to fill the TV void in our lives by doing skits...what?...and please tell me at what point in the semester we all just let ourselves go? We looked rough!). When we left the room after that last all-nighter together, we thought it was goodbye, but last night we had the promise of "the next time."