...and a good time was had by all.

My high-school English teacher used this as an example of an unnecessary use of the passive voice. That kinda ruined it for me. (heh, I bet she wouldn't like that colloquical verbage!)

The weekend away was awesome. K and I took a different route than before so we could avoid the $8 PA turnpike toll both ways. The drive was more scenic, too, and we sang along to Cake songs and talked all the way. We arrived just in time to catch the GCC Children's Theatre production of "The Music Box." It was a musical written by a student who was a Tri-Rho with K and directed/wrote another musical that I was in Junior year. What an incredible show - not just because our friend wrote it, composed all the music, and accompanied the entire thing from the piano at side-stage, but because he did a great job with it! That plot was cute and included lots of audience interaction, which the kids loved, of course. We were so glad we made it in time.

After the show, we were greeted by all our friends in a mob! It was so good to receive so many warm hugs and to catch up with them. K had to leave to attend N's bachelor party, but I got to go out with everyone afterward and just chill. I saw my former suitemates and people I'd worked with in the theatre last year. I slept over some friends' suite. I didn't keep up much with them, so we had a lot of talk about until *gasp* THREE in the morning! I hadn't been up the late in MONTHS. I woke up early in the morning, too, not just because I was meeting L for breakfast at 9 but because it was light early and I've gotten used to sleeping in the dark at home. (FYI, you could amuse yourself while reading this post by counting the number of amazingly old-fogey-ish statements I make. Yiiiikes!) Still, getting up was worth it because I had the best time talking to her and eating yummy Eat 'N Park french toast. She even brought pictures of her trip abroad and they were marvelous!

Later that day, the ceremony was lovely and the pair looked HOT! >;) I also finally got to see that whole group of people and we just kept the party going at the reception. Yummy food (yay for pepper jack cheese!), drinks, some dancing, and lots more talking. It ended rather late, so when we finally treked back to campus, it was 11pm or so. Man, we felt so beat! The girls weren't in the suite, so I decided to meet K up at the student union building and ran into another group of girls on the way. They invited me to stay with them, so I did. More chatting and hanging out and pretty soon it was 2am and I was just letting the old head hit the pillow.

I slept like a rock and got up to meet K for breakfast and later J and M for the drive home. Since we had the same course for 3-4hrs, the girls and guys split up and went in separate cars. It was good to get some face-time with M. We've been sharing blog comments for a while, but we hadn't had a good long talk in forever. The best part was, we knew we could probably get more time to talk in 6 weeks when the next GCC wedding hits.

Coming back to a place that's so familiar is surreal. You feel like you just fit there and yet you're wearing clothes you didn't own then and you don't have any homework to do - a sure sign life is different. Because it's such a small campus, I saw lots of people's faces that I recognized and I had people do double-takes when they saw me pass them on the sidewalk. We did so much talking this weekend, but it was hard sometimes to keep the flow of conversation going when I was just thinking about how much I wanted to be around these wonderful folk all the time. I didn't even want to talk about serious things sometimes, I just wanted to pretend it was the good old days and we didn't pass the last six months (or longer) far away. Some people I just wanted to hug, for goodness sake! I enjoy my new life, but that doesn't mean the old one's lost all its appeal.

Even still, we were glad to get home, cuddle with the cat, watch a little TV and hit the hay early. Hey, it was fun staying up, but we'd earned a few ZZZs! Thanks for spending time with us, folks. You made this weekend a smash success, even if I now miss you more.