I’ve been wiped out since coming back from my reunion. Monday I felt like I was spinning my wheels all day. Yesterday I was in a total fog. After sleeping through parts of our after-school meeting, I thought I would be rested enough to get something done once I got home. I was wrong.
It was nearly seven by the time I was walking in the door. I had some cereal and sat down in front of the TV with my chapel materials, thinking I could work on them a little. Instead, I started falling asleep again. At 8pm, I decided I would just go to bed. It took me a little while to get ready for bed and to fall asleep, so it was nearly nine by the time I was unconscious.
I slept soundly. I feel much better this morning. Good thing, too, because chapel isn’t done. I have two hours to get ready, go to school, and write chapel.
Happy Birthday to my niece Rachel! She’s sixteen! I got a card last week. It’s still on my desk at school.
I stopped at the grocery store yesterday because after school today we’re having a meeting that promises to be very long. We’re all bringing various salad ingredients to share so that we have something to sustain us. I got bean sprouts and ginger-sesame dressing.
At the grocery store, I decided to walk down the toothpaste aisle, just to give a look. They had all the usual offerings. But then I noticed various weird and medicinal-looking toothpastes. Among them was a box talking about dry mouth. Remembering the Tom’s of Maine box mentions xylitol as a moistener, I grabbed a box of this new toothpaste and read the ingredients. No sucralose or aspartame. It was sweetened with sorbitol and xylitol! Cool! I got a tube.
It is called Biotene. It has other claims on the box besides making your mouth feel not dry anymore. (Wouldn’t water fix that?) It says it has enzymes to help control bacteria. I used it last night. It was pretty good. Not as good as Tom’s, but pretty good. It had an interesting taste… it reminded me of how a dentist’s office smells. I will use it for a while and see how I like it…
Well, I arrived back in Baltimore without dying in a horrible plane crash. I had an uneventful trip back. My stop in Minneapolis was longer this time. What would I do with three hours? I started by getting some Godfather’s pizza. I can’t get that in Baltimore, so it’s kind of a treat. I then decided to walk the airport a little. I wondered what kind of stores they had. Finding what looked like a shopping area on the map, I headed there.
Wow.
There is a mall inside the airport. The picture I took doesn’t capture the size. The corridor keeps going and going and going… The stores are still airport kind of stores, so I didn’t end up buying anything, but holy moly! It was huge!
Between walking the mall and having a laptop with me, I had no problem finding stuff to do for three hours.
I got home at 11pm. Max seemed happy to see me. As I was getting ready for bed, he was really playing with his water dish. At one time he had his paw in it swishing things around. I tried to catch it on camera, but all I got was him drinking. I like how he watches me from the corner of his eye. hehe…
Yesterday was a late morning. After sleeping in and going to the local truck stop for a wireless internet signal and posting, I met up with everyone for a 10am talk and tour.
Our tour took us all over campus. It was striking to see how much everything was the same. I took pictures like a crazy man. I’ll eventually post them all to an internet service so I can share them with classmates. In the meantime, here are some highlights:
Here is the sign we won naming rights for at this year’s auction. We named it for two classmates who have died since graduation.
When I was student body president, my unique accomplishment was a celebration of Arbor Day. We planted a tree. After a school-wide naming process, the tree was named Roy-Oak. Hehe… get it? This picture is actually from Friday. It shows the full height of the tree.
When touring the main academic building, we went past several bookshelves that had text books on them. I thought the cover of this one was hilarious. I think maybe if I studied Korean Literature, I’d get X’s for eyes as well…
The tour included the gym, a place you wouldn’t think I’d have any memories of. The locker room actually was a place of great emotion… horrible anxiety. I had it every Friday night before football games as I worried about how much I was going to be hit.
We ended the tour with lunch in the conference room of the dorm we’re staying in. After eating, we had some fun remembering our years in high school. The old scrapbooks and photos were fun to look at.
We ended the day by hanging out in the Heidelberg Gardens and the dorm.
I’m late with my post this morning because I was late to bed last night.
My flights were fine yesterday. Lloyd and Lauren picked me up right on time, though I have to say the Kansas City airport is the weirdest airport I’ve ever been in, including the foreign ones I’ve seen. In the afternoon, we walked around campus a little. Our formal tour is today. In the evening we went to a home football game. The Saints were losing 31 to 9 when we all left. Our next stop was Heidelberg Gardens in downtown Concordia.
Heidelberg Gardens, or the beer gardens as they are called, is a HUGE area where people listen to oompah music and eat and drink. There was a little area where St. Paul’s alums gather, so we saw not only members of our own class, but other classes as well. We stayed until they kicked us out at 1am.
