What a Way to Make a Livin’

I do not have a picture of Dennis (that I haven’t already used), so I’m posting a scene in which he might have participated had he attended the reunion (and moved on to Chuck’s house). I giggled like a schoolgirl when I got Dennis’s email this week (the rest of this post):

Thanks for keeping the blog up (ends this month? Say it isn’t so. I don’t think 10 years is too much to ask.) I’m finally getting to check it out. I can’t wait to see the book since I didn’t get to attend.

In the meantime, please keep posting those pictures. I’m playing this game of trying to see whose name I can guess before scrolling down and reading it. (I won’t tell you my score.) What is amazing to me is how good everyone looks.

On the last leg of my trip that week which happened to end on June 10, I kept thinking about the reunion. As the lady next to me coughed some nasty Asian flu all over me, I thought about relaxing at the picnic and catching up with everyone. I was landing in Dallas about the time you all were taking showers to get the picnic dust off and the party started. Trust me, in between nodding off and waking up to sound of the “giving” lady next to me, I was thinking about the fun you all must be having.

But now that I think about it, I actually had a much better time than you guys partying at the reunion:

I got 25,000 FF miles in one week.

My body is building up resistance to who knows what kind of Asian bugs.

I was reminded that many people who live near the hot, sticky equator do NOT like deodorant.

I did find my passport, wallet, paper plane tickets, and new computer right where I left them on the train 1.2 hours earlier at Ueno station in Tokyo. (Good thing that train travels in a circle and no one was curious about the goodies inside. Maybe it was a good thing I was in Japan at the time.) Good thing those Rolaids were inside my bag. I needed them after that gut wrenching hour and half.

I also learned new ways in and out of my hotel in Tokyo to avoid the Indian prostitute who chased me all over the place. (That was a bug I didn’t want to catch.) It’s not often you see a 6' tall 200lb man run from a 5'2", 100lb woman.

So when is the next reunion?

Dennis