Spending Time With My Dad.. And An Old Flame

Last night after dinner, my dad decides he wants to go have bowling practice. I usually go with him if he goes and practices on Wednesday.

But it was Thursday. But I was looking for activity, so I agreed to go.

I figure it couldn't do too much harm to bowl two days in a row. So we arrive at the bowling alley and get down to bowling practice.

Practice is different from bowling for recreation or bowling on league night.

On league night, the only thing you want is to get lots of pins. You don't think so much and if you haven't perfected an addition to your game, you let it go for that night.

For recreation, there's even less thinking. It's just fun with your friends, not so technical.

For practice, it's all about thinking. You're planning out your entire shot. Feet, arm, swing, speed, carry, etc.

So I'm up to the lane trying to convince myself that I have come a long way in my bowling practice.

Just because I had just rolled a strike did not mean I was automatically going to throw a gutter ball. Those days were behind me.

Just when I had decided I was maybe thinking too much, out the corner of my eye, I think I see an old flame.

He was never a boyfriend. But there was an extended involvement that overlapped more than one other guy.

This guy and I had a tumultuous "relationship" because I told him we'd never be boyfriend and girlfriend because he smoked.

I'm sorry I have no link to a previous story, but I've never mentioned this guy before.

The best I can do is link to a story about PT when I was trying to get my princess DVDs back. At that same time, I was trying to get my camera back from this guy.

I'd left my camera with him when we went to a wedding together down in Champaign-Urbana earlier this year (I know, what it is with me and weddings?).

And even though I'd been out with him a number of times since then, I kept forgetting to get it back.

Getting that camera back, for me, signalled the end of our involvement in any romantic capacity. Just like getting the DVDs back signalled that for PT and me.

But getting back to this guy out the corner of my eye. I ignored him at first because I wasn't sure it was him and I wasn't sure how to react.

I needed to figure out a couple of things first. Was he on date? Was he with his boys? Was he with his family?

Determining which of these questions had the answer of yes was crucial because that would determine how I said hello.

I figured out within a couple of frames (and without ever looking directly over there) that he was on a date.

By this time, it was pretty clear he'd seen me because his head was facing every way but in the direction we were. Which was weird cause there was only one lane separating us.

So I waited until the date chick was bowling while I had just finished. I turned his way, registered surprise, and headed over to say hello.

I was almost right in front of his face before he seemed to see me approaching. Which confirmed that he was going out of his way not to look in that direction.

After suppressing a smirk (after all I was doing the same thing), I smiled and said hello. We had a quick conversation and exchanged a hug.

Our convo lasted exactly long enough for her to finish bowling and then I was back on my lane with her watching me curiously.

Since I could look over there, I had to size her up. I simply had to. I could say with confidence that although she was pretty, I was prettier. And I wasn't a fan of her shape.

Was that catty of me? I dunno, probably. But, hey it's what I do. I like to know that an old flame could be doing better.

And it's not just about looks, she seemed kind of boring. Or maybe they were just new to each other and didn't have a whole lot to talk about.

The guy I knew would have been laughing and talking and affectionate the whole night.

Okay, now that I've got that out of my system (I know, shame on me), I hope he finds a good girl for him. Better than that chick. I just wasn't a fan of their lack of chemistry.

Even people who withhold emotional complaints, smoke, have questionable ambitions, and really weird fingernails deserve to be happy.

We ended up leaving the bowling alley around the same time. I'm very glad we used different exits. That would have been super awkward to walk out together.

TMI Thursday: My Date To A Wedding Was A Little Too Well Known

***Alright, folks, you know the rules. Join us all in humiliating the crap out of yourself every Thursday by sharing some completely tasteless, wholly unclassy, “how many readers can I estrange THIS week??” TMI story about your life. Or hell, about someone else’s!***

This week's TMI is about my friend's bachelorette party. I wrote about it back in March, but I didn't tell this one story. The first part of the party was at a hotel. It was at Embassy Suites. Anyone who has stayed there knows they have a happy hour that is not to be missed.

We were all sitting and enjoying drinks and talking. One of the subjects that comes up is the brides exes. The women in attendance were a combo of undergrad and grad school friends, so the undergrad friends had to fill us grad friends in on the exes. We only know of the groom. One story that came up was this guy who wasn't actually an ex, but who tried to "seduce" the bride (we'll call her Angela) simply because his friend was dating her friend.

They all start laughing and begin sharing stories about this friend, who they had to cut loose because she was a bit... promiscuous. Angela tells the whole story of how she had to set seducing guy straight that she wasn't like her friend and wasn't going to sleep with him just because they were both sitting there. He told her she wasn't going to leave her friend there in the bedroom, that would be rude. He started doing a strip show for her. She quickly weighed the variable and then decided her friend, who was back in the bedroom with a guy, could handle herself. She left the seducing guy, half naked, in his living room. He was of course pissed, but what could he do.

The rest of the women at the bachelorette party laughed in remembrance of that story. Then they tried to remember who the promiscuous friend was in the bedroom with. Suddenly, they remembered. The guy they named was a guy I know. He was in fact my plus one for Angela's wedding that was two weeks later!!!

I didn't know whether to bring it up then or not. Angela didn't let everyone bring a plus one because she was on a tight budget, so I didn't mention to anyone that I was bringing a guy, let alone a guy they all went to college with. I was slightly embarrassed to see that their opinion of him was one step above a girl they all decided to un-friend. But I was amused to see the looks on their faces at the wedding when they realized he was there with me. I also felt a bit better because it wasn't a serious date or anything. He was just my plus one for the evening. But I do know that I will play 20 questions and six degrees of separation a little better next time, lol.

TMI Thursday!!

***Alright, folks, you know the rules. Join us all in humiliating the crap out of yourself every Thursday by sharing some completely tasteless, wholly unclassy, “how many readers can I estrange THIS week??” TMI story about your life. Or hell, about someone else’s!

This week's TMI is about when I was seeing my TA. I wanted it to be a secret since it was above-and-beyond frowned upon to do such a thing. He would've gotten into more trouble than me, but still, I didn't want my classmates to know.

 

There was a big party fundraiser that almost everyone from school went to. He and I flirted during the party and as we got more drunk, the flirting got more obvious. We were doing okay until the after party. I pride myself on not being too much into PDA (I've mentioned before how I make allowances for PT) even when I'm drunk, but for some reason I just wasn't focusing on that fact.

 

Someone brought along jello shots. And he and I both took one. Then he grabbed a handful of my hair (I forget how often that happens, hehe), pulled my head back and kissed me. I only had about a half-second pause before joined in the kiss. But after we stopped kissing, it occurred to me that we were standing in the middle of the living room in a house filled with our classmates!

 

His solution to the problem was to go downstairs to the host's bedroom. I agreed and we saw the room was already full with a group of students 1 week from graduation who were smoking weed. I didn't even know these people smoked. They offered to us and we both declined. But then we started making out on the bed. I guess I reasoned that it didn't matter if these people saw because they were gonna be gone in 7 days so they barely counted as schoolmates. And my class was particularly anti-social, so they didn't even know any of them to tell.

 
Did I mention I was wearing bright red lipstick that showed up very clearly on his skin/neck/chin/forehead/cheek? Did I mention that it was a costume party so I was already half-naked to begin with (I was Foxy Cleopatra from the Austin Powers movie)? Did I mention that the people in the room started discussing what we were doing with each other? Did mention that the host of the after party came into the room and got pissed because he had been asking me out and I had kept refusing? Did I mention that we ended up leaving the party together and did a very bad job of pretending we weren't leaving together even though we were in separate cars? Maybe I shouldn't mention that because it's TMI!!

Revisiting Recent History

So, I'm visiting a place I no longer live in for a friend's wedding. This is the friend whose bachelorette party was so awesome a couple of weeks ago. I'm so excited about this wedding. By being here for this wedding, I've given myself an opportunity to reconnect with some people who really mattered in my life.

When I lived here in Urbana, it was because I was in school here. I had a pretty rough year (half school, half family, half personal, yeah 3/2, lol) and consequently got pretty close with some of the administrators. So the first thing I did when I got up this morning was go to the med school building and visit with some of the Deans. I didn't tell anyone I was coming and they were so pleasantly surprised to see me.

It was a nice feeling for them to be so excited to see me. We spent a good hour catching up on things. Most of them are going to the wedding tomorrow as well, so there was some girl talk about what we would wear to the wedding.

We talked about Match Day and all the M1s who are trying to switch to my campus in Rockford. Don't know if I've fully explained this stuff before, but Match Day is the day that every single graduating medical student in the country who matches to a residency program finds out where they match. There's a complicated algorithm that figures out where people go based on how the student and the program ranks the other after they interview. And M1s are how my school refers to first year medical students. And Rockford is just one of the 4 campuses my school has students at, every M2 in Rockford, Peoria, Chicago, and Urbana all are considered in the same graduating class and are all in together for class rank. At the end of M1 year, a person can put in to transfer to another site. Rockford is where a good number of Peoria people are putting in to transfer. That makes me happy because I like to hear that people want to come to my campus. Rockford's campus has opportunities and little earlier than other campuses, and the staff and Deans and professors and stuff are comparable to Urbana in terms of providing a familial vibe.

But anyway, It was nice to sit down and chop it up with people who were once so important to my present and future. Without them, I wouldn't have made it through last year. And tomorrow, I'll see the rest of the people who get that big claim. My friend invited most of our study group to her wedding. It was a pretty close study group, in fact those people are mainly the ones I consider my friends from last year, even though we're at three different campuses now. There will be some people not there, but for the most part, all important parties will be present. I'm really looking forward to catching up and reliving the good times from last year with them.