Tuesday, July 22, 2008

NTID Reunion Recap

What a time at the reunion. I didn't want to leave, but I had to. Whoever plans them, keep doing so. They keep getting better every year. I'm hoping future gas prices will stabilize or at least be lower than how they were at the time, hovering around $4.15 a gallon. Where the artwork was, they had a slideshow of previous SVP events, with me being in one of them with my face covered with the result of a pie eating contest.

What tempered the reunion a bit was going without two old friends, James Sharer and Harold Tritt, both who died within 6 months of each other. That plus finding another old friend I couldn't find, had died also, Barbara Fallon. Steve Baier, James and Janet Byrne, Jamie Berke, and I attended Harold's funeral and burial. The art room also had a listing of those alumni who passed away.

The stage shows were pretty good. Our final time in the Panara theatre had a few surprises, with Robert Panara showing up as well as the staff tossing two cases of disposable film cameras out to the audience and Dr. Robert Davila briefly talking. We had CJ Jones and John Maucere bringing down the house. I had seen The Wrong Game for the second time, and they also showed a preview of the Dummy Hoy movie, "Signs of the Time" with the production staff answering questions.

The food was good, with the best time being Friday under the tent with a rather yummy ribs dinner with some other things. The weather pretty much cooperated, with it being sunny, and it did rain some.

Right before Jamie and I were to head to the airport, we found she had gotten a message on her SK saying Delta had cancelled our flight from Rochester to JFK airport. After a quick call, I managed to get our flight rescheduled from Rochester to Cincinnati, then to National Airport and still had a bit of time to kill at LBJ with someone.

Like I said, in all, it was a good time out there. I had to use my wheelchair what with all the standing around everyone was doing, though I parked and folded it in the wheelchair area in the theatre and moved to my seat. Sometimes it's better to join the audience...