Dinner with Andrea

While KrystalAdventures has more or less been on hold for 2 weeks, MY adventures have not. So that means I now have about 15 very busy days and 2 or 3 adventures to catch up on. While I am trying to get a handle on that, let's just go ahead and get the best part out of the way first. The first weekend of this month was the bi-annual Alumni reunion of my fraternity. These guys have been getting together every two years for quite a while and I am honored that about 6 years ago they invited me. I missed the event 2 years ago, but was determined not to miss it this year. It is such an amazing feeling to be among all of that brotherhood even though most graduated 30, 40 and 50 years ago. In fact on Friday I was the youngest person there by at least 10 or 12 years. (For those Mercer ATO's closer to my age that are reading this, it makes me sad to see the lack of participation by the younger crowd year after year. Missed opportunities to connect and reconnect with that which makes our fraternity great, our brothers. Yeah, I'm calling you out!) Anyway while planning my trip I decided that I always have such a blast it would be a shame not to share the weekend. So I summoned up the nerve (that took about 3 weeks) and I invited Andrea. I technically met Andrea about 12 years ago, but due to her career taking her all over, we lost touch until about 2 years ago and we've been emailing since. Because I was in the middle of finals, and Andrea's life was rather chaotic, it took a while to get our plans set, but she was able to come down for the Saturday evening banquet.I had a blast catching up with Andrea, and I think she enjoyed her visit as well. Sadly because her life continues to be a mad house she was unable to stay too long. I forgot to get someone at the banquet to take my picture WITH Andrea so I tried to do the "timer" on my camera.Note to self: When turning on the timer, make sure your thumb does not turn off the flash. Actually, I think that is what we would look like if we were being hunted by Predator.The ironic thing is that Andrea is in the photo/video production business (folks from Macon may recognize her). So my one chance to demonstrate excellent photojournalistic skills and I fumbled, big time. Andrea agreed to a do-over, though and I think it turned out OK.Sadly, the weekend came and went entirely too fast. And while my life has gotten extremely calm and quiet after finals, Andrea's has gotten even more crazy. So it'll probably be a while before we catch up with each other again. I just pray it's not 12 more years!