my day began with me getting only four hours of sleep, being late for byu's graduation, and explaining to my patient host why there was a girl asleep on her couch.
nothing like being back in utah.
no school does, it turns out: i walked up to the dejong concert hall and realized that i was not ten minutes early, but twenty minutes late (something that is becoming a recurring theme on this trip.) thankfully, her mom had saved me a seat and passed the camera bag down the row to me (she had also conveniently chosen to sit on the right side of the auditorium, giving me a good angle to shoot from, for which i was very grateful.) when they finally called her name, i snapped enough pictures to make eadweard muybridge proud. and because me and kristin and a camera create a sort of artistic chain reaction, we were still running around the building taking pictures long after everyone else had left. ...well, almost everyone else. apparently we looked somewhat legitimate, since someone else asked me to take a few pictures of his graduated sister. i thought that was kind of cool. i refused the money but did accept the mint brownie from kristin's dad, which he informed me was just about the highest honor he can bestow.
being that this was mark's wedding weekend, i wasn't sure how much time i'd be able to see him, since, if he did have some down time, he'd probably want to spend it with emily. but he had some free time and so he picked me up at byu and we did what we always do: head to ihop and then watch the simpsons. and that may sound pretty trivial, but that was what mark and i did together, so to do it one last time together really meant a lot. (i guess we just have really trivial lives.)
we were having a sort of "a girl-allowed bachelor party" that evening, so while mark headed home to get some rest before that, i walked up to kristin's for her small, pseudo-official graduation party. mostly it was a welcomed excuse to see her pictures from her trip to europe and get the accompanying stories. i also managed to get enough of her friend together to give her the graduation present we'd gotten for her, and that was a fun moment for me.
being mark's best friend, i guess it was my duty to throw a party for him. i never really asked him, i just did it. and i did it how i wanted to do it, which was to have a rock band party with the old gang (sans tim and katy and a few others.) brooke offered her parents' house--complete with surround sound--and cheryl agreed to provide the rock band equipment. i've learned that you can never "recreate" the good moments of the past, that you can force them to happen again, but it was worth a shot anyway.
and here's the deal: this wasn't one of those times. this was as good as our best rock band nights. in fact, it was absolutely awesome. enough people commented that they felt like we should be watching some black and white foreign movie first that i regretted not bringing something, but this was mark's party, not mine.
whomever's party it was, it was perfect. the core movie night gang was there, we had the whole house to ourselves to be as loud as we wanted, and everyone got into it. we were all a little rusty (just ask tom sawyer), but that did stop us from taking risks. brooke grabbed the mic whenever i wasn't using it, cheryl's husband bravely sang "poker face", and i danced in the background. of course, we played all of our favorites: "won't get fooled again" (with president sam stepping in on bass since katy was two time zones away), the whole room singing along with "livin' on a prayer", and singing "foreplay/long time" let me once again be the rock star i've always wanted to be.
because we were doing this night right, once we were rocked out we ended up at ihop with an awesomely surly waiter. disaster almost seemed upon when president sam couldn't find "nutella crepes" on the menu, but our mojo was on a roll and the liverpudlian taking our orders assured him that, yes, he could still get them. we laughed, we talked, we discussed the british film institute's ranking of vertigo as the new "best movie ever."through all of this, mark was a great sport. it'd been a busy weekend for him, what with planning a wedding and getting sealed for time and all eternity that next morning. and because of the time zone difference, we had him up four hours past his usual bedtime. but neither of us regretted it for a moment. this night was everything i'd dared hope it would be. my whole trip to utah was already worth it. we got to go back and be "us" one last time.
1 comment:
I feel cultured; I have seen vertigo. And I'm glad you had a fun time
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