Coming Home?

Well, as you should be able to tell, I fell off the wagon last week and didn't get to blog. I can't tell you how much I loathe working with the laptop carts at school, because it takes 10 minutes to pass them out and 10 minutes to collect them, and then I have to stand at constant attention of what the kids are doing for fear they will "accidentally" wind up on a porn site. It really cuts into my slacking time.

Anyway, Jennifer and I spent the weekend in lovely downtown Abilene, Texas for ACU's homecoming. I learned a couple of things from this experience:

1) Only the pretty and perfect people come to homecoming reunions. As I reflect on my time at ACU, I had more than a few friends. This weekend, I saw exactly three of them, and that is only because they still live in Abilene. The rest of them had better things to do than spend a weekend trying to recapture past glory. The cynic in me says that the only people who go to reunions are those whose lives peaked during college, but that is probably unfair.

2) Jennifer apparently had more "pretty and perfect" friends than I did in college. In what will surprise you not at all, Jennifer is more social than I am, and the whole weekend thusly consisted of me standing awkwardly behind her as she hugged and chit-chatted with people that I could not pick out of a line up to save my life.

3) I have really good current friends. There were exactly two times this weekend when I got excited upon recognizing someone. Both happened during the homecoming chapel. The first time was when I saw the Thompsons (Cody, Robyn, and Jace) from VRCC. The second time was when the Wages came in a little later. Also, we met up with the Hamptons who showed us around campus (it's changed a bunch in the last 7 years) and let me hold their cat. Seeing old familar faces is nice, but it is hard to beat those reminders of home.

4) Despite all of this, some friends are real keepers. My friends the Bells (Don and Melissa) housed us for the weekend and showed Jennifer and I that we really suck as hosts. The Emery's shared lunch with us Sunday, and there was some real nourishing of that relationship that I hope doesn't end at Carino's.

I hope that my comments don't offend anyone, particularly Wages', Thompsons', or any of Jennifer's friends whose names I learned this weekend but immediately forgot.