Weekend getaway, of sorts

Back from a weekend that was full of adjectives: lovely, refreshing, exciting, fun, nostalgic, stimulating, unexpected, much-needed, too brief. I got to hang out for the first time in a while with most of my grad school classmates, one of whom brought her seven-week-old son. We delivered and heard a bunch of interesting and/or entertaining presentations, and I talked with dozens of people in a way that wasn't draining like networking usually is, because it was all natural and mutually interested conversation (and because it was interspersed with lectures, ha). I got a kiss on the cheek from a favorite professor. There was much wining and dining, and yesterday a fellow alum/friend introduced me to a nearby bakery that had opened up after I graduated. Mm, tea and fluffy Mediterranean quiche.

At one of the events I encountered a man with my last name, which has never ever happened before. It's a rare name, so it wasn't a surprise after the initial discovery to find that we are related.

On Friday, I got to meet rubynye! I get nervous sometimes when meeting a new online friend one on one that we won't be able to sustain a conversation, but she is an absolute delight and we had a great time in one of Harvard Square's new-ish coffeehouses. Well, I did, anyway; I shouldn't speak for her. :) I am not just saying that because she brought me a hand-made tentacle magnet and some baked goods. The few hours we had together went too quickly.

The other surprise of the weekend was that I actually won one of the eight thousand raffles I entered in a travel expo a couple of weeks back, which, if no more catches present themselves, means I am the recipient of two round-trip airfares to one of a few select destinations... provided I buy the minimum night stays at their hotel(s) at said destination. I read the terms of agreement and think it will still be worth it, given air travel costs these days.

Mostly it was one of those weekends where you really needed a change of pace and didn't realize it until you had it. On either side, the flights provided welcome reading time. For those of you keeping track, the penultimate few chapters of My Own Country broke my heart, not because of the author's difficulty taking care of terminal AIDS patients (redundant at that time, in the mid- and late '80s) or his marital problems but because of his portrayal of the families when they started losing their adult children and siblings and spouses to this disease that had no treatment, the descriptions of what happened to their bodies and minds as they faded, and especially the chapter in which Verghese worked out the pattern and the cultural narrative of infection from his Tennessee base: a generation of young men who migrated from small-town, mainly small-minded U.S.A. to the coastal cities to celebrate gay and bisexual liberation only to contract this illness and make their painful ways back to their roots for care until they died.

Next up, a change of pace: The Hunger Games. Might as well, right? Almost everyone appears to be out of town the next couple of weeks anyway.