Monday, August 11, 2008

To State College and back

We went up to State College, Pennsylvania this weekend for the last of the '08 summer weddings. This time it was Nico and Jessica. I've known Nico for about eight years now, since I was a second-year graduate student and he was an undergrad. He defended his dissertation recently and now has his PhD, so really I got to see Dr. Nico this weekend. I'm extremely proud of him, as he's got a post-doc at Princeton, and although he is the smart, hard-working, one, I feel as though I played some miniscule part in all of this. This is why I like teaching so much, one feels a tremendous sense of pride in the success of those that they taught.

The journey up was painful, as we got stuck in horrible traffic. Not near DC, mind you, entering Pennsylvania. It took us eight hours to get there, going west of DC, and we took a route through Baltimore, east of DC (see map), on the way back (which took 7 hours, and we stopped for over an hour in Baltimore and wandered around a bit). Luckily we made it back in time to get Dante from the kennel, and although he decided to tear up his blanket at the kennel, he seemed to be fine there. My measure of this is how much he eats, and he apparently ate every meal while there...

The wedding itself was nice, very calm, and we saw some people we had met before, so it wasn't like we knew no one. I got to see Nico's parents again, and they are just wonderful people. After the wedding there was a "post-party" in someone's hotel room, which was with the leftover beer from the reception, and involved me, Corbett, and two friends of Nico's from Penn State. It wasn't much of a party and there was too much beer for the four of us, but alas. The conversation had a very strange air about it, centered a lot on homosexuality and sex. This was not, as you may think, prompted by me (and of course not by Corbett), but by one of Nico's friends. I couldn't tell what his deal was, and most likely it was just his way of "seeming cool" with some gays. I am certain the conversation would have been different otherwise. There was a part of me that wondered if he was trying to say that while he was completely straight, he had either gay curiosities or interests. It is all very confusing, and in the end meaningless, as I doubt I'll ever see this guy again.

by Topher at 10:18 AM |