Recovering Baptist

A few weeks ago an email from a friend I haven’t talked to in high school. My first reaction was “cool” and my second one was “how the hell did he find me?” Turns out he did a short stint in the CIA, so it’s not surprising that he was able to hunt me down. He’s now a lobbyist, and he was in town this week, so we got together for breakfast with another long lost friend.

It’s really cool to see old friends for the first time in 16 years. Someone said that when you go to a reunion in your 30s it’s to impress people, and when you go in your 40s it’s to see old friends, so it was good to just see the old friends without the whole reunion mess and the lame attempts to show off. We just reminisced about the old days, caught up on where we are now, and talked about how sad it was that the school’s president just took a dive out a window.

I’ve always been bad at keeping up relationships, but as I reunite with old friends more, I realize what a shame that is. Maybe I’ll try to do a better job of that this year.

We figured that avoiding amateur night on the roads was probably a good idea, and a cabin near Ellijay turned out to be perfect. My family and two others spent four days playing pool, shooting off fireworks, and sitting by the fire. The kids played well together and actually behaved except for bedtime. As dull as it may sound, the adults pretty much did, too. We played pool, sat by the fire, and ate. And drank. And ate. And drank. And ate some more.

Our menu for the weekend pretty much consisted of every cholesterol filled, sodium saturated, carbohydrate heavy foodstuff possible. And to drink we had a wide selection of great beer and limoncello. And while I love to eat and drink, at some point even I realize that even the Romans put an end to their feasts at some point.

And so now it’s back to the real world. One nice green leaf is about all I can stand to eat today. I even tried to head to the gym for the first time in many, many months, but someone pulled the fire alarm. So much for a healthy 2008, but if how you ring in the new year is a representation of how you’ll spend it, this is looking to be a fun one.