Saturday, 20 July 2002

Ah, a great reunion day.

Jackie and I got up early and had breakfast at Owen. Breakfast was the meal that Owen did okay. (I hesitate to say "best" about anything Owen does, but, if all you're going to have is corn flakes, toast, and juice, Owen does okay.)

Most of the Clarion 2001 folks had planned to together around 11:00, which turned out to be the time that Tim Powers and Karen Joy Fowler were in the cafeteria eating, so there was a good crowd of people from the 2002 class as well.

All the 2001 folks who were here (except Rick, who headed off to the bookstore just before we got it together to make a plan), ended up going to Rio Bravo for lunch. We'd lunched there a couple of times during Clarion.

In the afternoon there was an auction of Clarion memorabilia to raise money for Clarion scholarships. I bid on a couple of things, although in the end all I bought was a squirt gun for $6. Some of the potential neat stuff (such as the devil ducks signed by all the 2002 instructors) would have been cool, but not cool enough to make up for having another six things that we'd have to find a place to keep in our apartment.

I donated the squirt gun back after the water-gun fight.

I had kind of planned on skipping it, seeing as how I'd been unarmed until the last minute, but I'm really glad I partook of the Damon Knight Memorial Water-gun Fight. It was great fun.

After that was the BBQ, which was marred only slightly by running out of food. (I think a lot more people showed up than had told they were coming, so they hadn't gotten an accurate count to the caterers.)

Mart came! She hadn't been sure she'd be able to make it, but she showed up sometime during the auction.

After a long afternoon of hanging out and talking, Jackie and I decided that we needed a walk, so we strolled across campus, ending up down along Grand River and going to Barnes and Nobel.

In the evening I instigated a game of Mafia. We got a huge crowd, about 20 people, easily the biggest Mafia game I've been in. I don't remember who all was in it, but Thomas, Genevieve, Geoff, and I were all there, as were three or four people from the 2002 class, and a smattering of people from other classes. It was a good game, one where a serious effort was made to use logic. People paid attention to things like who voted to kill whom when we were villagers.

I was mafia and we lost. I lasted until pretty far into the game, though.

It's all been great fun. I'll be sorry to leave.