e_clare

Midwesterners congregate in New York City.

All right, so they don't congregate exactly. There's no organized gathering of Buckeyes and Hoosiers (at least not to my knowledge). But we do seem to find each other in unexpected places. At Kloss & Peter's house-warming party this weekend, I met two Oberlin grads and several IU kids, including one who grew up in Dayton. Yup.

Coincidences aside, the evening as a whole was essentially the best of the Silver Street parties, transplanted to Astoria. There was so. much. dancing. And we all stayed up way too late - not until sunrise, fortunately, and there wasn't a softball field for 3am frolicking this time, but it was still fantastic. Until we had to wake up and Do Things, and then I was so very tired and a very little bit hungover all day, on top of which it rained buckets in the city, and that's never fun.

However, buckets of rain do allow you to squish together beneath shared umbrellas, and there's something to be said for that. *halo!*

I've definitely fallen into a rut. Good news is, I packed three boxes of books today. Bad news: those were the first three boxes I've packed. Now I'm getting into the hard stuff, like figuring out what to keep and what to pitch, and why I kept all of these old high school papers anyway.

My family -- the historian and the librarian -- have a habit of keeping things long past their prime. Going through a box the other day, Mom pulled out taxes and receipts from 1987, '88, and '89; information about housing at Indiana University ('87); a Newsweek from the week I was born (with Michael Jackson on the cover - yay?); a pre-wedding article on Princess Diana and Prince Charles, written in the style of Masterpiece Theater; and a 1974 ad for a car/grocery bonus offer.

She was looking for her undergrad paper on medieval illuminated manuscripts, which I'm not sure she ever found.

This evening, I found notes from NHS and literary magazine meetings my senior year, notes on a smattering of AP calculus classes, French vocabularly lists (3 pages), and a draft of my graduation party poster. I wasn't looking for anything in particular, fortunately, because I don't think I'd have found it. Yesterday, when searching for glue, I discovered two letters from an Egyptian penpal I had (briefly, looks like) when I was 15. I didn't find the glue.

This is why it's good that we're moving. Now we can get rid of things that we truly don't need -- "historical value" or not -- and it'll be a very happy thing.

Of course, sometimes you find things you've saved for a reason, even if it's purely entertainment. My mother has a copy of a handout from her college friend's Catholic high school, simply because it's one of the funniest things EVER. I remember hearing about it as a kid, but didn't see the actual paper until last week. Here, for your reading pleasure, I present the following excerpts from the "No-Nec Club" rules. (With apologies to any Catholics or anti-sex-education folk who may be offended by the mocking that follows.)

( that's not a typo )