ND Weekend, part 1: Friday, September 11, 2009

Drove up to ND. Left my subdivision at 10:09 AM and arrived at ND at 2:39 PM. I think that pretty accurately shows that it takes four and a half hours to drive one way at a leisurely pace. I’ve been on the route so many times but had never driven the whole thing by myself… I think the best part was when I first got on the freeway and my iPod Shuffle was playing Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline.” It was a sign of a good weekend to come.

There was only one problem with the whole drive: At one point, I’m just driving along, going a steady 8 miles over the speed limit, but I’m passing a line of truckers so I figure that’s okay. All of a sudden I look in my rear view mirror and there was a sheriff waiting right on my bumper. Of course I freaked out; everyone freaks out when the fuzz is practically rear-ending you. So I pull over as soon as I can… and the sheriff shoots right past me. As it turns out, there was an F-150 pulled over about a mile up the road and the sheriff was going up to help this guy out.

So of course I got to ND safely. I stayed with my old roommate from last year; she’s rooming with one of our close friends, and some other friends live right across the hall in Pasquerilla East. It was actually the room right next to our room from last year (I kept overshooting it all weekend—oops!). So, my three dozen cupcakes were safely in the room. We had a few hours to kill before we needed to go out to dinner, so we began to watch the extended director’s cut of Watchmen. Lauren was entranced by the number of scenes that were added and we didn’t even get to watch the whole thing.

It took us an hour to get ready for dinner. It’s understandable once you realize that it takes for. ever. to get my hair to do what I want it to do – ie. it actually took me forty minutes to make all my hair curly. More about that later. So anyways, once we were done getting ready, Allison drove us all to dinner. We were going out to celebrate a friend of ours, Marita, getting engaged a few weeks ago. As it turns out, Lauren had made our reservations at Tippecanoe, which is a restaurant located in the old Studebaker mansion in downtown South Bend.

It was a blast. As we were pulling in, Marita was convinced that we were taking her to dinner in a castle. We got our own semi-private table in the solarium, which had bay windows and the most amazing crown moldings; the paint on the walls was a truly exquisite shade of pink. Everything on the menu looked delicious, and between the four of us we tried the steak, a shrimp penne dish, tilapia, and the shrimp stirfry (mine). Their sweet whole grain bread came to the table warm and fluffy; their salad was spinach leaves, dried cranberries, walnuts, and small slices of apple in a honey mustard dressing; and our entrees were delicious.

I kind of have to take a time out and dedicate an entire paragraph to the harpist. We were thrilled to have live music during our dinner, and the restaurant was so quiet at first that we could hear everything. So, we heard excerpts from Coldplay’s “Clocks” and the theme to “Puff the Magic Dragon,” among other things. We tried hard to keep from giggling too loud (this was a high-class establishment after all), but we made sure to give her a tip for keeping us amused all throughout dinner.

The conversation was mostly focused around Marita and the fact that we all enjoy some really good friendships with one another. But then, eventually, as happens when the first of your friends becomes engaged, we realized: holy bleep, we’re getting old. We have to start thinking about grad school, law school, where we’re going for school, preparing for GREs and LSATs, and generally figuring out what we want to do with our lives. Sure, it’s nice to talk about weddings and bridal registries and celebrations, but… sometimes, you have to talk about the serious stuff.

But we didn’t let that get us down; we still have a year and a half with which to avoid the dreaded ‘real world’. Our conversation got derailed from becoming positively negative by the announcement that we could have a carriage ride complimentary on the house! Marita was thrilled with this; I think we all were. It allowed us to feel like pretty princesses. It also gave us a really great view of the entire Studebaker mansion and some of the surrounding area. We were able to get some pictures both inside the carriage and with the carriage in the background.

Once we got back to campus, it was kind of too warm for us to just sit around in our pretty clothes, and we were waiting on Allison’s friends Eric and Ryan to get back to us on plans for later in the night, so we changed and watched the first half of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Marita and her roommate hadn’t seen it before, and I think they were amused.

Eventually, around 10, Allison, Marita, and I headed to Eric and Ryan’s room in Keenan to watch a few episodes of 30 Rock. I thought it was pretty funny, but I liked Tina Fey to begin with. I think it would be better watching it weekly than watching it all at once. Eric also showed me the mock Cleveland tourism commercials, and I have to admit, even though Justin goes to school in Cleveland, I thought they were pretty funny. Hey, at least it’s not Detroit!

I finally got a chance to call Greg, who was the entire reason I picked this weekend to begin with. He was at Fiddler’s, a local pub, listening to an Irish band as he overnighted into his 21st birthday. It sounded like fun, but it would have been too late of a night for me anyways; I was exhausted from driving all day and turned in ‘early’ (which, on a college weekend, means 12:30 AM).