They'll Pass You By Like The Wink of A Young Girl's Eye

Today was my alma mater's annual Alumni Cross Country Meet. Nothing too formal... just something the team puts together every year where we just show up and run a race and then have Subway sandwiches and chips afterwards. I haven't actually run the race since 2003 (and I haven't run it particularly well since the mid-90's,) but I always go to see old friends.

One such friend was on the women's team my freshman and sophomore years, and she's the only one, other than me, who has shown up every year. She doesn't run anymore either. Last year, she was all excited because she was about to get married, and M and I were going to have a baby. She couldn't wait until this year to see our baby and show off her husband. A few weeks ago, I heard that she had recently gotten pregnant herself, so there was even more to look forward to.

So we saw her today, and she oohed and aahed over PrettyGirl, and then we told her we'd heard congratulations were in order for her too. Unfortunately, this was no longer the case, as she had a miscarriage a week or two ago. And she was depressed about it.

So here we were, talking about how she had lost her baby, while I was standing there with a perfect baby of my own. I felt really bad for her. She's always been a happy, bubbly person, but she looked really down today. But she's going to keep trying and is still optimistic. And her new husband seems very supportive, so I think she'll be OK.

On a more positive, albeit a much more trivial, note, there were no Subway sandwiches this year - there was pit BBQ. It was awesome!

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We went to Friendly's for dinner tonight, which had its moments. In the entrance foyer was some guy laying in the corner by the pay phone, apparently asleep, with the phone dangling off the hook. M asked him if he was OK, and he just kinda looked at us. We told the greeter, the manager went to see what was up, and a few minutes later we saw the guy hobbling down the street aimlessly. He later came back with a guy who bought him a hamburger at the carryout counter (I hypothesized that this was intended recipient of the pay phone call.) This mysterious benefactor then disappeared from the scene, and the sleepy fellow was still sitting on the bench by the counter, enjoying his hamburger and starting at passerby, when we left.

Almost as strange was when PG started laughing at apparently nothing at our table. We looked in the direction PG was looking, but nothing seemed all that out of the ordinary. There was a girl sitting in another booth who had an interesting hairdo, but I wouldn't have expected that to be so amusing to a baby. In any event, it's always fun to watch PG laugh, so we didn't complain too much. But it was a bit odd. Maybe she was loopy from the cold she's still trying to shake.

Tomorrow we're going to DC to see M's cousin and, hopefully, go to the Spy Museum. So hopefully I'll have something interesting about that to write about tomorrow! Stay tuned!