Farewell, Sean... good luck in New York!

I finished spellchecking tags today while I was making plans with my brother about tonight's farewell for Sean, who leaves for New York dental school on Thursday. We decided to meet at Chapters before busing over to Nathan's, so I bought a few Bathroom Readers for people. At Nathan's, I made Jon sign various cards while Nathan drove to get Danielle before we all piled into Erin's Volvo and were off to dinner at Earl's. (Erin had a verbal forgery at work today... oh my!)

On the way there, we talked about Bryant and Adela going out... he showered her with all these gifts (let's just say that my one foray into that kind of thing was NOT like that! :P), and changed his Friendster profile around to indicate that he was in a relationship. He'd been going out with his ex-girlfriend for a few years; Sean and Adela broke up for good a while ago, and Adela changed her Friendster profile to indicate that she was in "a domestic partnership." (the Friendster stuff is all according to Danielle) We figured that guys will play the field until they get self-sufficient and mature, then try to settle down with someone. (see players for who they are!)

Chung Yan and Karen So are going out too, which led to a lot of teasing from Erin since she knows him very well. ("Are you going out with her until Channel M relocates to China, Chung Yan? Was that a romantic phone call from Paris, Chung Yan? Are you sure that you didn't give Vernon YOUR wedding invitation last week instead of the one Ficus gave you, Chung Yan?") My mom thinks they'll marry in a couple of years because of her biological clock.. it could be! Hannah had quite the past with boys until she went out with Phil S., too! (Chung was after her in the past, along with a few other guys!) Erin has a history of teasing people: there was this time during Timothy Fellowship Bible Study that she asked Kenny whether he and Winnie were ever getting married! (at that point, they'd been going out for at least six years...) Hannah has her stories, and so does Sean... although Sean definitely tells his girl stories very well, we think Hannah's had more actual experience since Sean's had a lot of near-misses. (she told Erin's Bible Study group about all her past with boys once, and they were surprised!)

Dinner was definitely very cool... I finally got a chance to talk in real life with Eric H., and it was good catching up! Also talked to Sean, Vanessa, their cousins Brian and Katie, Brian, Denise, Amy (who met up with us at the gelato place, which now has 208 flavors), Eric M., Daniel, Eunice, Eddie, his cousin Jonathan (who has the exact same name as my brother) Justin L., Adela, Jackie, Michelle, and Nathan. (I was just in time for the group picture because I went off to the washroom, haha)


This is some of what we talked about:

* grieving's going as can be expected for Nathan (he's had to counsel people over their grief, and is counselling Eric H. now over unrelated problems)
* Eddie's US cities road trip being okay (the baseball stadiums were the real highlight, as there was no real culture shock or whatever with the actual cities since they were kinda boring)
* Jon's durian gelato ("Durian is like Christ, since so many people violently reject both!" / Sean's "Ew, now my mouth tastes like gasoline!" / everyone else's wanting him to get away from us since it stinks... Erin thanked her lucky stars that Eric M. was driving us home in the Parisienne :P)
* hockey (the "Asian Sensation" Richard Park / Todd Bertuzzi getting reinstated today / Brad May going to Colorado of all places / Steve Moore... I'm going to read the sports section tomorrow!)
* baseball (Jays games, an 18-inning game, a 16-1 game)
* Dawn's farewell next Tuesday (I should remember her birthday card too)
* the Mexico missions trips people were going on (Michelle says she and Sheena's team built two houses instead of one: while it's good to be there, you DO reach a point where you also want to go home! Nathan, Adela, and Bryant are going on the dentistry one later this month... Adela will have two separate Mexico missions trips with two separate boyfriends soon!)
* Steph's new Ipsos-Reid downtown job
* Sean's very nice East Side River apartment in Manhattan being only three minutes from campus and across the street from the Empire State Building (subway passes, stereotypes of people, living with two others who are siblings)
* Nathan and Eddie being distantly related until a divorce happened
* Nathan accidentally grabbing the gelato girl's hand ("this is going to come up when you run for Prime Minister... the Clinton thing had better not happen, but the marriage should!")
* local political scandals (Glen Clark's deck, Gordon Campbell's drunk driving arrest and goofy smiling picture, Mike Harcourt...)
* the gelato place (trying a lot of flavors before having to choose one or two, Eric M. not trusting their sugar-free stuff, butterscotch / cherry pie for me, vanilla butterscotch, balsamic vinegar, la dua, cherimoya, green tea, chocolate chocolate chip, wasabi, apple wasabi sorbetto, banana swirl, white chocolate with blueberry / raspberry, root beer sorbetto, almond halvah, curry, other flavors)
* the Atkins company going bankrupt, which Jon hadn't heard about (dodgy-sounding Atkins maple syrup, overestimating the popularity of the diet, etc.)
* updates, news, hanging out, MSN, forensics, the summer, books, loitering, skunks, many gelato flavors, hugging Sean goodbye, etc.


On the way home, the guys and I listened to Dan Russell on Sportstalk. We also bugged each other about the usual stuff: production, #4 / Alderbridge, hitting other car doors, etc. All in all, a good time! Now to catch up on 24 hours of stuff I missed! I finally had to block Chris Sykes temporarily (?) because I got tired of his "hi... ?... ?" M.O. while I was trying to do something else. Maybe I'll unblock him later... I'll see. ;)

Here's a new Rejected icon, courtesy of my friend Mike Farley at Our Place! You can see the rest of my Rejected icons here... Don Hertzfeldt is the bomb, yo!



Just in time to be a day update, too... phew!