Dallas 6.10.2010 Amy Adams Tassos

We drove into Dallas wanting to hate it, whether from past experiences, what it represents, or maybe just because its in Texas. But Amy Adams Tassos (1993) works in a really pretty neighborhood which she told us was the gay section of town, so the houses were all well kept up and nicely decorated. We met her outside of the labyrinthine Presbyterian church where she works at about two in the afternoon, and man was it scorchingly hot with a heavy dose of humidity (the sun was out the day after a torrential rain that fell across the southwest and killed about 13 people in Arkansas—we were camping near Tyler, Texas and were caught in a piece of it). So we were standing in a parking lot getting grouchy when Amy showed up and banished all bad thoughts through her immediately evident positive energy and the glow that she gave off, perhaps from the expected August arrival of her 1st son and second child. Samantha, her daughter is, at the moment, a two year old who terrorizes her day car.

Amy took us all out to a “down and dirty” Tex-Mex restaurant called Mia’s. She’s worked at the church almost since she got out of college. Amy was working for an advertising firm which paid next to nil and the church offered to double her salary and give her benefits. Her husband, whom she met through her cousin, works as a head hunter for the major technology firms, such as amazon.com. So life is good in Texas. Her twin sister, who also attended ESA, but only through middle school, is now a horse physical therapist for cutter (cutting?) horses which are predomintately in the rodeo these days, but were previously used for keeping the cattle herds in line. When we asked Amy about her participation with the outing club, she told us about a scar that she still had from a stick stabbing her in the arm. It must’ve been a pretty good wound, but that was the only trip that she ever went on. Anyway, dad said later that she was the most pleasant person he’s ever had in his classroom, “I can even remember where she sat,” and I can tell why.

Matt Rainey and his bride-to-be Sally 6.9.2010

Our first visit was in Alexandria, LA where we met up with Matt (1994) and Sally for lunch at the Critics Choice about an hour after we had eaten a huge breakfast chez Trant consisting of a delicious quiche, biscuits, hash browns, and watermelon. Regardless, we managed to push through our respective lunches.

Now I can see that I’m going to become a purveyor of gossip if there are readers who actually know these people, or readers at all. Now, for the news on Matt.

Matt is finishing is residency this month and planning to open up a private practice in Ville Platte, where he’ll be able to catch KBON on the radio and see his 5 year-old son, William, whom he has nicknamed his “hurricane baby” (Hurricane Ivan, I believe). He’s also opening up a clinic in a town near Ville Platte which lacks any kind of doctor, and he told us he’d be open to barter in trade for medical service. That includes chickens, potatoes, or pies, although Matt says he’s now on a Mediterranean diet which does not include pies, but allows for a drink or two nightly and lots of fish (although strangely he ordered a philly cheese steak sandwich, which I gather is not Mediterranean).

Anyway, before Sally arrived he told us their story: One night he was out with a bunch of buddies in New York City where he was doing his last year of Med School. He was getting onto the subway to head back to Brooklyn and sitting across from him was this girl that he thought was pretty cute. Since he was feeling pretty “frisky,” he struck up a conversation with her. After they talked the entire ride to Brooklyn which somehow took two and a half hours, he got her phone number at the end of the line. The next day he took her surfing on Long Island, a sport which he took up while in school in Granada (the island), and she either liked surfing or Matt enough to stick. They’ll be getting married on August 28th.

Then Matt brought up a story of an outing club trip: Dad had taken a group out to the Rio Grande over Mardi Gras. Most of the trip had gone smoothly at first, but one uneventful day, the group heard a scream from a little ways away. The crowd ran to check out what had happened and saw one of the students, Chris Richard, rolling around on the ground, pants down, screaming in pain. Turns out he had been using the bathroom, and his leg must have fallen asleep or something and he accidentally sat down on a cactus, which must have accounted for the screaming. For some reason or another, dad had brought a plethora of tweezers on the trip. Thus armed, several students sat around and pulled the needles out of his behind. He fainted. For the next few days he couldn’t paddle, but he eventually gained back his strength, although it couldn’t have been too comfortable because once the group got back to Lafayette, he had to see a doctor for the little infections that he had on his bottom on account of the cactus needles that had broken off and remained embedded in his skin. We’ll be visiting Chris in Humbolt Country, California.

Other news: Scott Rainey, Matt’s brother is expecting his second child in about 6 months.

Dad’s words to us after this lunch: “Scott and Matt were something like brothers to me.”
Us: “Brothers? Aren’t they a lot younger than you?”
Dad: “Ok, maybe more like sons.”

Morgan and Cameron donate!

This past Sunday I drove to New Iberia thinking that dad and I'd hang out, talk about our plans, maybe set one thing in stone, and he'd buy me dinner. He had gone upstairs to what I thought was take a nap. I was trolling the book shelves looking for Lonesome Dove when dad walks downstairs seersuckered out.

"Dad, you look nice..."
"Thanks."
"Any particular reason?"
"Morgan Weiland's wedding, you should come."
"When is it?"
"In about an hour."

I refused politely, pretty sure that I hadn't been invited, but five minutes before go time, dad convince me to get topped and tailed, although I knew that I'd be really sweaty sitting outside in the brutal May heat (I've been recently told that "sultry" makes the weather sound much more romantic than really really hot and humid).

Anyway, Morgan had invited dad to the wedding when he was in D.C. last fall raising money for the brand new scholarship fund, which Morgan and Cameron (I guess her monetary er ins and outs are now also his) donated to. So I'm considering this wedding as our unofficial beginning to this adventure. Plus the Tates were there so it seems like a good place to begin, although they gave money long before this blog and bus trip ever materialized.

Anyway, the wedding was beautiful, the bride and groom were generous and wonderful, and we got to sit next to Cameron's uncle and aunt who told us about their adventure:

For the past three years, they've been living on a 42' sailboat, moving from port to port, paying off local bandits, and generally living their dream. They had bought dress clothes specifically for the wedding and were planning to chuck them before they got back on the boat. They had a great story about a boat part, island bureaucracy, and a thousand pesos, but I had two of the stiffest gin and tonics I've ever had in my life, so that's that.

Tangipahoa, Alumni Trip 10.23.09

Here's a little story about a trip we took, and what the bus did.

No outing club trip is truly great without a minor disaster. Maybe we shouldn't have insisted on the bus picking us up in New Orleans, but we all like attention and trouble, and that bus attracts both. First sign was when we stopped to get gas and the bus wouldn't turn off. So, we put it in with the bus still on. Then we took an exit that brought us south into the middle of the marsh, rather than north towards the river. Which turned out to be fortuitous, considering that the bus stopped going any faster than 35 mph, and something started burning. We pulled over into a boat launch parking lot and checked it out. Something was smoking all right. We decided to keep going. But it kept smoking. We found a gas station and called James, who knows about bus mechanics.

Every gas station is different and they're always fun in these situations. This one had hot dogs that you had to pay for, but you could put as much chili and cheese as you wanted on it from the nacho machine. For free. But I digress.
To fix the bus, you find a hammer and use it to bang on the misbehaving part. It worked (to stop the engine from smoking, although we still couldn't turn the bus off), so we got back on the road and hit the river at sunset, rather than our midday estimate.

At the campsite, under the stars, we feasted on 200 raw oysters (which, by the way, explode when you leave then on the fire long enough).