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.”