So I went to Ol' Mex last night with special guests Ben and Nora, of Lawrence fame. Good times, but I completely forgot about the standard two-for-one special and we ended up with a surfeit of booze.

My usual awkwardness notwithstanding, it's amazing how comparatively easy it was to communicate with these people. After a few months of talking to friends who I've either just met or who haven't seen me regularly since high school — even Graham, who knows me better than anyone here, has a facial expression specifically for conveying how out-of-character he considers some of my statements — talking to Lawrentians is like losing so much static.

There's no magic to it; they've just hung out with me recently, on a fairly regular basic, in a wide variety of situations.

And like all the Lawrentians who I chose to associate with, they're fairly clever. I feel like I should add an asterisk for Jubb of "drunken naked river accident adventure" fame, but you know what I mean.

('05-'06-'07 cluster reunion in 2011.)

Is there a name for the process in which nostalgia loses its sepia tone and becomes rose-colored? I remember feeling that the Brainerdites understood me so much better, back during my first few years of college; there was a different shared outlook, a different set of inside jokes and hilariously inappropriate parlour games.