While I was in New Jersey last weekend, I found the perfect item that provided a snapshot of a brief few months of my life. I have been using the same planner format from Daytimer since I started college. It's the one page per day format, and if they ever discontinue it, this whole facade of an organized life will crumble.
I was searching around for something to read while waiting for my parents' impossibly slow computer to load, and I found my planner circa 1997. On the outside, there were two stickers for Mil Mulliganos and Too Hectic, and inside, flipping through the planner pages, I found:
1. Directions to Wilmington, North Carolina and a phone number for the Fountain Motel. BB and I drove down to the WE Fest to watch Mil Mulliganos and The Sidedoor Johnnies perform that summer. We were also running from the roommate incident from Hell. Both of were all hung up about making sure that we had a place to stay with a pool and found the motel online. After a full day of driving, we found the motel and the pool AND the Interstate and the gas station both were next to. If you leaned on the headboards in that place, you would stick.
A quick Google search informs me that the WE Fest still exists and is described as "an artist driven celebration of up and coming musicians and independent culture, featuring more than 70 bands from around the country and the world." It should not be confused with the other WEFest, some sort of country music event.
I have pictures from this trip, and I am always wearing platform sandals. Also, a green floral bikini with boy shorts. Disturbing. I also remember a night at a bar where some idiot told BB she looked like Tori Spelling. She does not.
2. Plane ticket stubs to Chicago. I took a number of trips to Chicago to visit my then boyfriend. He was living with his band. He supposedly had an air mattress, but it was really a pool raft. I slept on the raft because that's what you do when you are cool enough to have a boyfriend in a band and you get to fly out and visit him. I also remember their favorite bar in the neighborhood and the cool people that worked there.
3. A big "21" scrawled in marker across the page for my birthday. The Mulliganos were back in Syracuse, playing at Chuck's. At midnight on Sept. 4, we went down to Armory Square so that I could have my first legal beer and then some. On my actual birthday, I wore a polyester leopard print shirt and two of the roommates from 850 made me a big leopard 21 that I wore as a necklace. I drank a lot of beer. The insane roommate fell off our porch and bit off part of her tongue. I have a picture of NN and KL in our house, looking all "are we dating or just hanging out?" Now they're married with two kids.
4. Postcards from different art students that lived in the Red House. I thought my life would be complete if I could be "arty" enough to be considered for The Red House. I still have a plastic beer cup from one of their last parties. It's a frat house now.
5. A post-it note that says "hand in assignment to Hubbard." Hubbard was one of our magazine professors and I believe he was my advisor for a while. NN and I were in a class together with a number of other women named Jennifer and a few faces from the Feminist Collective. He called us the coffee clatch because we all sat together.
I really miss college sometimes.
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