Realities Collide

I'm walking down the hallway at the conference last Monday chatting with Kim about something when I hear 'Walker!' Now, I haven't been called Walker in quite some time, but old habits die hard, so without even thinking I turn around. And there is Petrone. We used to refer to these moments in college as 'realities colliding' - you know when you are in one world and someone from a totally separate world is there. The world that Petrone represents for me is the wonderful summer in Lewes where I also met Andrea and Stacy (of other blog entry fame). Andrea and I are together so often now that I don't get thrown back into Lewes reality when I see her, but with the exception of a dinner last year when Petrone happened to be in Charleston for a meeting I haven't seen him in probably about 7 or 8 years. So needless to say my response was 'No way!' after which we both cracked up laughing. It was awesome! Funny enough, he's been keeping up with my blog so a bunch of the catch up on my end was much simplified (yeah blogs). But, it's much more fun to catch up in person, and as opposed to our few hours of dinner last year, we had 3 days at the conference to catch up. Granted there was a conference going on and we both had 'our people' that may or may not be hanging out in the same spot but we worked it out.

So, some background. In the summer of 99 (yep, way back then), Petrone, Andrea, Stacy, and I - along with another 6 or 7 people - had a summer research internship at the University of Delaware. This involved moving to Lewes, DE for the summer, working during the day and hanging out in the evenings. Different internships handle housing differently, but the way DE handled it was by having us all room in the dorms at 'the wonderful house of Henelopen' - otherwise known as the dorm building that sat just outside the gates of Henelopen State Park. In addition to our internship there were a few other people staying in the dorm, so in all I think there were about 15 people living in the same house with no air conditioning for 3 months. Andrea and I happened to be roomates, and became fast friends with Petrone because he happened to work in the same lab as Andrea. It wasn't long, however, before everyone was good friends because come'on you are living in the same house and there is not much to do other than get to know each other - and it didn't hurt that we had the greatest group of people EVER! No really, Petrone went to graduate school at Delaware and he said the interns always sucked after us - I mean granted, maybe we are a little biased, but whatever.

I really don't have time to write out all the stories to explain how great the summer was, but let's sum it up by saying it still ranks as one of the greatest summers of my life - and I don't see if ever dropping off that list. I may live to be 100 and I will still list the summer of 99 as one of the best. And then what was nearly as entertaining as talking to Petrone all week was looking through my pictures when I got back to pick out some to scan in to post. This is why I scrapbook - I can sit for hours and look through pictures because they all have a story that I may have forgotten until I look at the picture and suddenly remember every detail.

Petrone and Tracy with the leftovers of a pinata parrot - this picture ALWAYS cracked Andrea and I up so it was what I was actually looking for when I pulled out the book

Andrea and I back before the 'real world' began :)

Jude, Andrea, Petrone, Kara and Stacy in the kitchen of the wonderful house of Henelopen

this picture for some reason also always cracked me up - I have no idea what the 3 of us were doing but I definitely lost if we were trying to see who would laugh first

a good portion of us on an evening trip to Ocean City - I rode the whole way there on the top of the three people in the back of the car I was in

this is one of those pictures I was talking about that reminds you of a memory you don't even remember having - we ran a 5K that summer and I somehow totally forgot until I saw this pic

this picture also had me laughing becuase for some reason Tracy and I were dancing in goggles - who knows at one point the heat and humidity made us go crazy I think :)

Ah, what an awesome trip down memory lane! I'm sure that there are few people who would enjoy those pictures as much as me, but perhaps they at least entertained :)