Old friends

My friends are collectively the most important thing in my life. I spend a lot of time thinking about academics (papers, jobs, etc), gaming of various sorts, reading, creative writing, music, and (especially) baseball, but I know where my priorities really lie.

So, I would first like to send out a wave of appreciation for your loyalty. A friend is always a friend for life, as far as I'm concerned.

Yesterday, I had the chance to spend some time with Mou Li '00 (and her husband) for the first time in over 3.5 years. (I last saw Mou during my semester in Berkeley.) She looks exactly the same and said the same thing about me, so I guess we were both happy. :)

Mou was originally a Lloydie but defected to Page. (Some people make strange choices sometimes.) Some of you might remember her as the person who convinced me to allow myself to be showered on my birthday senior year. (This is the one time I participated in showering.) You can find that picture here. Here is the description [well, I fixed a couple minor grammatical typos that I just noticed] I wrote on my website for this picture many years ago (after the part where I describe showering in general):

As an undergrad, I didn't particpate in showering wars. I had a birthday mini-party my senior year. I didn't intend to be showered that day, but my will broke down. (Mou walked into Upper Crotch exclaiming, "Shower Mason!" and my will broke down. It was all her fault.) That was the one time I participated in showering wars. This picture was taken in Tropic Alley, where I fought better than expected. I grabbed onto the fire doors and was almost able to close them. (Unbeknownst to us, there was somebody in one of the shower stalls in the bathroom, so we repeated the whole thing in Purple Alley. I didn't do as well. I tried to help myself by biting a couch, but that didn't prove very useful.) Showering me are Mou, Louis, Mark Tilford (who lived in Kaos Alley {of which I was UCC} and decided he wanted to help shower me), and Tim. Watching me being showered (pictured) are Travis, Joe (with a camera, so there's probably another picture of this somewhere), and Steve Van Hooser. Also watching (and taking this picture) is Jit Kee Chin. Also at my small birthday bash was Megan Linnehan, although I don't think she was there for the showering.

The shirt I was wearing was a gift from Matt Sullivan, who was studying for and then taking a midterm at the time. (Not that I should toot my own horn, but after we had cake, I went outside the room where Matt was likely taking his exam -- I had suggested that room as a good one -- and did some reading for CDS 241a there while I waited for him to finish. I wanted to show moral support and get him some ice cream cake when he was done. I think I went to bed multiple hours later than I really wanted to that night, especially after we returned to see graphs about "Person A" and "Person B" that Travis had drawn on the Upper Crotch whiteboard. Was there a "Person C" as well?)

This picture is one of my favorite pictures from Tech because so many of my best friends are in it (and another was taking it). My roommate was playing video games in our dorm room instead of joining in on the celebration, but you can't have everything. In looking at this picture now, I note that the hat Tim is wearing looks familiar (maybe I even wore it at Coachella) and I wonder if Joe has the picture he took because I never saw it.

And while I am roasting Mou (well, aside from the frosh bar-b-que back in the day...), let me tell one of my favorite stories about her. (Sorry! But it's just too funny...) Some of you have probably heard this one before. This was senior year, and I was walking through Page to bug Mou. The Page females apparently were going through a phase of getting their hair dyed, so Mou had some blond streaks in her hair. She asked me how it looked and I, of course, answered completely honestly and said she looked like a zebra. My reward was to be kicked (very similar to the reward I would get from her when I beat her at Mario Kart), except Mou is short and wasn't wearing any shoes, so her foot got me right in the knee and she hurt her foot slightly whereas I was completely unharmed.

Mou also uttered one of the best Housequotes ever, but I'll save that for offline comments because I've picked on her enough for now (and this is all old material anyway).

So, it was really great to see her yesterday! To say that was the highlight of my weekend would be an absolutely huge understatement. (Let's not wait 3.5 years next time!) I am also thinking that a Mou versus Jing grudge match shower war would make for quite an interesting contest. I couldn't really choose sides, except I might want to think about who would hurt me less if she lost. Mou has probably mellowed out from motherhood whereas I'm not sure if Jing will ever mellow out, so maybe it would be safest for me if Jing won? For my own safety, I definitely won't be the referee.