Date Night

Tonight was date night at the Smith house, and we did a throwback to our early days.  On our second "official" date (according to my husband, cause I'm not sure what makes it "official"), we went to the Butler University Rejoice concert with my mom and dad.  It's a wonderful free concert, and it includes many of the musical groups that Butler has to offer.  We missed it last year, so we made sure to get tickets this year.  Well, not exactly.  We made sure to ask Seth to get us tickets this year, since he lives on campus.  Seth, of course, forgot/procrastinated/ignored his mother, so his wonderful lady friend, Elaine, got them for us.  She's a keeper, that one.

No seriously.  We worry how Seth will function in the real world, should his lady friend wander off.  I may or may not have a secret account in Wisconsin where I hide the funds that keep her from wandering off..........but I digress.

Our friends were so excited to go to the concert with us.  They are usually headed to Florida for the winter by now, but decided to wait till next week, so we were excited that they could go with us.  That is, until Mary was diagnosed with the flu today, and Fred started showing signs as well.  So much for that.  We were all pretty bummed.  I called Elaine to see if she and Seth wanted to double date.  Yes, she was excited to go.

Apparently, Seth was not equally excited, because he ended up backing out when work offered him some extra hours.  Elaine, however, was still excited about going with us, which is great, cause when the mother gets alone with the lady friend, she gets the real scoop, like "how clean is Thomas' bathroom?", "how filthy is Chris' room," and "did you see Jill and Michael's last SnapChat, cause I'm thinking Michael didn't realize his mother in law was on the distribution list."  Informative session, it was.

It was a slightly different concert than in the past, because the Indianapolis Children's Choir wasn't there, and the audience didn't sing with the carols.  New additions:  I was sitting next to Sheldon Cooper's doppleganger.  A Middle Eastern lady sitting in front of us kept videoing instead of living in the moment, and when it finally got to be too much for me, I leaned up and said "excuse me, but my daughter here has seizure disorder and your phone is messing with her -- she's not feeling well at all.  Could you please TURN IT OFF?"  I'm not sure the lady understood English, but it worked.  Boom.  That sucker was off for the rest of the concert.

And then there was our personal favorite.  Jim remembered a particular conductor from the past who really loves his job, because he is like a three ring circus up there.  The energy he has, combined with the wild facial expressions, are something you have to see to appreciate.  But when Elaine leaned over and said "I didn't know that Butler let Austin Powers conduct," it was all over.  I could NOT unsee it.  The guy is just awesome.

The best part of the evening though, was watching Seth's roommate.  He is third chair violin, and he is awesome in just about every way.  He's quite the sharp dresser, with a penchant for bow ties -- I had really hoped that this particular element would rub off on Seth, but alas, he's still a Tshirt and jeans guy.  But the love that Travis has for music is just so evident when you watch him.  When the symphony stood up to take their bow, all that was missing was the royal wave, because the boy looked just plain proud.  My favorite part, however, was when he joined the chorale to sing, because they sang a German song, and Travis was INTO IT.  You could tell that he was just plain having fun.  It's a wonderful thing to see someone who really loves music.  Add to this that Seth's other friend Wojtek, who is Polish, was up there having just as much fun, and it just made me smile.

Probably the funniest thing was that they had a high school choir from out east of Indianapolis sing with the chorale.  We stopped at Applebee's on the way home for appetizers (half price, dontcha know), and when we left, there were those same kids, loading onto the school bus still in their concert clothes.  It's all about the timing, folks.

So now, I've been exposed to the flu, kicked Seth out of the will, saw a Pole sing German, and had a margarita with Asian tacos.  How was your day?

Parents' Day Out

This was Family Weekend at Butler University.  Seth was anxious to have us come over and hang, but for what, he had no idea.  Apparently, they only email the schedule of events to the parents, and mine went missing until the night before, where I dug it out of the depths of emails I had gotten while on vacation for two weeks.  Electronics.  At best, a mixed blessing.

I had been texting back and forth with Seth all week, trying to figure out the plan, so finally on Friday, I sent him the web page explaining the weekend.  He replied "not much of interest," which kind of surprised me.  Butler goes all out, so they had everything going on from football, high ropes, drum circles, tours of the planetarium and Clowe's, to, of course, basketball.  He immediately replied, in typical Sethanese fashion, that he hadn't seen that you needed to click in order to see the list of events.  Oye vay.  He told me that we should just come over and hang, and maybe we could go watch the rehearsals for The Nutcracker (one of his friends is playing in the orchestra) or do a tour or two.  Then he told me not to come over early, because he was really tired, and his best friend was there spending the night, so he knew he'd be up late.  

This spiralled into a circle of confusion that lasted until the next afternoon, when I had given up hope of getting together and started cleaning and doing laundry.  Of course, that was when I got the text asking when I was coming over, because he was now up (it was 12:07pm).  More texting.  More confusion, and we agreed that he would come here for dinner, and I would go there at 2:30.  I called him when I was almost to campus, and was met with a "you're coming today?  I thought you were coming tomorrow!" Oye AND vay. He told me to come on over, because he and his lady friend were just hanging out.  Truth be told, in the flurry of texts, I was the one who messed up the details, but we were both fine with it, because it was a great time.

Did we do any of the Family Weekend events?  Nope.  We went to Starbucks on campus, where one of his roommates works.  We ended up sitting there for three hours, just chatting, while more and more of his friends and their parents wandered in.  I ended up finding out the following things:

1.  If you have a Scottish brogue and order water in a restaurant, you will more than likely be met with "we don't have that."  And Seth's buddy's mom can switch from the brogue to an American accent at the drop of a hat if she's thirsty.

2.  If you have a college student who comes home to do laundry, you are not allowed to order out.  Seth's girlfriend was offended when she went home to see her family and do laundry, but mostly to have a homecooked meal, and they decided to order Chinese takeout.  She felt deprived.

3.  Seth's roommate woke up to an unaccompanied female sleeping in the other roommate's bed.  Apparently, said roommate left to go do things and left his girlfriend sleeping in his bed.  Not cool.  

4.  Seth's posse includes Catholics, Jews, Lutherans, agnostics, and atheists, to say the least. Their political leanings vary from ultra conservative to liberal to apolitical. Their majors vary from violin to pharmacy, physics to creative writing.  One of his friends is British, and another is Polish.  Needless to say, the conversations are VERY interesting.

5.  Starbucks has these fantastic Refresher things that don't have coffee in them, and that taste AMAZING.  And Seth's girlfriend orders the same lattee at Starbucks as I do.  Serendipity and all that.

6.  The laundromats in the dorms don't take quarters, so when the internet is down, you can't do your laundry, because debit cards won't work.  Seth has yet to bring laundry home, but it's coming, I'm sure.

7.  You can make the Spare to the Throne unbelievably happy if you bring him back three boxes of salt water taffy from Florida.  He was almost giddy.  Yes, he loves the stuff that much.

8.  Seth's girlfriend understands Sethanese!  This is no small accomplishment, folks.  

Yes.  I have hope for our future, because these kids are amazing.