Had an enjoyable chat with Craig this afternoon. We eventually wound up visiting Ruby Tuesday’s, which—according to Lee—is the New Shari’s. The Shari’s for the aughts. The college variant of Shari’s. (Shari’s was an important part of high school life in Corvallis, you see, and so has left a lasting impression on my friends and me.) Anyway, at Ruby Tuesday’s we discovered that the standard dress for employees was a white work shirt and very tight jeans. Craig was going to comment on that, but then noticed that the males also appeared to be wearing very tight jeans—that, at least, it enforced equal opportunity tight jeans.

After my early dinner (which came far too soon after a late lunch—be warned that, though Ruby Tuesday’s may be the “new Shari’s,” it does not appear to sell milk shakes or small desserts that can be used as an excuse to sit and chat), we then visited our old high school. The snow storm earlier this year really did a number to the textured concrete surface on the front of the school—good portions of the concrete had fallen off—and now the school appears to be undergoing a complete remodelling. The front appears to be gaining a new arched entrance way, and the temp walls that defined the inside of the school appear to have been razed and replaced with real walls (or, alternatively, much nicer-looking temp walls). Individual desks have been removed in favor of small tables, each sporting two chairs; hallways are larger, and some classrooms have been combined to form larger classrooms that are unusably wide.

My beloved F building, where I spent many hours huddling over a computer screen working on yearbooks, has been completely redesigned on the inside: the photography area now includes a good chunk of the old Mac lab, and a PC lab has taken over the rest of the Mac lab space. The Mac lab now resides in the classrooms that used to be held by Mrs. Lavietes and Mr. Rasmussen, who used to teach Spanish. I didn’t at all recognize the hallway I saw through a still-familiar window.

Weird.

The quad looks about the same as I remember it, though there are a few more permanent rails and a bit of fencing that wasn’t there in my heyday. My friends’ traditional lunch location—an “outdoor hallway” along one side of F building—remains unchanged (save for the addition of a small bit of graffiti, reading something to the effect of Bill + Ted = Poop Buddies). Our spring lunch spot—a nearby grassy hill in the quad—no longer has any view of the creek that runs through the quad, as its vegetation has grown quite thick, but otherwise also remains the same.

Many posters advertising the upcoming Yearbook Signing Party (now featuring free soda, apparently) were hanging around, too. Back in our day, all the Yearbook Signing Party needed was two or three big butcher-paper signs, and those were mostly so that kids knew what day to show up.

As we were leaving, a boy and his dad (!) were spray-painting The Rock. Yellow background, blue text: WR RULES. Out of curiosity, we asked them what that meant; apparently WR is the name of the son’s band. I commented to Craig, afterwards, that I thought that message would mean more if it were painted by a fan of the band. I mean, I don’t go around writing about how much Brent rocks—I leave that up to you. (You’ve been doing a pretty poor job of it, FYI. I know I’m no Donna’s VD and Unicrons page, but come on.)

In the evening I had a milkshake with Eric and Nate at—you guessed it—Shari’s, and then we got a short demonstration of La Pucelle Tactics. I learned the true reason that purification is La Pucelle’s middle name, and also was introduced to the creatures known as tiny bats.