Criminal Masterminds

Leave takings

Last Saturday Crystal and I were talking on MSN; she was saying how Bastian was leaving on Wednesday, and he was riding a bus down to the airport because both of her parents were working on Wednesday, and they wouldn't let her drive down to the Cities alone. At this point, I'm feeling horrible that someone as awesome as Bastian was going to have to ride a bus down to the Cities that I volunteered to go with so she wouldn't be alone.

No approval from parents or anything, I just said I would; and Mom and Dad were in Eau Claire so it wasn't like I could just go upstairs and ask them. Well, that was a no go, but then it occurred to me that Mom had Wednesday off (an ever present fact for the last two years), so I tell Crystal to hold on and I call Mom. Mom immediately offers to take him down, saying that it wouldn't be right for him to ride a bus down to the Cities. So, I have just successfully found a ride for Bastian, allowed Crystal an opportunity to see him off, and gotten out of school on Wednesday; I was pretty happy and sad at the same time because Bastian was leaving and I knew it was going to be hard on Crystal. Of course, after all of this, I realize that I have Knowledge Bowl on Wednesday, which normally wouldn't be such a big deal if it wasn't the first practice we were having together as a team, so my intent was to be back in time for Knowledge Bowl.

Wednesday morning comes, we go and pick up Bastian and Crystal at Crystal's house nine-ish. Bastian is possibly the most organized guy I've ever met; he had managed to fit everything in all of his suitcases (two of them) and they were all packed; like I said, impressive. So, we throw things into the back of the truck and head down to the Cities. The ride there was pretty uneventful. With two exceptions: when we were driving by Albertville, Bastian remarked how cheap things in America (or Minnesota at least) are. He claims the $500 he spent on clothes would have cost him $2000 in Germany; so apparently America is a third world country where gas is cheap (he figures it's about $6 a gallon in Germany) and clothes are too. Second, somehow we got onto the topic of Spanish and Alvarez, and Bastian gave me news that made my semester; Alvarez is retiring after this year, which means I will not have her next year in AP Spanish. I do believe I can survive the rest of Spanish 4 with minimal eye-rolling and homicidal/suicidal tendencies because of it. What a great way to leave, Bastian; I'll probably never forget you now.

So we arrive at the airport (Mom was very proud she did not get lost), and it's a little before noon. His flight does not leave until 2:50, but Crystal and I both need to be back to Brainerd a little after three so there's no way we can stay even for a couple hours (not like we can get that far into the airport anyway, stupid laws...). There was a relatively amusing moment at the check in counter where Bastian said that his bag would "explode" if anyone tried to open it. Crystal, Mom and I all immediately looked at one another and realized that saying the word "explode" in an airport was probably not the best idea ever.

Bastian got all checked in (had his passport checked, which is in German so that took a while) and handed off his bags he was putting on the plane to the people, and we walked up the stairs to stand outside the gates at the Hubert H. Humphrey terminal (that place is tiny). We stood and talked for about fifteen minutes before it became pretty much unbearable and we all said goodbye, Bastian basically pushing us away because he was probably about to cry.

So, we got back into the car and drove back to Brainerd; we had plenty of time to spare so we stopped at the Appleby's in St. Cloud and had lunch. Which led to a conversation about saying "I would win" in Spanish ganarí­a and what it sounds like in English gonorrhea. Oh, and telling Mom about when Crystal's mom thought that the interval (an "s" like symbol) of e^(x) looked like it spelled out "sex."

We dropped Crystal off at home, picked up my siblings and I showed up at Knowledge Bowl at 3:50, just in time to hear Rezac talk about the next meet and have a very shortened practice, which kind of sucked for us. Okay, the first half was bad, it was better in Rezac's room, but hardly. And Logan, apparently he did show up, but since it started 25 minutes late he left to go to One Act. Anyway, had some interesting fights over who was going to be spokesperson. Sam does not trust Tay to be spokes and Tay does not want Sam to be spokes, so Sam wanted me to be spokes but Tay couldn't handle that. It was fun. And that was my Wednesday in a nutshell, very long and exhausting, actually.

posted by Kara @ 11:01 PM