#whoneedsdinner

[jpnezz]

@ingrid.was.here is the queen of charcuterie! #foodporn #instafood #whoneedsdinner #holidaysangria (at Loveland, Ohio)

[alexwhoneedsfriends-blog]

Who Needs Dinner

Part 3 of The Festival Saga. It’s so hard to say goodbye (to something that happened months ago).

High school and college improv taught me to always follow through with my jokes. It taught me a lot of other great things, but let’s stick with this one for now.

During the weeks following the festival, it was clear that things were slowing down. There were still a lot of people in the office but from week to week, fewer and fewer people would come in. Our department was still doing work but interns were only coming in once a week or were finishing their time there. After spending many hours together, it was fun writing thank you notes while joking around. Did I get us to play Beyonce in the front room? Yes. Playing “Formation” is a great afternoon pick-me-up.

This time also disclosed other things about me that I rarely think about but come off as quirky or amusing to others. Case study: pant suits. I own a couple of pant suits. I always find it funny that this information is so amusing. Now that I’m “working” in the film industry, why would I have pantsuits? They are from another life called high school. Throughout high school, I attended a couple business programs over the summer. They would require business professional attire from time to time, and I’ve never been interested in wearing dresses often, so I got pants suits. My body has not changed too much, so I still own these same pants suits. When this came up in a conversation (I don’t know how), other interns told me I should wear one to our department dinner that night. I said I would. They laughed because they probably believed I wouldn’t do it. I follow through with my jokes. I wore a pants suit.

Our department dinner was a “congrats we made it through the festival” dinner, but maybe more so a farewell dinner. It was our Creative Director’s last festival and a majority of the interns were not returning for the next semester. We all dressed up a little bit (me, in a pantsuit) and arrived at my boss’ beautiful house. The inside: like walking through an IKEA model home. The backyard: something you would see at the end of an episode on Food Network. Life goals! We all grabbed drinks and sat at the long table on the patio. It was great to catch up with people I hadn’t seen in ~2 weeks and talk about their non-work lives. I was even able to find mutual quirkiness with others (yes, sometimes I rate things, like Beyonce’s albums*. This shouldn’t be that surprising.) I really got to know the people I had spent weeks/months working with.

After dinner and desserts came more drinks and a chill out session. Some interns began to leave which left a smaller group. Those remaining sat around a campfire in the backyard. One of the interns was also a music teacher and had some of her small classroom instruments. Our CD added her instruments. Each of us picked up an instrument and played with the Conference Department band. We played for a few minutes and then continued our conversations. What a great musical interlude. We talked about the festival and what our CD was doing next.

And that was it. A community that I had come to really know was dissolving. It still exists in fragments. I’ll see some people around the office or in our writer’s group, but it’s different. When you have been through an experience with people, I guess your friends are the ones you keep in contact with after it is all over. Then, it’s never over.

*I don’t think I mentioned rating Beyonce’s albums. So, before I go to a concert, I like to do a deep dive into their music. Each day, I listen to a different album. I don’t like being at concerts and being surprised by a song that I don’t recognize. In the case of Beyonce’s music, I decided to rate each one - based on how many songs I liked on each album. Long story short: B’Day is my fave, I AM...SASHA FIERCE is overall my least fave. Still not sure how Lemonade fits into all of this. It may just be a different scale.