The Gurly Life

A walk down memory lane, shared

Today Deirdre was at Brown, in Providence, RI. I was here, in LA, at our Brown Club of Southern California annual kickoff event. While I was at the event, Deirdre sent me a text message with a picture of the house where we lived.

It was her senior year, and my sophomore year (though it was perhaps my junior year because I skipped a year and graduated in 1990 instead of 1991), and we lived in French house. Well, it had been French house until the year before I lived there. It was for folks who were French majors or simply had an interest in the French language or French culture. That year, it was no longer French house. Liza and I shared a room and Deirdre was our next door neighbor.

The house was really large and the downstairs area was mostly wood paneled. We had one of those large wood televisions, and would watch SNL on Saturday nights.The kitchen and eating area were below ground with windows on the top of the room, and everything was a pastel mustard color, if you can imagine such an institutional color. Oddly, I don't remember the placement of the stairs.

Our rooms were on the second floor. Liza and my room was a large round room and a smaller square room that led to the bathroom, which we shared with the guys in the room on the other side. When we got there at the start of the semester, Liza brought her kitten, Micio. He was a black kitten and the tip of his tail was white. He was a wild kitty. A couple of times he ran around the room and leaped out of the second story window. He was longing for the great outdoors. 

The house has since been sold and is now someone's home. They've done a beautiful job with it, I saw it back in 2005 when I was at Brown for my 15 year reunion.

So here it is, the picture of our old room. The top floor window, the round one, and the window to its left, were my room. The one to the right, slightly lower, was Deirdre's room. I had a trunk under the round window, almost a window seat. My desk was by the other window.

 

I'm soooooo important!

Well, not really, but in a way, yes.

So, enough blahdy-blah, and let's get to it. I have done volunteer work for my undergraduate alma mater, Brown University, for a few years now. I started out nice and easy, doing a few applicant interviews every year, and now I'm in it up to my ears.

I'll back up and explain.

The alumni contribute to the university in all kinds of ways. One way, of course, is by donating money. But just as significantly, alumni do a range of volunteer work. For example, the application process to the university includes an interview with a volunteer alumnus/a. Now, somebody has to coordinate all that. I started out as an interviewer, then became an area chair (handling part of the LA area), then area coordinator (handling the OC, LA and IE), and starting this year I will be regional director, covering the west coast, including Hawaii and Alaska. The next, and last, volunteer level above that is world chair. As regional director, my responsibility will be to get as many applicants interviewed as is humanly possible in my 5-state area.

There are other things that alumni volunteers do. For example, they run the alumni clubs. The LA area alumni club was dormant for a few years, but we resurrected it. I was co-president of that club for a couple of years, specifically the resurrection years. I'm still on the board of the club, but I try to play a minor role otherwise I end up runningeverythingallthetime and no one needs that. I mean, there's only so much of the Elena Show that people can take, right?

Anyway, so right now I'm just in charge of the west coast.

Another way in which alumni can contribute is by being on the Brown Alumni Associations board. This is the worldwide organization that herds the alumni. More or less. Not entirely clear on this distinction, but you get the gist of it.

Today a friend of mine asked if I'd like him to nominate me to the BAA. This would mean going back to Brown 2 or 3 times a year and being on a couple of committees. And it would mean being more closely involved in how the alumni help shape the future of the university. Given my ultimate goal of being Queen of the World, this would definitely be a step closer!

Seriously, though, I did go to Leadership Weekend a few times before I stopped being able to afford it and spending a couple of days with hundreds of other Brown alumns who are also involved at a leadership level was the most inspiring thing I did for myself all year. That high carried me for the whole year. I definitely would love to have that 2-3 times a year.

So we will see what happens. Being nominated does not mean an automatic yes. But of course, just being nominated is an honor, and I'd like to thank the Academy... no, wait, wrong speech.

We went to a very nice house

This afternoon I went to a Brown alumni event, it was the annual send-off party for the kids who were accepted into Brown and who decided to go. The gathering was held at a famous producer's house, whose 2 sons are at Brown. I'm not going to tell you who the producer is, but he used to be a talent manager, and then transitioned to producing. He has produced a slew of tv programs and movies, and is now the head of a studio. If you know much about entertainment, you might be able to figure out who he is.

The reason I'm blogging about it is because the house was absolutely gorgeous. They had the house built, and it's just wonderful. It's on 4 levels, with large windows all around so that when you're inside there is a ton of light. The building and the interior decoration is very warm, it looks like an actual house that people live in, and though it probably sits on over an acre of land, it is not at all overwhelming, it's quite welcoming, actually.

There are the requisite swimming pool and tennis court, a kickass barbeque set-up that any self-respecting man would drool over, a front lawn that is the size of my building, a badmington court (or perhaps it's volleyball? or both?) on grass, and a pond. You know you've arrived when you have a pond. The pond is not a little pond, it is large enough to have a dock and a rowboat. The water, of course, is quite clear, it has fish, and beautiful flowers.

Today's portrait was taken in front of said pond. And I took a couple of shots of the water flowers.