As the term winds down, the men and women of Section H are spending as much time as possible with each other-scheduling events almost nightly.
On June 27, the crowd went out to the Red Sox-Tampa Bay Devil Rays game at Fenway. When he bought the tickets in March, organizer Curt Medeiros was heard to exclaim: “It’s the Devil Rays. We’re guaranteed the win. Oh yeah, and Pedro’s pitching too.” Well, neither thing happened, but with enough beer, there were quite a few who managed to stay through the end of the ninth before joining the rest of the cohort at the Hingham houses.
A mere two days later, fifty-five NH’ers, partners and children made a weekend trek to Waterville Valley, New Hampshire.
Although they weren’t roughing it in the woods like their colleagues on the camping trip (see article this issue), they still had their adventure. Arriving after midnight, Ree-shard Linder and his wife Jen were ready to get to their room. As they came up on the building’s front porch, Jen suddenly noticed a large black bear on the porch digging in a trash can.
Hiding behind a porch pillar in a flash of amazing common sense, Richard did the obvious thing in this situation: he reached for his digital camera to document the encounter. Before the flash could go off, his better half (luckily) whispered, “Richard, be an adult for once!” and there was no attack. Only after the rest of the group inside noticed another bear on the side of the house and began yelling were Richard and wily Jen able to get away.
NH went on to start the partying with dinner at a local restaurant. The main event of the night was the post-dinner partying in the condos, relieving some of the stress that has built up after days of term sheets, emerging market economic analysis and endless discussions of the five forces.
“Bear”ly able to contain their excitement, the section’s golfers hosted a mini-clinic on Saturday for the newcomers to the sport and played a round. Others chose to kayak or canoe on the lake. Angela Wu, normally the section’s most bubbly character, learned that she couldn’t float when (in her words) a “big wave” caused the kayak of Priti Shah (Vimal’s wife) to capsize. Of course it was a wave, Angela. Sure.
The event was flawlessly planned by Amish Mehta. Amish’s preparation reached its pinnacle on Saturday night, when he had organized a catered dinner at twilight, followed by hours of games, chat and cheer around a bonfire. Relying up on her years of entertaining people in the Catskills, Hannah Vazzana go the group to play charades (ask Billy how he described “Howdy Doody”), “Celebrity”, and, naturally section impersonations (we’re getting ready for that one again soon). And clearly the local bear population heard about how much fun NH was having. They made another appearance, giving Richard a chance to take a picture when they ran through the yard near the bonfire.
The final event of the night was a two-hour Indian bhangra dancing display by Priti Shah, Hira Verma and native Indian Ed Han. I another room, after Lee Monahan kindly offered a few quick poker lessons, his pupil Kirsti Domay took him for all he was worth. Was the wily Kirsti merely acting like a novice or was it truly beginner’s luck? We’ll never know.
If it sounds like I don’t know what I’m talking about, it’s because I don’t. I wasn’t even there. Instead, I was busy getting engaged to my lovely new fianc‚e Amanda, which was a hell of a lot more fun anyway.
Special thanks to Jim Smith, who contributed to this article
