I have come home from Homecoming

This was Homecoming weekend at queen's, and the first one I've gotten to experience as an alumnus. Friends were seen, beer was drunk, and all my money was spent.

The weekend started on Thursday afternoon when I arrived at Kevin's house in Kingston. He lives in the heart of the student ghetto, just off Aberdeen street, which is the main party street. I went drinking at the QP with Greg, and the rest of the night is a bit of a blur.

Friday was the first official day of Homecoming, and the one I was looking forward to most, for one simple thing: Homecoming Ritual. Ritual is an event that happens every Friday at Clark Hall Pub from noon til 6. People go, get blasted in the middle of the afternoon, and sometimes go to classes or labs drunk off their asses. It also gets incredibly busy even on non-important weekends. Add several hundred alumni coming back to go to Ritual and you've got a recipe for a packed bar and capacity violations. This was the first year I was actually able to get in, thanks to my alumni card. I drank a personal best 4 pitchers, and then went to get some dinner.

That night was the Principal's Ceilidh (that's Gaelic, it's pronounced kay-lee). Basically a meet and greet with the administration, important people on campus, and other alumni. Plus the Bands gives one of their important performances of the year (the other being at the John Orr dinner). I met up with a bunch of friends and we all raided the buffet table. I was still recovering from Ritual, so I just drank water all night, which makes me both boring and lame, but I needed to stay alive. After the Bands performed (sounding much better than they did last year) I hung out with all my friends who are still in it, and went home to pass out.

Saturday morning I had planned to go to various warmups and pancake keggers before the football game, but a few of us decided to go to Epicure (a neat little restaurant not far from campus) for breakfast instead. Bad idea, because the place was packed and took over an hour to get and eat breakfast. We wanted to step off with the Bands for the ghetto parade and march to the stadium, but we couldn't. We caught them about halfway through the ghetto parade, and then stopped to chat with some people. We never did catch up again, but we walked through the alumni parade twice (once trying to catch the Bands, again because we stopped to buy a drink from some kids).

The football game was an abysmal affair. The Gaels got crushed by Western (the biggest rival Queen's has) 45-17. It was tied at 17 at halftime, so it really sucked. We left midway through the 3rd quarter, after Western scored 2 touchdowns in 6 minutes, and went to the Ports.

The Portsmouth Tavern is where the Bands has gone after football games since the stadium was built at West Campus in the 50s. For Homecoming, all the former Bandsies eventually wind up there, so you need to go early to have a chance of getting in. This year they roped off an area for the Bands to occupy when they arrived, which was a nice gesture. Eventually they came, and everybody got drunk. Especially me. I don't remember how many beers I had or how much money I spent, but I remember buying drinks for a lot of people. After we left the Ports, we wound up at a house party where I ate all the remaining pizza, and then left for Aberdeen.

When I got there only half of Aberdeen was a madhouse. When I left, the entire thing was.

Imagine a street that's full of so many people you can't even move. Now make all the people drunk and the ground littered with beer bottles, and you'll have a rough estimate of what Aberdeen Street is like during Homecoming. I somehow managed to find some of my friends in the crowd, but they were all out of beer. After eventually locating a kegger and getting some free alumni beer, I figured I should quit drinking if I wanted to avoid the worst hangover of my life. I pushed my way through the crowd trying to get out, met up with other friends I had been separated from earlier, and eventually got back to Kevin's house, where we watched Family Guy until I passed out.

The hangover was pretty bad, but not the worst I've had. The rest of today was pretty uneventful. I said goodbye to some people, had a quiet lunch, did the crossword, and then came back to Ottawa. I think I'm going to sleep really well tonight.

All told, my first Homecoming as an alum was awesome, and I hope the next one is as good.