The Unfadable Class of 2000

The day of the reunion, I dropped off all the decorations into the ballroom. Then checked into our hotel room to get ready while I waited for the rest of the girls to get there to help decorate. I was already tired, and the party didn’t even start yet. I was up at 5:30 that morning, because I had a hair gig for my friend’s wedding in Berkeley, but I was too nervous to even realize that I was running on fumes. LOL As soon as all the girls got there, we headed down to the ballroom to start decorating and placing the place cards and name tags in alphabetical order. We blew up balloons to make balloon bouquets for each table, and bigger bouquets for the DJ table. We stacked the donated text books in the middle of each table, and tied it with a silver glittery ribbon; we placed tea candles around the books; we tied the balloons onto the books. Before we knew it, the party was going to start in 20 minutes so we all went upstairs to finish getting ready.

(Our clever color coded place cards and name tags.)

(Our creative name tags.)

(Our text book center pieces.)

(The DJ Set-Up)

(Our Giveaways. Home videos from our Senior year of high school.)

When we got back downstairs there were already a lot of people mingling. Dorothy and Carmen were manning the check-in table passing out place cards, name tags, and DVDs. The DJ was already set up with two LCD screens set up on each side. He was the sh*t!!! He played songs that were played when we were in high school, accompanied by the music video. The photographer was already taking pictures of the guests. Teachers were already catching up with former students. I can honestly say, it felt like we were in a reunion they have in movies or on TV. It was great! Milan was the MC for the night, and might I add, the best MC ever!!! He was cracken jokes and getting people to participate. Lots of people were saying they remembered him being quiet, and here he was 10 years later, a terrific public speaker. I’m not surprised that he’s now one of the leaders of a fraternity in San Jose State. During dinner, we gave a preview of the DVD that was given out as favors. You would hear a lot of laughing, a lot of “eeewwww”, and lots of “oh my god!” Hahaha. We had a slide show of pictures people sent to us from high school.

We even had a mini rally! I’m happy to say that every single person participated. It was the perfect ice breaker. We had to walk around and find a partner to talk to (preferably someone you haven’t spoken to in a while), first topic was, “what did you wear in high school that you would never wear again?” Then you moved on to be a group of three and the topic was, “what job did you have during high school?” Then you moved on to a group of four and the topic was “who was your high school crush?” Hahahaha! We found out many girls loved them some Mr. Baham, and the guys were crazy over Ms. Kulkarni. Finally we ended up in a group of eight and had to sit at a table. At the table we found two packs of Bubble Yum gum, index cards, and toothpicks. The goal was to make a sculpture with the gum, then have the best sculpture of the group be presented to the whole class. All I gotta say about that is, there are so many “creative and artistic” people in the Class of 2000. LOL The final game was pass the lemon using no hands. Honestly, I suck at this game. LOL That’s why in high school I refused to participate in it, because I knew that I wasn’t any good at it. 10-years later, I still suck at it. My boobs held up the lemon longer than my chin and neck put together. LMAO! I was willing to cheat for my team and pick up the lemon with my hand and place it back to my neck, because there was no way I was gonna have my friend Johnny grab it from my boobs. Hahahaha. Even with his wife’s (She’s one of my BFFs.) blessing! Hahahaha! F*ck that! No thank you! LOL After the rally, we opened up the dance floor, while everyone continued to mingle and get drinks at the bar. Everyone had so much fun, that no one wanted to go home. After we closed off the ballroom, everyone shifted to the bar in Houlihan’s down the hall. Everyone stayed there until the bar was closed. Some people still didn’t want to go home, so the party migrated to IHOP across the street. LOL

(Mr. Sal and his unforgettable Burton P.E. jacket.)

(The bar made lots of money that night. LOL)

All in all, this was the most fun I’ve had in a long time. It was a roller coaster ride to get there, but it was all worth it at the end. Jenille and I had nightmares for months. Each night was a different nightmare always with the worst case scenario. We had so many doubts that we could pull it off, and it turned out way better than expected. What did I love most about this reunion? There were no groups. Everyone was spread out. Everyone was mingling with people they didn’t hang out with in high school. People reconciled. It was my ideal reunion. The next day, I found people were adding each other on Facebook. Seeing that made me feel like this reunion served its purpose. So many people were able to reconnect that night. Everyone kept asking us, “What are we going to do our next reunion?” or “When’s the next reunion?” I kept telling myself, “Never again.” But with the bond that Class of 2000 has, how can you say “I quit?” I chose to go to my 10-year reunion, because years ago I taught myself that tomorrow is never promised. People come and go everyday. You never know what tomorrow will bring. So if you have an opportunity to experience a milestone in your life like this, then don’t pass it up. You’ll just be left with the whole “shoulda,” “coulda,” “woulda’s.” Who wants to live like that? Not me.

PHILLIP & SALA BURTON'S CLASS OF 2000's
10-YEAR REUNION

July 10, 2010

The Making of a Reunion Part II

( . . . . . continuation.)

Feeling more motivated, I started searching for our former teachers via Google. I was successful to find a little over 20 teachers. Some were still teaching at Burton, while a few transferred to other schools. I emailed, called, Facebooked, and even visited teachers at Burton dropping off invitations on my days off. Jenille also managed to find teachers on LinkedIn. We succeeded on getting five teachers to attend: Dr. Dorman, Ms. Haines (who flew all the way from New York to see us), Mr. Kim, Mr. Salvemini, and Ms. Santiago.

Eventually deposits were slowly trickling in. We had to give a few extensions, but it still worked. Half way through our journey, we came across another bump in the road. In our contract, we said we could get 100 people to go, but we could barely get 60. Jenille and I emailed Laura once again. I scheduled another meeting with her hoping to renegotiate the number of people that would be attending. Lucky for us, Laura was very understanding, and agreed to drop our number down to 60 people, and still let us keep the ballroom, only rather than the whole ballroom, we would get to use 2/3 of the ballroom instead.

As months turned into weeks, we found that we only had 55 people who left deposits, basically not the 60 people we agreed in contract. To make matters worst, the last two weeks, seven people decided not to go anymore even if it meant they couldn’t get a refund. We were down to 47 people. OMG! What were we going to do? We started texting those who mentioned before that they were interested in buying a ticket closer to the date. We changed our Facebook statuses reminding people to buy tickets. We even instant messaged people convincing them to go. SUCCESS! With two weeks to spare, we managed to get our final head count to 66 people. Six more people than we anticipated.

With that solved, we started finalizing on our given tasks. Milan was able to get us a DJ. I managed to get my good friend Iz to be the photographer. Both were willing to hook it up big time and work within our budget. Melvin worked really hard on trying to get more guests to go. Jenille continued to handle our money, and send out monthly reminders about the reunion. We couldn’t think of a good souvenir to pass out, until I remembered that I had a tape from our Senior Year. The miracles of Facebook I tell ya, minutes after posting that I’m looking for a place to transfer an old VHS tape to DVD, my friend Richard tells me he can do it at home. Richard was nice enough to edit our ancient VHS into a brand new DVD, along with a couple of surprises of his own. LOL I was in charge of making place cards and center pieces. As soon as we knew how many tables we would be having, I sent out posts asking people if they were willing to donate their old text books. We had a stack of books in the middle of the tables, tied by a silver ribbon, holding down a bouquet of balloons in our school colors. Jenille, Elsie, Audrey, Cecilia, and Bern were nice enough to come over my house and help me wrap some of the books like how we used to make book covers in high school. They even helped me stick the names of the guests on the proper place cards of their meal choice. Even my 10-year old son helped! He scanned ALL our pictures for the slide show. Audrey had this whole box of candid pictures that she kept from high school! She brought them over and sorted through them, while my son scanned them. LOL Elsie thought of games we could play for our mini-rally at the reunion, while Bern was nice enough to make a run to Target to buy a couple of gift cards as prizes. Elsie also made the cutest name tags for all our classmates. Rather than using stickers that read, “Hello my name is . . .”, Jenille suggested using our old school IDs. LOL Luckily Elsie still had her Senior ID. We even had gifts for the teachers who came. Gotta love BevMo. I found great deals on bottles of wine. Everything turned out great!

The Making of a Reunion Part I

On Saturday, July 10, 2010, I had the privilege of attending my 10-year high school reunion. Oh what a journey it has been to reach this eventful day. Last August, me and about a little more than 20 of my former classmates, all met for dinner at BJ’s in Tanforan. The purpose? To start planning the 10-year reunion of Phillip & Sala Burton’s Class of 2000. Everyone had great ideas. Bottom line? We wanted a semi-formal event. Basically a reason to get dressed up nice. Our goal? Recreate our Senior Prom. LOL Because honestly, our Senior Prom was WACK!

After months of surveying other students, visiting numerous venues, and playing with numbers that we didn’t have, we finally decided on booking the Holiday Inn SFO. I had been there for a wedding a few years back, and remembered it was actually nice. Jenille and I looked at so many packages the hotel had to offer, and finally settled for the second best package (after all we weren’t planning a wedding lol). With the cost of the hotel (included one-hour open bar, appetizers, three course meal, seat covers, contribution for the deposit to hold the date, and free rental of ballroom), DJ, photographer, and other extras, we configured that we would need to ask everyone for $75 a ticket. This is where we hit a major bump in the road. Not many were willing to pay that much, despite how good we made the package. It was a big let down. I decided to go back to Holiday Inn and see if I could negotiate a contract with them. After about an hour of negotiating, the coordinator, Laura, offered us a great deal. Rent the ballroom for $500, and a choice between: steak, salmon, or pasta for $38 a plate. SOLD! Let’s sign this contract.

You would think dropping the ticket price to $60 would make people happier. Nope. People still weren’t happy. We did everything we could. Offered payment plans where they could pay bit by bit each month, or just pay the whole balance to get it over with. Just collecting a $25 deposit was difficult. It was really discouraging. To top that, we were getting a lot of negative feedback. Here I was missing my lunch breaks doing research to find places. Using my days off visiting different venues, when I could be spending it with my family or sleeping in all day. Then all I would get in return, was words of discouragement, or negative feedback. It was heartbreaking. Then you had Jenille, who had a family of her own too, a full time job, and classes after work, trying to configure numbers to make the reunion happen. Then there was Melvin, using up so much energy to get people hyped to go, only to get the same words of discouragement or negative feedback in return. I honestly wanted to quit. I think if it weren’t for the advice my friend Chris gave me, who actually helped plan the reunion for Class of 1999, I would have said, “That’s it! I quit. Screw this!” Thank you Chris for that motivation to keep going. It really did help.

(To be continued . . . . .)

Send Me to Rehab! Sook-A-Holic Right Here!

So after months of having a writer’s block, I’m officially back! My inspiration? The day I got to meet CHARLAINE HARRIS! For you non-Sook-A-Holics, she’s the reason why HBO has the show “True Blood.”

A few weeks ago, I was just messing around with my phone reading peoples’ statuses on FB. When I saw that my friend Sandra was talking about the Sookie Stackhouse series and how she was excited about the newest book coming out soon, and the new season to begin in June. I just HAD to make a comment about it. LOL So I commented with “I ordered my book months ago! It’s already on it’s way!” Sandra responds back with, “Are you going to come with me to see our favorite author when she comes here?” Hold up! What? Charlaine Harris is coming here? OMG! Christmas came early this year! Hallelujah! Automatically, I open up a browser so I can google Charlaine Harris coming to San Francisco. **singing “Haaaalll…lelujah! Haaaaalll…lelujah!** There it was, “Charlaine Harris ‘Dead in the Family’ Book tour dates: Tuesday, May 11, 2010, 7pm at Borders – Stonestown.” Aaaaahhhhhh……..I was like a kid in a candy store. My first thought, “Crap, I got Hula and Tahitian practice. F*ck it! I’ll go late. Into my calendar you go.” LMAO!

So with weeks of anticipation, the day finally draws near, and I’m super excited. I couldn’t even concentrate on work or other things. Never mind that. Forget that I have a wedding to prepare for the following Saturday, and a couple of Tahitian shows I have to practice for this month. I want to meet Charlaine Harris damn it!

So the day of the book signing, I had to work until 5pm Luckily, my friend Sandra arrived to Borders early, and she was nice enough to grab me a ticket to fall in line to get my book signed. THANK YOU SANDRA! LOVE YOU FOR LIFE! I get to Borders, and goodness gracious was that place packed! Where the heck did all these people come from? As I’m looking for Sandra, I hear the workers say, “If you have a ticket, she will sign two items!” What?!?! Out comes my phone, “Jon! Grab my other book in the car! She’s signing two things!” (I’m in heaven. LOL) I finally find Sandra and her son sitting in the middle of a sea of people. So we’re chit chatting, while we wait. Catching up since we haven’t seen each other in a while, when the worker comes out, and tells us Charlaine Harris is ready to come out! Woo hoo! Outside comes this cute woman dressed in tan and white. Her hair color wasn’t the red that you would see on the book jackets of her novels. It was more of a strawberry blonde? But omg! The minute she opened her mouth and started to speak, me and Sandra look at each other and say, “OMG! She sounds like Sookie Stackhouse!” She had that adorable Southern belle accent. Charlaine Harris had a 20-minute Q&A session, before she started signing any books. Boy was it worth it to be late for Hula practice that night! Not only does Charlaine Harris have a friendly bubbly personality, but she’s funny too! She practically answered everyone’s questions. She only stopped for a second, to complain about the TV that was on in the store and say, “they should really turn that thing off.” LOL One girl, oh my freaken goodness (even my 10-year-old son said she didn’t belong in this crowd), really made a fool of herself. She kept mentioning “Sookie’s niece” even after everyone kept yelling “nephew” at her. I don’t know if it’s because she just started reading the books, or whether she was just nervous to talk to the author, or she was just plain dumb, but she sure did get the crowd to all yell “NEPHEW” in unison. LOL One more dumb comment out of her, then I could have sworn all these Sook-A-Holics were ready to carry her out of the store. LOL After dozens of questions, the inevitable question came up, “Why are you so good at writing about sex?” Charlaine Harris’ response, “I don’t know. I guess I’m just good at it.” Woooooo….the crowd went wild! LOL For those who don’t read the book . . . . . the lady is a freak! LOL

I waited about an hour to get my books signed, but it was so worth the wait. I promised my friend Der that I would ask Charlaine Harris about her fave character Quinn. Me: “So my friend wanted me to ask you, is Quinn coming back?” CH: “As a matter of fact he is! He’s going to be in my Sookie novella that comes out next February. So you can tell your friend that you heard it yourself, straight from the horse’s mouth, yes he’s coming back.”



Oh what a night! Honestly, it was one of the best nights I’ve had in a while. LOL Thank you Charlaine Harris!

According to urbandictionary.com . . . . .

1.	Jillian	286 up, 18 down
	This is a complex name to understand let alone define. The reason this is so complicated is because the many theory's experts have come to. One of the theory's states that this name is only used for people with extreme power and or abilities like a goddess or pharaoh. The extent of this name cannot put into perspective for the simple fact that a word has not been created that fully describes her. Philosophers say Cleopatra was going to be named Jillian but once the power of the name alone was considered they decided she could not fulfill such large shoes. We have been graced with few words/phases that describe Jillian. Jillian is an incredible friend, who's loyal and wont stab you in the back. She has an amazing sense of humor and loves to laugh and have a good time. She may come up with some ideas that simple minded humans cannot see the point or concept, these ideas takes someone else who's name shares the same magnitude as hers. Because of this some may consider her and some of her ideas crazy, stop yourself from thinking this because this type of crazy is far past your imagination and should be thought of as a good thing. Shes a beautiful woman to say the least. Hot/sexy would also be another good term to address her appearance. Her intelligence is far beyond anything a simple mind can understand so don't even try to venture down that road. Simply put Jillian is awesome for lack of a better word. Jillian. there is nothing that accurately describes her but this is as close as we can get.

Makes you think. . . . .

"When a good woman's love goes cold, it never comes back." - Tracy Morgan

I had to write this down somewhere; just in case I wanted to read it all over again. It really made me stop for a sec just to think. He's so right, it's scary.

Munchkins, Smurfs, and Oompa Loompas?

So I was bored at work yesterday, and when I'm bored I like to surf through Wikipedia. For those not familiar with Wikipedia, it's pretty much an internet encyclopedia that anyone can edit. Meaning if you can type in sentences, then you can use Wikipedia. lol Anyhow, I decided to look up the city of Tracy, because I wasn't exactly sure where it was located. After learning that it was a suburb of Stockton, CA, I decided to read about Stockton next. This is what I found:

"The first human beings to settle along the streams and riverbanks in and around what is now Stockton were countless generations of munchkins, including members of the smurfs and oompa loompa tribes, who lived in the delta's waterways, using them for grub and transportation."

WTF?! LMAO! Moral of this story: Wiki isn't a very good source! LOL

P.S. I went back on Wiki to see if It's been fixed. lol They changed it. Someone must have caught on.