Category: Virginia

It’s turning into Old Home Week here, with lots of updates about Virginia classmates. The latest update is the best, though. I got an email last week from John “G Money” McLaughlin, who preceded me as the secretary of the Virginia Glee Club. He said something interesting about getting engaged.

Yesterday I got the engagement announcement, including a picture of John (who doesn’t look like he’s changed at all in the years since I last saw him) and his lovely fiancée, Kathy. Congrats to the both of you, and looking forward to the big day.

Oh, the ironic part is that John’s lived in Seattle the whole time that we’ve lived here. We just never found out until last week.

We bought our plane tickets last night. The hotel has been booked since last month. We just have to confirm that our dogs can stay with their mom, to line up a rental car, and to find some kind friend in DC or the burbs with whom we can crash on Sunday night prior to our early morning flight out of Dulles. A month from today, I’ll be back in Charlottesville for my ten year college reunion.

As I noted a while back, this will be an interesting one. In addition to catching up with the publishing crowd (Michelle, Fox, Greg, et al: anyone up for a COUP Refugees Happy Hour on Friday night?), I’ll get to ask Kate about the Fox vs. Franken case, listen to Justin, maybe meet Don Webb’s little girl.

Also looking forward to seeing George and Bethany again. The reunion will be the five year anniversary of our meeting Bethany; we bumped into them (almost literally) on the Corner on the Saturday night of reunion weekend back in 1999.

And what will people find in me? Ah, there’s the rub. Though I’ve been to b-school at MIT, lived in Boston and Seattle, and worked at Microsoft since the last reunion, I’m feeling a lot more humble, somewhat less sure of myself, than I did five years ago. Maybe that’s better. I seem to recall being borderline insufferable at the last reunion.

I got my copies of Justin Rosolino’s new album last night (see this post for background). As I wrote on his discussion board, the album is fantastic. I was prepared to be skeptical of the remake of “Legacy” since that’s one of my favorite tracks from the last album, but I think the new arrangement heightens the building tension that was already in the acoustic version. It’s like hearing Jeff Buckley’s pre-signing acoustic stuff and then listening to Grace—the song is the same but somehow more so.

The album, Wonderlust, is available from cdfreedom.com.

Almost forgot: it looks like I’ll have a chance to give Justin my feedback in person at my UVA reunion. (Wonder how Justin feels about providing “an evening of relaxing, nostalgic entertainment.” Also wonder if he’ll take requests. Yes, I’d like to hear the a cappella version of Prince’s “Kiss,” please.)

Forgot to point to this one. The first Google result for "west lawn" site:virginia.edu leads into a fascinating set of photos by Joel Winstead around University of Virginia and William and Mary landmarks. The cool bit is the Myst-style navigation (e.g. click on the left side of the photo to turn left, click on the bottom to go back, etc.).

My only gripe is that the author stopped with just two buildings at Virginia. I’d love to see the following:

• Going all the way down the lawn, with the ability to look at (or into) each Lawn room
• Inside Cabell Hall, all the way down into B-012 (the historical rehearsal space of the Virginia Glee Club) and up onto the stage
• Inside Clark Hall, and up onto the roof and inside the old skylight(if they haven’t closed all the paths one could take to get there
• Through the Monroe Hill tunnels
• Into the basement labs in the Physics building
• Plus the ability to “walk” (virtually) from one building to another

Of course, all this work suggests that the project should really be distributed. Hope to see it continue.

It looks like some of the more paleolithic of the undergrads at my alma mater are protesting the trend of extension of benefits to same sex partners. See this opinion piece by an assistant editor at the Cavalier Daily, which appears to be in reaction to a protest site, DontGiveToUVa.com, that recently appeared over the issue. (Aside: what is it with this paper and neo(lithic) conservatives? In my day it was editorial cartoons ridiculing the Jewish student union for asking the university to consider not having football games before sundown on Rosh Hashanah.)

Kudos to Tin Man for noting the piece and providing an extremely well written and well thought out response.

I was overwhelmed with a bit of nostalgia for my undergrad days today and decided to go hunting for pictures. I found David Evans’ site and was blown away. Evans, who is on the Computer Science faculty at the University (and an MIT grad), has hundreds of photos on his site, including many astonishing (and astonishingly big) ones of the University grounds. One of Evans’s photos of the Rotunda in snow is currently adorning my desktop; credit where due.

While I was airborne: Cavaliers repeat as Continental Tire Bowl champs. Sorry, Rob: maybe next time.

At Shel’s wedding, I asked several of her friends, who were also Virginia Tech alums, if anyone had seen the score of the annual Virginia-Virginia Tech football game. The consensus was, “No, but I bet Tech won.”

What a pleasant surprise, then, to see on CNN in the hotel lobby this morning: Virginia 35, former #21 Virginia Tech 21. After a really difficult season, this must have been like winning the lottery. And finally some vindication for Matt Schaub, who tied the only remaining quarterback record that he didn’t own outright by tying Shawn Moore’s career record, 55 touchdown passes.

And the team is going back to the Continental Tire Bowl, against Pittsburgh, in Charlotte on December 27. Too bad I’ll already have flown back to the west coast by then.

Tin Man has RSS. Tin Man has RSS. Tin Man has RSS.

And Trackback.

Apparently this converting to Movable Type thing is going around…

Oh, on that note, Greg and George—it appears that unless I can get a login connection to Esta’s Manila server, automated solutions just aren’t going to work. And not being able to get a connection is exactly the problem.

Greg pointed out an interesting guest post on the Dean campaign weblog from David Wasserman of Hoos for Howard Dean, the Dean campaign organization at the University of Virginia. What astonished me was that even at the University, normally a bastion of apoliticism or rock-ribbed southern conservatism, the group numbers 253 members.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like the HooBlog ethos has gotten to the campus yet. I can’t find any evidence that Mr. Wasserman blogs on his own. It would be an easy and effective way to bring lots more people into your campaign, David, and would give us something to point to from the outside. How about starting your own Dean blog?

Jim sent his final update today from his nearly six month, 2,171 mile long hike through the entire Appalachian Trail. In the final episode, he helps a 62-year-old Irish priest rescue an unprepared day hiker with a twisted knee, explains the trail protocols for getting food from other hikers without asking for it, rhapsodizes over hiking boots… and makes it to the top of Katahdin.

Jim closes with the closest thing to a benediction I’ve ever heard him utter:

If you have already or are currently living a dream, my hat is off to you; I understand now. If you have a dream, do your best to make it happen. Life is short, and you owe it to yourself to at least give it a shot. Even if I had ducked off the Trail at the first road crossing in Georgia, I would have been happier knowing I tried than if I had never tried at all.

I plan to update the Mothman Chronicles page over the next few days with a few extra features to make the experience of reading Jim’s story from beginning to end a little easier. Maybe before my next update, Jim will finally explain why they called him Mothman.

My old friends Erin and John “JP” Park, whom I haven’t seen in far too many years, sent an email tonight announcing the birth of their son, Ronan. And a more beautiful baby, and prouder parents, could not exist in the world. Congrats to the both of you.

Jim updates from Monson, Maine, after an unusually long silence caused by library closings and other trail issues. This is the home stretch for Jim; he has about 115 miles remaining on his Appalachian Trail adventure. News: the AT is crawling with liberals (8/29); Harvard frosh are unprepared (9/4); hiking the Appalachian Trail can cure snoring (9/14); and Jim gets to eat more calories at one meal than I am probably consuming during most full days (see for instance 8/28, 8/29, 9/8, and 9/15).