Last weekend we went down to Lexington, Virginia for my 10-year college reunion. Here are some pics from the trip. It was a great time, primarily because we got to spend so much of it with our friends, Sarah, Randy, Julie, Jesse, but also because I got to catch up with several classmates and professors I hadn't seen in a while. While I had a lot of fun hanging out with them and seeing the campus, there was also an odd mix of feelings accompanying me on the trip, some good, some not.

It's strange that I only spent four years at W&L. I guess college is such a pivotal time filled with so many new ideas, sensations, and emotions, that it plants itself more firmly in your memory. It makes the four years seem like twenty. But the alarming reality is that I've been away from Lexington two-and-a-half times as long as I was there. I've had two different 'careers,' first as a bartender, then as a 'web guy.' It's strange that those lives know nothing of each other and the person I am now bares only a slight resemblance to the person I was then.

For me, it's the smells more than anything that bring the memories back. The trees outside the freshmen dorms, the musty smell of the old buildings on campus, the library stairwells - as soon as they hit me, I'm taken back 14 years to my first year there. I feel again a sense of excitement and independence, a strange mix of contentedness, opportunity, and fear. And eventually, it's all supplanted by a lingering sense of sadness. Because it's over. The dreams I had then have either happened or they haven't, and either way, it's not quite what I thought. And I'm suddenly that guy who I used to see ten years ago, snapping photos, talking about how things have changed, reflecting on the past. And I used to think, no way that would ever be me.

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