The year — nay, my entire college career — is quickly drawing to a close.

I’m reminded more often about bygone years. For some reason, I seem to be running into my friends from Speed 3 on a more frequent basis now than in the past few years. Some of them have changed significantly in appearance. Others, not so much. But I know that we have all grown.

I look at myself in the mirror and see that I have aged. My complexion is more weathered; my hair has begun graying. I still have the look of youth, but I make no outward denial of the march of time. It’s nearly May, which means that I am nearly 22. Gosh, twenty-two years. I’m sure that my parents and grandparents reading this will scoff at the notion, but I feel old.

I’m a senior at Rose and at Pike. I’m the person who supposedly has seen or done everything before and thus is looked to for advice. I like that role, but the price is that I soon will enter the real world. I soon will be back to square one, where I will need to prove myself all over again. My elders, who supposedly have seen or done everything before, advise me that this cycle is repeated throughout life. Probably true, but I’m still uneasy about it. Moving back to square one means that I lose most of my influence and authority. It means that I (for the most part) lose control.

Losing control. Man, I hate not being in control. I think that is part of the reason why I don’t like drinking all that much. I simply cannot stand not being in complete control of my life and my actions.

One of the other things I think about on occasion is my legacy here at Pike and at Rose. I wonder how (if?) I will be remembered. It’s not something that I can dictate or change; it’s simply something that is. It’s an odd topic to ponder, almost as if I’m contemplating my own eulogy. On occasion, names of Pikes long ago graduated will come up in discussion. The references run the gamut from the light-hearted to the reverent to the critical. Of course, the only people who are remembered are those who have been active enough to be memorable. I hope that I have been active enough over the past few years so that I have made a positive difference in at least one person’s life.

I’ve tried to make the most of the past few months. I’ve been staying busy, be it with my photography class, training for the triathlon, or hanging out with my fellow seniors. I stayed up all night at Relay for Life. I pranked my little brother by saran-wrapping his dorm room. I went to Paris. I started reading more (currently in the rotation: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance [still], The Millionaire Next Door, and the Koran [don’t knock it ’til you’ve read it]). I planted trees around Terre Haute. I took the FE. I worked on senior project. And I helped at (and after) Pike’s work day.

Ah, work day. So much done, so little accomplished.

Suffice it to say that my project got done. Hey, I know how to repair windows, and my team was awesome. A couple other projects got done too. Of course, that statement implies that there were a good number of projects that were NOT completed.

The most significant of those was the laying of drainage tile around the main house. It should have been a simple project, but things went downhill rapidly after we kept running into unmarked utility lines. By “running into,” I mean, quite literally, “running into.” The biggest snafu of the day was when our backhoe hit a buried 7200-volt power line. Nobody was injured, but the blunder knocked out power for a couple of hours and is almost certain to saddle us with a large repair bill. Oops. Of course, had the utility-marking people actually done their jobs correctly, we would have known about the cable and probably would not have hit it. Oh well. The next day, we decided that the entire project was far more than we could handle, so we filled in all of the trenches and holes, making the previous day’s efforts an exercise in futility.

Fortunately, my electrical engineering senior project was much more successful. Our project actually works! We gave our presentation about our successful endeavor on April 21 at the ECE Senior Symposium. The presentation went off without a hitch thus making us happy. I find it interesting that four years ago, in April 2000, I visited Rose for the first time on the same day as the ECE Senior Symposium. Obviously, I subsequently attended Rose. I wonder if somebody else was in my shoes last week, making their college decision on a tour during Senior Symposium?

That visit four years ago lead to a series of events that will soon culminate in gradutation. Graduation is just a few weeks away. After I walk the stage during commencement, I have some down time, then… I’m going to Europe! Again!

The plans are taking shape: we’re flying into Frankfurt for the start of a 24-day trip. I’m looking forward to it!

Make the most of the last vestiges of childhood.

Yay! (Note that the biography is somewhat error-riddled) Update: it was actually quite accurate.  Also, slightly earlier, there was this.

That’s it for today — just me being conceited.

Remember the Scopes Monkey Trial, where a high school science teacher was convicted of teaching evolution? That happened in Rhea County, Tennessee.

Apparently, that county has been expressing its conservatism again.

Curious about the type of people in Rhea County, I did a demographic query. The results list a prominent neighborhood type as “shotguns and pickups,” something that I found amusing.

So I was eating burgers on the porch today after Spring Cleaning at the house (the barn is clean and organized again!) when one of my Brothers made a very disturbing observation: I have some gray hairs on the side of my head!!! Yikes, that’s frightening. I mean, jeeze, I’m 21 years old; that shouldn’t happen for another decade or two. I guess I should be thankful that I have hair, but still…

I’ve got to hand it to Motorola’s engineers.

On the night before I left for Paris, I decided to do some laundry. So as to get everything clean at one time, I decided to wash the jeans that I had been wearing earlier in the day. Everything went smoothly until I went to move my clothes from the washer to the drier.

All of my clothes were in the drier when I checked the washer for any laggards. I noticed something dark, relatively small, and apparently hard sitting on the bottom of the washer. “D’oh! I must have washed my wallet!” I thought. No, that couldn’t be — I don’t carry a wallet (I use something akin to a money clip, except without the clip part). Hmmm… what could it be? I reached in and retrieved the mysterious object. When I saw it, my heart sank.

It was my cell phone.

My poor little StarTac, having taken so much abuse (and numerous broken antennas) appeared to have finally met its demise. The phone must have been in one of my jeans pockets when I threw them into the washer, which means that the phone was certainly powered on during the wash cycle. The phone gave no indication of life following the wash; no beeps, no lights, just nothing. It was unresponsive to the power button. The LCD had water in it, which flowed back and forth as the phone was rocked.

The phone was almost certainly dead, but I felt a need to make a desperate attempt to revive it. It wasn’t that I needed the phone per se but rather the 90+ phone numbers stored within. Like so many people in today’s society, I have become completely dependent on my cell phone for remembering phone numbers. If I were to lose my phone, I would only be able to call numbers imbedded in my psyche from those damn auto insurance television ads.

I moved the phone to my room and surrounded it with silica gel (a desiccant).

Overnight I did wait, hoping in my dreams that the gods of technology would take pity on my poor phone and grant it resurrection.

In the morning, I looked at my phone, hoping to find it dry and happy. I cautiously pressed the power button, hoping for newfound electronic life. But it was not to be. The phone remained silent as ever.

At that point, I reasoned that perhaps only the battery was destroyed, so I cautiously plugged the phone into the wall charger. Seeing no sparks, I tried again to power on the phone. It awoke! With a melodious beep and a bright LCD, it sprang back to service, supported by power from its electric tether.

Pleased with the triumph, I unplugged the phone and left it to dry out for the week while I was in France.

Upon my return, I attempted to recharge the battery. To my pleasure, the battery started accepting a charge after a few hours indicated its readiness.

As I write this now, the phone is sitting behind me, happily waiting at the ready for communication. Battery life seems not to have been impacted and the water has disappeared from the LCD. The only lasting reminder of my heinous electronics faux pas is a slightly more broken antenna. That, I can definitely deal with.

——–

I’m pleased that the phone worked, or else I would not have been able to hear an amusing voicemail message left on my phone while I was in Paris. The message was from my Brothers down at Panama City Beach – specifically Dinger, Stu, and Nagel. They were gently chiding me (in a good-natured way) for not being down there with the rest of the Pike seniors.

I do somewhat regret not going to Florida with all of them, but that doesn’t mean I regret going to Paris. I really enjoyed Paris, not only for the sights and experiences, but also for the quality time it allowed me to spend with my little bro Tyler. I’m very happy that I went, and even more pleased that the whole thing went extremely well.

Ah, the sights. Over the time we were there, I saw Notre Dame cathedral, Pompidou modern art museum, the Seine river, the Arc de Triomphe, the Louvre, the Eiffel Tower, the gardens and chateau at Versailles, Luxemburg Palace, the Catacombs, and the outside of the Royal Observatory. I wonder where I’ll go when I return in the spring?