Twenty five

It’s somehow been twenty five years since I graduated from Rose. Our reunion was this weekend at Homecoming and, for the first time since graduation, I actually went.

An brick building with an ornate entrance and incongruous, modern-looking windows stands behind some trees and bushes. — Moench Hall

I took a redeye to Indy, and met up with Eryn’s friend Leslie for breakfast before heading west to Terre Haute. I killed time at Loose Goose Coffee until getting lunch with Casey & Rachael at Mogger’s, which doesn’t seem to have changed at all since we were in school. The three of us then headed to Rose for a campus tour, and so much has changed. There are so many new buildings! I’m glad the three of us did the tour together. We each remember a somewhat different set of things, so we kept reminding each other of stuff along the way.

Two fountains jet water into the air above a lake. There is a tall brick building on the left shore, and a triangular, metal-and-glass structure at the far center. — Speed Lake

After the tour we met up with a whole bunch of other friends for the annual bonfire: Dan, Herb & Karen, Imler & his kiddo, John Pederson, and Robin. Afterwards we went to Applebee’s for snacks and drinks.

A giant bonfire burns. — PSA: engineers are all pyromaniacs.

My friends and I got to campus pretty early on Saturday to hit hit up the CSSE, Math, and HSSA department open houses. I had fun catching up with Sid at the Cybersecurity meetup, and spent entirely too much money at the campus bookstore.

A late-1990s Texas Instruments Extensa 660CD laptop computer. — The CSSE department has a museum of ancient hardware that includes the laptop model we were issued freshman year.

We wandered around campus and hung out for the rest of the day. Sheehe, Bethany, and their kiddo arrived that afternoon, and our class reunion officially kicked off at 5. It was so nice to see and catch up with Amanda, Andy, and everyone else! Now, it had been 25 years since I saw most of the attendees, and a few things have changed since then. Some weren’t very gracious upon learning that particular bit of news, alas, but I expected some of that—2026 Indiana isn’t exactly a paragon of progress, after all.

Two dozen people awkwardly pose for a photo. They’re all wearing nametags.

We went to Kleptz afterwards, which we probably ought to have warned them about ahead of time. The next morning we went out for breakfast at Cackleberries before going our separate ways. I drove back to Indy and met up with Helena and her wife Karmen at Loom, and Dan joined for a bit. It was lovely to see Helena again, to meet Karmen, and to get to say pspspspsps to all three of their very friendly cats.

A woman squints at the camera on a sunny day. There is a small lake behind her with some fountains in it. — Will I manage to return for our 50^th? Stay tuned.