I’m bound for lots of the nostalgia in the coming weeks. It’s going to be an emotional flood of memories and old faces. Some of it will be bittersweet, some painful, and the lion’s share will hopefully be a great flashback.

Next weekend, I’ll be headed back to Athens to see the Grand Opening of the new Chateau of the Sigma Nu fraternity house. I was the last person to live in that house back in 1996. There has been no real fraternity house for 13 years. It will be amazing to see it come back to life. I’ll miss the old house a great deal. There are literally hundreds of stories to be told about the place. This new house, then, will need some time to develop it’s own aura. Hopefully, the guys won’t destroy the thing in the first year, but really, if I was there, I’d probably be throwing up in a toilet on night one. Because that’s what my college experience was about in the majority.

I’m going to take it back even further come the end of September. I’ll be traveling back to Rome, GA for my 15-year high school reunion at Darlington School. I can’t wait to see some old friends and meet their wives and children. I can’t wait for them to meet my son, too. It’s going to be odd because I was just working/teaching there only 3 years ago. Many of my colleagues, who were my teachers to begin with, will be there and its odd to connect with them on such different levels. As a student, they knew me in a certain way. As a colleague, they knew me in quite a different way. Of course, that goes for my impressions of and experiences with them as well.

All this will be happening as the fall descends around me. Fall always make me think back to times like the start of football season in Athens and the first days of high school, meeting all the new people and adjusting to new roommates and such. Clearly, I’ve already begun my mind trips back in time.