I left my laptop power supply at school yesterday, so I couldn’t do much work since my laptop’s battery no longer holds charge. This afternoon, I drive to school to pick up the power supply and remembered why I left it yesterday. I left it because it no longer worked. Thus began a transient state of panic as I realize that my proposal presentation only exists on my laptop, and I now have no way of retrieving it, and I need my laptop to do my presentation on Tuesday. Of all the times that the power supply would break down, why now? All it had to do was to hold out for two more days.

In the mail today, I got the annual report published by the scholarship I had at UVA, telling about what the current Scholars are up to, and what all the alumni are up to. Glancing through all the classes, there were two “In Memoriam” in total, both in the 2000s (the program started in the early 80s). One was for Dave; the other was for a guy whom I knew of, but I was never friends (or even acquaintances) with personally. Ironically, I knew of him through Mary, the girl who passed on word to me about Dave’s death this summer.  I remember Mary saying that Jon was one of her best friends at UVA, right from the start when they’d knock on their adjoining dorm walls in Webb their first year. I tried to google some information on how he died, but everything I found simply said that he died in his home on February 6.

This made me wonder how Mary is doing. I haven’t really seen her since she graduated in 2001, nor have I talked to her much, yet she was such a defining person for me my first semester at college. I want to reach out to her, just to say hi, ask how she’s doing, how she’s holding up. To lose two dear friends in one year must be so tough, but I don’t know how to approach her. It’s been so long, and I don’t even know what I would say.