Balancing College and Family

Since I didn't have my own car, I didn't head home very frequently, only for major holidays.  It is pretty much a miracle that I didn't hear much from my parents once they left.  My dad must have done something, because my mom is not the type of person to just let-go like that.  I talked to them about once a month while I was at school, on the dorm room phone, since I didn't have a cell phone.  That meant that occasionally my roommates were unfortunate enough to pick up those calls, which usually went something like this: "Dude, your mom called for you this afternoon...and she talked for an hour."  She had met all my roommates when I moved in, and I guess didn't hesitate to ask them how things were going.  Alex on the other hand, my roommate from Russia, got a call from his parents at 7pm every day, to check on him.  He was obligated to answer it, under the threat of his father driving the hour to the campus to enforce that rule.  While his parents tried hard to control him, he still did whatever he wanted, and could be quite the wild one.  He had the tricked out car with the big speakers, and drove like a maniac.  He had not fully adjusted to our culture, which was fairly amusing at times, and while he spoke good English, certain phrases eluded him.

My first visit back was at Thanksgiving, where I went to a High School football game, and then hung out late with a few of my former school mates, most of whom had stayed in the area after graduation.  They had taken up a routine of getting together to play computer games all night long.  LAN parties were just becoming popular at that point, but I was not into first person shooter games, for a variety of reasons.  I preferred real-time strategy games that required some thinking, and didn't like the perspective many FPS games had on violence and gore.  But I realized what everyone I knew from college was probably doing right then, namely drinking alcohol and getting into trouble, so LAN parties seemed like a positive alternative that I could support.

I also returned to my fencing class while I was in the area, and took 2^nd place in their Thanksgiving Tournament.  Not bad for no practice for three months.  That was the last fencing class I attended until last week, when after nearly ten years to the day, I connected up with the same group again.  It clearly will take a while to return to the same level of skill that I had before.  And if I finally ordered the equipment for it, since I could never afford any of it back in high school.

By Christmas break, even my parents who were usually opposed to both technological entertainment and staying up late, agreed to host a LAN party at our house over New Years Eve.  I figure they were more concerned about my brother getting into trouble than me, and that gave them a chance to keep an eye on what was going on.  It became an annual tradition for a few years, until it went out of style.  Back at school I actually got my roommates into Age of Empires, which is about the only thing we actually did together.  I even got a few people from other dorms involved, with a little creative use of the schools network, which I was becoming more familiar with based on my job.

My Christmas break was over a month long since my school was on the semester system.  So in mid-January my Dad and I connected up with my uncle in Colorado for a couple days of great skiing.  My brother started joining us on those trips once he entered college and they have become a biennial tradition for our family that continues to this day.