In which our hero sees an old friend for the first time since June 1996

While this visit has been productive academically and the inn has been cool, the highlight of this trip very clearly lies elsewhere.

A perhaps little-known fact among this crowd is that I was once not the only applied math major in Lloyd from the class of 1998. (Note: I am not counting Peter Wang, who went from math to applied math and back to math and graduated in 1998, because he was originally part of the class of 1997.) If Vito, Ben, and company are reading this, they'll probably already know who I am talking about.

Anyway, after sophomore year, this particular applied math major (this is the infamous Emily, by the way) left Tech. She was going to come back second quarter of junior year (and was supposed to suffer through ME 115 with me) but ended up not coming back and instead went to University of Utah to take a year's worth of classes and graduate as an economics major in 1998. During first quarter that year, many of us (typically class of 1998 people) would tell the frosh about a really cool Lloydie who they hadn't met yet but who would soon be coming back, and I believe her name came up several times until we graduated (so perhaps small parts of this ring a bell to the class of 01 people). Her name also occasionally came up on campus when relevant alums visited because one of the Lloydies from the class of 03 frosh looked a bit liked her (but had a completely different personality).

Anyway, Emily fell off the face of the earth, and over the years there have been several "Whatever happened to..." sorts of comments that usually included something about "Now there's someone who fell off the face of the earth." I was able to get her e-mail address in 2003 (through a chain of 4 people that I thought had been 3). Wes (or Brother Raphael Mary, as he is now known) was giving me some info about the Lloyd Christmas tree for the Legends book and I made one of the comments mentioned in this paragraph. His response included her e-mail address (which was unexpected), so that's how I got in touch with her again.

Anyway, I knew she had just started grad school in math at WPI, and (in a fit of boredom) I was googling myself a few days ago and noted that WPI's math department lists Amherst math talks (including mine). On Sunday, I suddenly remembered Emily was at WPI and was able to arrange something at the last minute. She drove down an hour a half (each way), saw most of the talk, and we hung out for an hour and change after the talk. It was a fun time. As a former Queen of Valhalla, she wasn't overly happy with table takeover night or the Words of Loki, but that's forgivable. Her husband works for Mathworks (and, in particular, does stuff for Simulink on Matlab), so I know where to send my complaints now (when I don't e-mail Cleve Moler directly, that is).

Anyway, not that this post actually means anything to anyone else, but for me it's a very, very cool thing to see a friend for the first time in that long (and is somebody who essentially dropped off of everybody's radar).