My suite went out for dinner a few nights ago. It was a microsm of why I'm going to miss them so much.

We drove to Oga's (a local Japanese place), sat down, and waited. Chandra and I had a conversation about how to redesign the umbrella-wrapper in the corner (it places your umbrella in a plastic bag so it won't drip) so that it would be cheaper to manufacture. "You don't actually need springs there, so what quantities would it take before it's cheaper to injection mold it rather than folding the sheet metal?" "Actually, I would extrude it..."

Got our seats. Sat down, ordered, waited. Conversation ranged from robotics to buying houses to fathers to how the glazing process worked for the tiny ceramic dishes that were supposed to hold soy sauce. (Kristen explained the pottery production process in 60 seconds.)

Got our food. Ate, ordered dessert, waited, got dessert, ate. Discussed the mass-manufacturing techniques that could have made the glass bowl that ice cream came, in while admiring its design (flowers). On the way to the car, Chandra mentioned that she wanted to make drunken watermelon (soak watermelon in liquor, in this case sake, so that it absorbs the alcohol - the classic way appears to be drilling a hole, sticking the neck of an open bottle into the watermelon, and waiting) and we had an argument about osmosis, with me advocating sticking two different liquors in the watermelon, one in each end, so that we had a drink-type gradient, and Chandra holding firm on having separate sample containers with watermelon slices soaking in each type of drink to maintain control over the samples.

On the way back to Olin, Gallimore's car radio started playing "Bring Me To Life," which was a song we rehearsed for License Server (our band) once upon a time. We'll probably never play together again; life is taking us to too many corners of the earth (and our instruments are too big to haul on a whim). When we turned into the front drive of Olin, Eric stopped the car and Kristen hummed taps to mark one of our last entrances into campus.

VanWyk started taking down the large Japanese paintings from our lounge today. The walls are glaringly white, and the corner formerly known as "Pile Of Tools" shockingly empty. My shelves of books are being packed into blue tubs, and I now own 1 computer (this laptop) instead of 4, but I now have enough money to pay rent and food for the entire summer and buy a folding bike, so life is good. It's always good.

Graduation rehearsal in 45 minutes. I should pick up my gown.