Gathering the class just in time for its 10th 15th 20th Reunion

Sunday, July 30, 2006

Jenny: Found

Alright, now we're rolling.

Through a contact email from Alex and Mindy I got in touch with Jenny and she's doing quite well.

She is living in Redding and enjoying it (except for the summer 112 degree heat). Jenny moved there a couple of years ago and has two children, an 11 year old boy and a 6 year old girl. She is teaching 6th grade at Redding Christian School and is loving it.

I reminded Jenny about how much I enjoyed hiding behind her big hair during classes back in the day (Mrs. Dan has many great pictures of gravity-defying Mississippi hair as well), and she replied:

Thanks for bringing up the "big hair days." It's actually something I'm trying to put behind me! My son doesn't believe me when I tell him that he may regret some of his fashion choices in the future.


Perhaps our class can teach her son a valuable object lesson or two about the future implications of bad fashion choices:

Friday, July 28, 2006

The Family

I forgot to put up a picture of me and my family. Included in the pictures are me, Mrs. Dan and Dan Jr.

I'm the one that looks a little spacey.


This was a while back, but I like it for the fact that I was stupid enough to wear weird facial hair at the wedding. Here's a tip to anyone not married yet: Shave BEFORE the wedding!

Styles come and go, bad facial hair decisions in wedding photos last forever.

Thursday, July 27, 2006

Alex and Mindy: Found

Whoo Hoo... Two more finds!

Alex and Mindy just found the site after trying to locate his sister on MySpace. Apparently they found it easy to navigate through MySpace's vast landscape of cascading text and whacked-out HTML - I must just be getting old. I was stoked to hear from them and I'm gonna try to get a current picture or two if possible.

Here is what I've learned:
  • They are living in southern, southern California (Imperial).
  • Alex actually works for the Department of Homeland Security.
  • Mindy is teaching Special Education (4th - 6th combo) in Imperial. She's found an area of teaching that she really enjoys. It may be challenging at times, but she says that no two days are ever the same.
  • They have two boys, who they say are big, lovable brutes. The oldest is 10 years old, 4' 8" and going into 5th grade and does well academically and the youngest is 7, 4' 4" and going into 2nd grade and also does well in school. He is social and very athletic.
They can be contacted at: aanegrete@yahoo.com or negrete113@hotmail.com . Drop them a line if you get a chance.

John Cusey: Found

Okay, finding John wasn't too hard. I had hoped to have enough patience to catch John searching for himself on Google, but I got impatient and jumped the gun.

I'll try to get up a mini-bio for John as soon as possible. I have, however, talked to him since then and he seems to be doing well. I'll put up his email soon too.

Here's a blurb from something he put in one of the comments:
I will quible about the paragraph about me later, but at this point I want to start by inviting anyone from our class to stay with my family if you are ever in the Washington DC area. We live 18 blocks East of the Capitol and have a basement apartment room and living room area that we would put at your disposal. We love showing people around this mostly beautiful city, and we never grow tired of visiting Abe in his memorial.

I hope everyone is doing well.

Tuesday, July 04, 2006

The First Find!

Aha, I found Nathan's MySpace page. Okay, he actually told me about it a month or two ago, and it took me forever to find it. (Seriously, try searching MySpace someday. It's a nightmare for those of us over-30 types. I consider myself to be pretty tech savvy and I was lost, lost, lost.) His profile is what gave me the idea to start trying to find everyone else.

Anyway. We have the first bit of info here. If he emails maybe I'll work out some sort of questionnaire so we can find out more about what he's been doing for the last 16 years. Until then, I've included a picture of him at his church and Nate with his family.

Update: Here's a brief blurb from Nate's Myspace Profile.
I'm a 34 year old, happily married father of two. My wife and children are so amazing. They are a constant reminder of how truly blessed I am. I am the Lead pastor at the greatest church, Church of the Harvest - Redding, CA. I enjoy reading, outdoors, and video games. I enjoy most types of music styles and I play a few instrumets (Jack of all trades ... ) Lately I've become a huge fan of UFC. And I'm not ashamed to admit that I'm a huge fan of American Idol! Soul Patrol!!

What I Know So Far

It's embarrassing how little I know about what's going on in everyone's life. However, for those who may know even less than me this hopefully will fill in some gaps.

Alex and Mindy - I think they're living in deep south California. My all-time best roommate (except Mrs. Dan, of course) Alex has been working with the Department of Immigration (great place to be right now) and I think that Mindy is teaching. They have at least two boys, the older of which is quite surely taller than me at this stage.

David - Considering his line of work, I don't know how much I can say online. However, from what I hear, he is doing quite well at what he does. I also hear that he is excelling at Motocross racing - which sounds far more fun than what I'm doing. Dave has several kids as well. Mrs. Dan says that they have amazing eyes, I just still can't believe that so many of us actually have kids.

Adam - After a long stint working in the hippie woods surrounding Willits CA., ex-patriot Adam returned home to Tuolumne and now is the lead forester over the entire county. I don't know his full title, but I know loggers and they all say that he is way, way up there. He is also married (to the fantastic Alicia) and has three kids. His son looks so much like him it's scary.

John - I never fully understand what John is up to, but it's apparently quite important. For years he worked in California politics and then migrated to Washington DC and became a major player in the Right to Life movement (you know, the kind of player that that tells senators what to do). Now he's working in a major role in the Department of Human Services - big office, lots of drama and what not. One of his current jobs is to help develop policies to keep teenagers from having sex... um, you know, good luck with that. He has a very talented writer wife and three scary-smart kids.

Nathan - Nate is currently a pastor of a church up in Redding. I've talked to him recently and things seem to be rolling along for him. His church reaches out into the poor areas of the Redding community and does a lot of amazing work. That's a hard road, but a good one, and he's the right man for it. He is also married (to someone who I think is his perfect match) with two great kids. I haven't seen them in years, but they were a lot of fun back when I saw them last.

Sean - I haven't seen Sean since his wedding, and I can't even remember when that was. However, Mrs Dan and I were blown away by his choice of wife and their shared focus towards where God was leading them. My sister is good friends with his sister Stacy, maybe I can find out more.

Dan - Quick wrap. I went to Cal Poly for engineering, but after working in the field for less than a year I was lured away into the nerdy world of Videogame Journalism. I helped start a lot of publications that are still around today including IGN.com, The Official Xbox Magazine and a whole lot more that you'd have to be pretty nerdy to know. It was quite a bit of fun and I got to travel to the four geek corners of the globe.

While in the Bay Area I met Mrs. Dan (actually her name is Dawn), she is way out of my league but somehow I conned her into marrying me. Dan Jr. (Riley, 4, girl) came along and we decided that Mississippi (Mrs. Dan's homeland) was the place we ought to be, so we packed up our bags and moved the Middle of Nowhere, MS 38655.

After working for a year writing videogame books, I signed up for Ole Miss Law School and the rest is finally history. I just graduated in May, I'm studying to pass the bar in late July and we're trying to choose where we want to work. So basically I'm exactly where I was in the summer of '90 - Square one: Just graduated and trying to figure out exactly what I am going to do when I grow up.

Monday, July 03, 2006

Short Shorts

I'll admit that I had a lot of fun over the years jeering John Stockton's NBA short shorts. But man, we came in right at the end of the curve of a very bad style of basketball outfittery

This is from our sophomore year and if I remember correctly, we didn't win many games at all. Maybe the other teams were so impressed by our daring sense of style and bulging thigh muscles that they felt they had to bring their "A" game.

Also, none of us could dunk.

Live on Google!

Whoo! This blog is finally searchable on Google Proper. Now it's able to catch any of you trying to surf for your own name. I'm a little disappointed that after a full day on Google no one has looked for themselves.

Perhaps I'm the only one who does this kind of stuff, but I'm pretty sure that others do too.

Here's my bet, though. I think that John Cusey will find this blog first. I know for a fact that he occasionally egosurfs.

As for now this is still a great, but so far unrewarding experiment.