Tom & Alissa

I finally changed my name (to Wilkinson) yesterday at the Brooklyn Social Security Card office. I don’t have a card yet, but I guess it’s finally done. Our anniversary is in a week, so I guess it was about time. :)

I was confronted with an interesting question when I filled out the forms, though - apparently I could have changed my whole name if I wanted, or at least my middle name, and I could have retained my maiden name as my middle name. I remember a discussion about this last year. I did at one point consider retaining my maiden name as a sort of respectful remembrance of my Dad, but then I realized that he picked out my middle name and it’s the name he chose for me. On top of it, my maiden name is Clark, and that’s a man’s name. So I just scrapped the “Clark” altogether. I have a brother to pass it on.

I am getting on a train tonight after work to Albany. I just printed up a host of directions for Albany to Messiah, Messiah to our friends’ house, from there to the Morristown NJ Transit station, and from there to home for Mom. I’ll go straight to work on Friday and won’t be home until Friday night. I also just looked up Messiah’s schedule for the move-in day; very friendly. I can’t remember RPI’s schedule (which, because I never lived on campus, made sense, until I remembered that I was a Student Orientation Advisor my last summer - oh well), but it will be kind of fun to live through it again from a non-student, non-parent perspective. Parents are very funny when they’re moving their children into the dorm for the first time. That I remember well.

All this stuff with my brother starting college is making me all reminiscent for the ‘Tute - that, and some virtual run-ins with old college friends (hurrah for Facebook). On the bright side, it’s pushing me to work harder on my grad school apps. It’s true, I’m a classroom junkie. My career aspirations grow ever more understandable.