In doing research for work, I went back and looked at the voting history for Survivor: Outback, and found that both Keith (who eventually made the final four) and Colby (who lost to Tina for the million) each survived getting ousted earlier by tiebreakers. In Tribal Councils (Keith's was even before the merge), they tied with another survivor with the same number of votes, but stayed on the program because of the tiebreaker of having fewer previous votes cast against them than the person they were tied with. Thought that was interesting.

But I guess you didn't.

I can't stop sliding down to a severe slouch in my chair. I hate that, and it can't be good for me.

So I'm most likely not going to my reunion in June. My five-year college reunion. (Yikes!) It doesn't seem like five years. Come May Whatever-Day-David-Wells-Pitched-His-Perfect-Game, it will be five years since I got that diploma and got drunk. (Ah, the 17th it was.) There are several reasons. Shall we look at them?

� I still see all my best friends. Bryan lives in Boston, Mia in New York, Matt in D.C., Brad in Virginia. I still talk and chat occassionally with Jamie, Mike and Barb, Courtenay and CJ, and several others. And Heather wasn't in my graduating class, so even if I we didn't read each other's diaries regularly, chat several times a week, and talk on the phone every now and then, she wouldn't be there anyway.

� I have too many other things to use my vacation days for. I was in Florida in February, I'm going to Cape Cod for a four-day Memorial Day weekend, Casey and I want to take another vacation, and I'd like to take a week for Matt's wedding in Seattle.

� People keep getting married. When I first graduated, there were several weddings a year for the first two years (1999 and 2000), but few the past two (though I skipped one last year). I'm taking a few days here and there for weddings, including Jamie's which is the weekend after reunion, so she won't be there anyway. (At the reunion, not the wedding.) And the reunion is the weekend between Cape Cod and her wedding, so that's a bit much. It might be too much to ask for, though I wouldn't mind four consecutive four-day work weeks.

� Stupid reunion is a four-day affair. Granted, no one has to go for all four days, but they do plan activities from Thursday-Sunday because so many Notre Dame graduates are bigwig moneymakers who can take all the time off they want.

There are, however, a couple reasons I'd want to go.

��I really do like South Bend in the summer. The town is more relaxed, quieter. Campus is usually dead in comparison, but I'd think the reunion crowd would be a fun, managable mix of older and younger alumni, not to mention more than a few hundred people but less than the 8,000 undergrad enrollment. Not that the campus ever really feels crowded or small, but it takes on a different feel when there aren't as many people there.

� Open bar. That's what I'm told. For a $200 plane ticket and $50 to spend two nights in a dorm, I could drink for free. All weekend.

� Regis. As some of you may have heard, Mr. Philbin graduated from Our Lady's University in 1953. Since reunions are every five years, he's on the same cycle I am. And this being 2003, it is Regis's 50th. It'd be cool to saunter on up to the open bar and ask for another drink, then have the older gent next to you turn and start talking to you only to find out it's Reege. But I take it the 50th is a big reunion, so they'll have all kinds of special activities going on and he might be busy. But I could suggest to him a story idea that involves him I'd like to explore and maybe get him to tell me that he knows for real that Mark Consuelos is actually gay.

� There's no one I need to avoid. I really have no regrets about college or the friends and former friends I made. I have more of a chance of an akward encounter at Disneyland than I do at a Notre Dame reunion. However, I just read in the alumni magazine's class notes section that one former hookup is not only married now, but she's got a kid. HA! Sucker! Um, no, I mean, Good for her. I kinda just let that one slip away after semester break one year, which wasn't nice. But it's not like I didn't return her calls or anything, so I wasn't avoiding her. We just didn't really hang out anymore after the holidays.