[NOTE: My apologies in advance for typos, but it's 2:12 in the morning so I think I have an excuse.]

I'm afraid that I'm known more here now for being away for long periods of time, only to drop in every now and then with a long blog entry either detailing my life or sharing some offbeat observation. This is one of the former, although it has more to do with the events leading up to the things that have concluded in this month.

The Honor Society

For years, I've been an honor society member. I joined at age fifteen as one of two inductees—the other one, obsessed with soccer, moved to Florida soon after his induction. That ceremony doubled as the graduation of most of the group, leaving myself along with the other underclassmen to keep it going.

Between overbearing mothers who thought they had to run the meetings and an increasingly flighty groups of members who saw the society as the least important thing on their social calendar, the organization slipped and slipped. I was the vice president and stayed there until late 2013, when the then-president got sick, then left for a mission trip out of the country as soon as she got better. I became the acting president, and soon thereafter, the former president's overbearing mother quit her official role as the chapter sponsor.

Somehow I managed to have high hopes for the group, but existing membership dried up and there were not enough new members to replenish it. All of this culminated in our graduation ceremony earlier this month, where one member showed up, did her part in the proceedings, and left within about 120 seconds.

The group was so small that it wouldn't be bad, except for the fact that I had to do everyone's jobs for them. I tried delegating at the beginning of my presidency but no one did anything on time or responded to e-mails. They were an enjoyable group to hang out and joke around with, but one wouldn't necessarily think them honor society members judging strictly by their online conduct.

Baseball

This year was my last opportunity to play organized baseball, something I've played and loved since I was about ten. Of the 42 games scheduled, we only played 27 games, winning 21 of them with an average score of 10-4. Everyone broke offensive records but, due to constant inclement weather, we never were able to achieve a truly consistent defense. Of our six losses, four were one-run games and two were two-run games, two went to extra innings, and all of them were against top-notch opponents who go year-round and have their own fields. (There were some other questions of integrity when one notoriously competitive coach had his cousin as the home plate umpire for a doubleheader against us.)

The season finished with our awards night dinner, something that's a bit of an annual tradition: players, coaches, and fans are all roasted. This was my second year with an official hand in the festivities and I created some videos for the occasion. Despite the fact that rendering the files took a long time (leaving my computer incapable of handling a second CPU-heavy operation alongside the render), the splendid reaction to the finished films made the effort well worth it.

The season wasn't without its ups and downs. We beat our archrivals—only so because they claim to be the "elite" and "only" team in the area when we've had a better record than they have for four consecutive years—in a tournament on short-notice without most of our all-Southeast-award-winning infield. The coach who backed out of the tournament had previously been with us, but he quit after three games, joined the best team in the state only to have his entire team quit to try out for us, then formed his own team which hasn't won a game in three years.

Family

My grandmother, who had a series of back surgeries late last year, continues to recover well. She's lost a lot of weight and is moving around better than she has since I can remember. She's still got some nerve pain, but it's come-and-go and will be for another year, and it's not even close to what she was dealing with before all of this happened.

My dad began suffering from debilitating eye pain in early March, to the point where he'd spend all of his free time on the couch, moaning softly in the dark. Eye-pressure-relieving drops didn't do anything and we were worried about the potential of glaucoma or other serious eye conditions. As it turned out, he had something called a cluster headache, the most uncommon and most severe kind of headache.

The headache lasted for about a month and a half, with my dad reporting varying levels of pain on different days and at different times ... then, just like that, it went away. He still got it checked out by a specialist, who confirmed the previous diagnoses and did an MRI, which showed everything normal ... or as normal as anything can be when one is peering into the mind of Sumiki's Dad.

I've also been seeing my mom's side of the family more this year, from my baby cousins following me around at the Easter get-together to a trip to see my uncle's band perform at a park just a few weeks ago.

Music

This is the last year that I'll be working in earnest on pieces by other composers. I've been studying with the same piano teacher, a retired professor who now spends his eighth decade busying himself by gardening, cooking, and traveling the world. He's seen me every week of every semester since I was six years old, when one of his graduate students brought me into his office and I was identified as a prodigy for my transpositional and improvisatory abilities.

It's actually only been in recent years that I'd gotten the nerves to perform in recitals, partially because of a kind of stage fright I only get when playing the works of others, but also because I'd not picked out my repertoire. I began selecting my own pieces and bringing them in around the same time that I began composing—which, incidentally, is how I discovered that I was totally at ease playing my own pieces.

My piano teacher was skeptical at first but was totally sold on the idea of me as a composer when I brought to him a CD containing a selection of my own pieces. I dedicated a piece for piano and orchestra to him, which he and his wife apparently began to show to their other students, and finally I presented to him a 100-page bound booklet containing all of my solo piano pieces from late 2013 to early 2015, with the bulk of the pieces (all but four) from eight months in 2014.

I played in the final recital last Sunday, and I'd be lying if I said that it wasn't bittersweet. After it was over (I was the final performer), my teacher announced my intention to study composition beginning in the fall and told the younger students that if they wanted a model to follow in music, just to look to me. The moment was a little awkward, but it was mostly just cool.

The next Great American Road Trip

This doesn't fit with the overall theme of the entry, per se, but there have been a number of occurrences surrounding the to-do list for the next Great American Road Trip. While a fourth month-long installment is on the table for this year, the potential departure date hovers around June 5th.