I Wore This Shirt When I Was Ten

Riverview Gators, 1986-87

This is my elementary school t-shirt from the 1986-1987 school year. I was in fifth grade when I got it; in the photo above, I’m age 41 and wearing it again.

I remember I was so mad when Memaw bleached it and the collar and sleeve rings went from dark blue to brown. I also remember that it’s in such good shape because it didn’t fit me long afterward. (Puberty was not kind; I gained some 20 pounds over the course of my seventh grade year, and another 20 in eighth grade.)

A few days ago, I decided to revisit my box of old t-shirts that I’m saving for themed quilts (or just because). I discovered that I’m almost ready to order a Totoro-themed quilt or a rock-band-themed quilt, I’ve got a ways to go for Connor’s superhero-themed quilt… and I discovered that this shirt from 5th grade I’d been saving is a size large.

So I tried it on. And it fit.

Mind. Blown.

So, even when I’m feeling down for having recently regained ten pounds of the 80 pounds I’d lost, I still have this: I can wear a shirt I wore on a Gifted class field trip to Cape Canaveral when I was ten.

Spotify Premium: Like Scour in the 90s, But Legal

Who remembers Scour?

I have vivid memories of working at my college job, sitting at my desk in the office next to my co-worker, Jeff, and one of us getting a song stuck in our head. Off to Scour, to download and listen to something random, like the theme from the A-Team, or some esoteric 80s song, or some freedom rock (turn it up!).

Did I know it was shady? Sure. Did I care? Nope. It was available, and there wasn’t exactly another avenue for me to quench my immediate musical desires back in 1999, and it was before the days of packet-sniffers that would throttle bandwidth or flag me for peer-to-peer activity, so…

Fast forward 18 years to 2017.* When I get Billy Ocean stuck in my head, I pull up Spotify on my work laptop — I pay a subscription fee of about $10 a month for Premium — and search for “Caribbean Queen.” I get an entire compilation album of Billy Ocean’s greatest hits, and I listen to the sounds of elementary school for a good half hour. Unlike some 20 years ago, though, I don’t have to wait 15 minutes for a 3MB mp3 to download over the 10/100 BaseT ethernet connection.

And it’s completely legal.

*Side note: I still can’t get over being 40 years old and so vividly remembering multiple decades.

2016 Year In Review

For this year’s retrospective, I’m going to lead off with the most important things:

What Made Me Happy (top 11)

(As recorded every night before bed)

  1. Talking with Aaron
  2. Cooking / Baking
  3. Hugs (mostly from Connor and/or Aaron)
  4. Working out
  5. Writing / Blogging
  6. Eating sushi
  7. Yoga
  8. Gardening
  9. Playing with Connor
  10. Date night/afternoon
  11. Being outside

If I’d consolidated some more specific things, like “working out” and “kickboxing,” the list might look a little different, but not by much.

Other notable one-off things that made me happy:

  • Wearing a sheath dress and feeling good in it
  • Watching Connor eat sushi with his chopsticks and enjoy it
  • Driving everyone (my grandparents, my Mom, and my son) to the Air Force Museum
  • Connor being super sweet about my boo-boos from giving blood
  • Watching the rain with Connor
  • Setting up a WordPress plugin
  • Watching Aaron and Connor play Mario

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Thirteen Years

This evening, as I was wondering what I’d post on my blog, I got a notification that I’d been tagged in a Facebook photo by Aaron’s cousin Megan, whose wedding we attended back in October.

Extended Family

I immediately got up from the couch and went into the family room to retrieve our wedding album and snap a photo of the posed portrait with all the cousins. I posted it in a comment: “What a difference 13 years makes…”

But then I kept flipping through.

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Throwback Thursday: Meta Edition

I know that I’m kind of a dinosaur for still having a personal blog. It’s my thing, though, even if it doesn’t get read as much as it did, say, ten years ago.

I found myself paging through my archives today, and I discovered a few interesting things that happened in years past around the autumn equinox.

Fourteen years ago today was when my blog officially began! I’d updated my own personal site with tidbits here and there, but September 22, 2002 was the first “real” blog entry.

Around that time, I was taking the cab to my job in the Sky Bank Lockbox department, where I would typically work a 12-hour day on Monday, an 8-hour day or less on Tuesday, then clock about nine to ten hours a day for the rest of the week. I had just graduated college the December prior, and was really, really missing the old college vibe (especially since the cab drove me past campus every morning on the way to work).

The Black Swamp Crew, 2002

On September 7th, a couple of weeks before I started this blog, a bunch of us walked from the Schnuth abode to the Black Swamp Arts Festival in BG. That’s me at the bottom left, and Aaron is in the blue shirt behind me.

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