8 posts tagged “memory lane”

If you're a fan of Reno911 or Kids In The Hall or just good sketch comedy, MARK YOUR CALENDARS: July 14, 2009!  Just in time to work up a good hangover for the sixth Harry Potter movie coming out the next day.  ;)
I used to watch this show growing up with two of my BFFs.  We spent many a day rehashing the amusement, so this is exciting. :)

Full post with info over here: http://adviceandfables.wordpress.com/2009/04/23/the-state-on-dvd/

Some folks have asked, and I wanted to clarify.  For anybody that was keeping score:  May 28, 2008 will be our seven-year anniversary.  We’ve been sort of off and on for a decade now, so anybody that says we haven’t put in our time is crazy.  Official engagement date: March 18th, 2008.  Aw snap!  So yeah, we leveled IRL.  It was a pretty casual mutual decision of sorts, but I am proud to say that I’ve learned to laugh and cry at the same time.  :))

I’m happy, Jason’s happy, Brak’s happy.  No date set yet or anything like that, our main goal right now is to purchase a home, which will take anywhere from 12 to 36 months.  [Sweet Hebus let's hope for sooner rather than later.]  Then after that we can start planning for some sort of celebratory function.  Beach life is fun for a little bit, but five years will definitely wear on your patience - especially when you live in Spring Break Central.  Ugh, give me a gated community on the hills of LJ anyday.  It’s just right there, COME ON.

In the meantime: let the mimosa-drinkin’ begin!  :)

"Which swear word are you?  Fu$k? Bitch? Something else? Find out instantly with this 8 question quiz!"

Hmm, after careful thought and answering eight random questions that have nothing to do with anything, I'm don't send me any more fucking application requests!  Wow!  Who would've thought?!?

In other news:  this weekend has been AWESOME so far.  ::ding ding ding:: winner winner winner!!!

Larger/more detailed images to follow, for now here are some drunken shots of me, J, and a ma0wma0w that's happy to see us again. :)  For my birthday J got a surprise 3-day/2-night package at the Glorietta Bay Inn and it was spiffy.  He got a mansion suite which was probably bigger than our whole apartment.  There was some hot tub action and champagne drinking.  Lots of champagne drinking, at least for me anyway.  Just got home and am feelin' good.  Woo!

Last night was a good night. Mostly.  Except that J drank roughly 15 beers and yakked up 20, starting around quarter to midnight.  

That was him while he was still able to stand.  
The rest of the photos are over here.

We had a great time and about 35 people showed up, it was a nice casual Black&White party, with a LOT of drunken folks.  I stopped around my third cup of wine and was much happier for it, although today I'm feeling really hungover.  Not as hungover as J... who spent a good two hours bunched up on the steps outside, doing the Hollywood diet.  Ergh.  As soon as I finish my cup of tea it will be naptime.

Hope everyone had a good NYE and here's to a great '08.  Aww, it even rhymes. :)

Fun in La Jolla, and now I'm heading out front to watch J surf and maybe go play in the water myself.

Got some really nice shots this morning, more to come.

And to make it pretty...

How old were you when you had your very first boyfriend/girlfriend? Do you still know them now? 
Submitted by KIM. 

A short version of my answer is "somewhere around 13" and "yes".  Now I get to make a longer, snarkier dissertation because it's fun.  This is why I love Vox, you guys always walk me down Memory Lane so easily.

I think my first boyfriend was Mike, in nursery school.  That didn't really count though, it was just something our families thought was cute because we were always around each other.  I think we called each other "boyfriend" and "girlfriend" but I can't quite recall.

Thinking back over a decade blurs the details a bit (you never think that will happen, but it does), so technically my first boyfriend was Gary.  We still talk a little via MySpace, he added me out of the blue one day..  He was my first kiss as well.  I believe this was when I was in sixth grade or so, it started at a friend's 13th birthday party.  We went to the same junior high.  He decided to unceremoniously dump me one day in junior high via a note (on freaking yellow paper, *gasp*, how tragic) that said, simply, "IT'S OVER".  I remember he and his friends ran away laughing after they saw me read it.  After a day or two I got over it but I have a vague recollection of never wanting to go anywhere near his house. 

Anyway, he's married now to some girl he started dating a few years later.  This is a shot of his little family.  The 'stache, it adds that certain... flair, yes? 

Then I moved on to dating this boy, Dennis, who lived down the street.  He was somebody's cousin and lived very close to some of my chick friends that I rode bikes with.  I don't remember why we broke up but I do remember being very sad.  Eventually we became friends again and thanks to MySpace we still say hello now and again.

Then Mike and I started dating again.  This was during eighth grade, when it was very important to have a steady relationship.  Eighth grade relationships that lasted more than a month were considered Very Serious, and I believe ours lasted about six months.  Things were not bad, we got to hold hands during field trips and we had each other as dates to the school dances.  I think Mike could be classified as being my first "REAL" boyfriend, due to the then-seriousness and off/on variations of the whole thing.

For whatever reason we decided it was not going to work.  I remember wanting to break up with him but wanting to wait until after going to Kennywood (a local amusement park) so that we would both have someone to hang out with there.  The annual Kennywood trip was a big deal during those days, it was a School Field Trip For Fun! and we all started getting antsy about it at least a month before.  Silly me.  He then dumped me on the morning of our departure.  Not only that, he dumped me for Laura.

Laura is a fantastic girl who I've been friends with for a very long time.  Since elementary school at least.  She is now a lesbian - a point that doesn't make her less fantastic, it just makes the situation funny.  Oh yeah, she's also hot... funny how that works out!  Anyway, I remember going up to them at the cafeteria table and saying to Laura, "Fine, you just saved me a lot of trouble," and stomping away in a huff.  Oh DramaLlama, how you've always been there for us.

His brother Rob filled me in on some weirdness after that.  Laura & Mike broke up shortly after that, and apparently Mike went off the deep end and just started being moody and breaking things randomly.  Rob's guess was that Mike knew he messed up with me, wanted to pick up a new girlfriend right away and went with the first girl available.  Then he realized we were not getting back together and went emo, or whatever we called it then.  Crazy, probably - all I know is that his family got all sorts of worried about him and decided to make me into a megabitch.  Uh, he was the one who broke up with me, but hey, whatever.

Rob & I had also known each other since preschool days, and I remember always being oddly attracted to him.  We got to make out at least once, which was fun while it lasted.  One day we were hanging out in his backyard, near prom-time, and he went in the house for something.  His dad came outside and said to me that he didn't want me getting involved with Rob, and that it would be better for everybody if I just stayed away from them.  Confused, I remember thinking that maybe their whole family was crazy, and he went on to say that he wanted me to stay away from Rob, "after what I did to his other son". 

DRAMA!! LLAMA!!!

Call out the Springer security guys, that was madness.  Anyway, I tried to be polite but failed, said screw this, went on to hang out with Rob every so often.  We never officially dated or slept together, but we were always pretty good friends.  I also never really talked to Mike again despite being in several classes and Band together. 

Fast forward to the present... Rob & Mike are now both married with children: Rob to Gloria, who he'd been dating at least five years, and Mike to Leann, a girl who used to go ice skating with Toni & me.  That last coupling was entirely unexpected, however I continue to keep in touch with both Leann and Rob, and probably will do so for many years to come.  Leann just had her first child, pictures of which are yet to be seen.  Rob's baby is just over a year old.

So that's the story of "My First Real Boyfriend", although I always wanted it to be one of my two major crushes, a boy at my church and a boy at my school.  Neither relationship ever came to fruition, although Boy At Church was nice enough to hang out with me much more often than Boy At School.  The former is recently married and the latter has pretty much disappeared off the face of the Earth, as so often happens with mega-crushes.  Unfortunately I haven't spoken to either of them in over five years, so I have no updates or photos.  Boy At Church is still friends with a girl I do keep in touch with, so she or my mom see him occasionally and fill me in, but that's about it.

To the best of my knowledge I'm friends with all my exes ...that count.  Two of them are total bastards and can stay in hiding, as they have been for more than a decade.  I'm sure that wherever they are, they're being less than classy, as always.

Who is the very first friend you ever had?  Are you still in touch?

To my best recollection, Leslie Douglas was the very first friend I ever had.  She introduced me to Amika & Angela, and the three of us hung out for a good portion of my childhood.  Suffice it to say*, she and I lost touch roughly a decade ago, however Amika and I still speak (via the Internet) weekly, if not more than that. 

Angela (who kept going MIA) has been found, and is married, living in Seattle.  Angela is tough to not only keep in touch with but to stay in touch with, so the two of us have sort of given up on her.  She knows how to reach us and we're not turning her away, but it's too great of an effort to keep running after someone like that.  It sounds terrible but it's just that she has moved on, and while we know that she still thinks of us, she doesn't exactly write too often.

Leslie, last I heard, was living with some guy back in the town we all grew up in.  She changed (or maybe we did), and we never really kept in touch after tenth grade or so.  Her cousin I still talk to somewhat regularly, if only to say hi.  We did the church thing for a long time, and yes, I still talk to all my church peeps (mostly). :)

Thanks, MySpace, for helping to keep everyone in touch and for making reunions obsolete.

*one of my favorite phrases.

I want you to think back... *way* back.  Remember, let's say, eighth grade dances?  Prom?  Graduation?  Chorus and band concerts?  College graduation, random parties?  Anything from five years or further back?

Well, you all know that somebody was there, documenting it, probably with a huge camera... getting all your hairstyles and crazy outfits and stupid poses on film.  Laughing as you tried to duck from the camera, because nobody had The Internet then, but you pretended to be camera-shy when you  know you really just wanted a goofy photo.  Maybe you caught a sneak shot of that girl or boy you had a crush on, or maybe they posed with you and didn't know you'd save the photo for the rest of your life.

Maybe as the years went on the memories faded, all you could remember were good feelings (or bad), but the faces had blurred too much.  Now in the digital world things are so much easier to duplicate, to share, to look back and laugh at.  Nobody really thought much of being in front of or behind the camera, and we would write all over our photos, documenting the place and time for reference.

I'd like to present a little glimpse back to those days, the days before Photoshop and MySpace and cell phones that make tiny movies.  Did I mention this is pre-Photoshop?  Yeah.  Maybe this is why some cultures are afraid the lens will steal a piece of their soul. 

----

I don't have a scanner, only a digital camera.  Some of these weren't great quality to begin with, but taking a good snapshot of a snapshot can be very tough.  I tried to salvage what I could.

I haven't always been a cat person; MarSing still lives with my family back in PA.  She was a tiny little rockstar Shih Tzu, she's maybe 14 now.  We got her when I was in sixth grade.

One day I decided to take a nap with her on the kitchen floor.  Barrettes and a shirt that changed color in the sun, oh lord.

A lot of you don't know about Cedar Point, but it's my second favorite amusement park ever, and holds a lot of sentimentality to me.  The Raptor was the first roller coaster I ever went on, a good way to get rid of my crippling fear of coastes.  That ride was PIMP.  So here I am on a weekend band trip to Cedar Point, buzzed off of two airplane bottles of rum.  It's come full circle because it's a photo... of me, holding a photo... of me.  In a handicapped parking space.

Here's where people are going to start with the "I can't believe you still have that... and you put it online!"

Clockwise from left is Maria, Brandi, Telise way in the back, Lindsay, me (still buzzed), and Toni.  It was SO HOT out.

Clockwise from left here is Corinn, someone I don't remember, Brandi, Daren, possibly Scooter, Toni, me, and Genevieve in the front.

Here we've got Sarah on the left, Toni, Brandi, Jennifer, and Tiffani.  Somewhere around 98, I think.

Lindsay and her ex Josh dancing at our cast party for Oliver. YES WE WERE ALL IN IT EVEN ME OKAY.

Webb and Alda at their (senior?) prom.

Dante at the same prom...heh, nice hair.  He cleans up aiight, and Kim (class of 99) is in the background.  I had braids too for like... a minute.

Daren (class of 99) and Toni (class of 00)

Daren and her friend

Shalynn (class of 99)... and yeah, I made Jason name his Blood Elf Shaelynn. Now you know.

I totally said I would dig these up and was glad to see they were still in the safety of plastic.  If I can find my old colorguard photos they'll be up too, so don't worry.

first one is Daren/Toni in the top row and me/Rikki on the bottom.  Rikki played flute, Toni and Daren played clarinet with me in regular band but Daren stayed on the Quipette (cheerleading) squad for marching band.  

Senior band shot, hah!  Clockwise from bottom left, me, Brian, Maria, Telise (way in back again), Brandi, Cyndi, Anna, Genevieve (should have been in front), Shalynn, Chimdi (who's MIA), and Mike.  The girls in the sparklies are all colorguard except Maria who was a majorette.  Anna played flute, Chimdi and Brian on sax, and the other two played trumpet.

Myself and Rob (Mike's brother) at District band.

Andre and Josh on drums (in back), Jesse/Shalynn/Mike/Autumn or Heather (can't remember) on trumpet.  Jesse and Brian on sax, and Raymond/Toni on clarinet.  We totally all had those same expressions all four years of HS.

The faces they're making had me all kinds of LOL here.  Andre & Josh in back, Maria/Jesse/Brian on sax, Ray/Toni/me/Lisa on clarinet (YES I STILL ROCKED THE SUNGLASSES), and Missy over on flute.

Rob & Ray before one of our band/chorus concerts, with their infamous grins.

Brandi & Amy at the same concert.

Brandi, me, Corinn... and Hamm.

And now for the college photos, just a few.  I love these photos so much. :)

This was at our '01 graduation, a month before I moved here.  DaveCasey, me, Rich, MacIntyre and his kid.

Very oldschool, at the non-Oakdale building downtown.  From left, Eugene, John Alexander, Rich, Brad, DaveCasey, Michelle, Derek (i think), and Winters

Myself with Zimmie... yeah, he's about 7 feet tall.

Classic Rich.

One day Ward and I went to the movies, probably with Hobbit & Crew.  They had a photo booth with the cool slides, and this was the result.  He rocks, this photo always makes me laugh.

My favorite PTI photo of all time, taken outside The Only Nearby Coffee Shop (aka Our Common Grounds) I used to hang out at *all* the time, before it became a 21+ "CyberBar".  Rich, me and Winters.  

And just in case you thought I was gonna rock it and not make fun of myself, here you go.  If you can't laugh at yourself then you can't laugh at anyone else.  So... a transition!
Once upon a time.  I was only a couple months here, and can no longer do that thing with my right eyebrow.  Nice shaved head.

I might have been two here, rockin' the flower tossing at some family member's wedding.  My cousin was the ring bearer and we are ultimately very creepy looking.

Shut up, if you're a girl my age and your mother doesn't have at least one photo like this of you then I will be surprised.  Tap, jazz AND ballet... for like four years.

Yes, it's a church photo.  Judging from the hair, this was perhaps eighth grade, right before My Transition to Makeup, Contacts, and No Bangs.  My mom totally did my hair every day until probably the beginning of summer going into ninth grade.  Ahhh.

Class of 1999, and it's finally over.  Hence the happy grin.  I wonder where my tassle is?

Progressing, this was shortly after graduation when I really was at Clarion for the weekend.  That's Craig, 1 of the 2 cool people in the old version of Everclear.  Greg was also cool.  I'm happy with this photo even though the flash was crazy.

And finally we've got me a little more like you know me today.  This was the very humid summer of '01, during my PTI graduation week.  Despite having spent the day crying, this is probably my favorite photo of Jason & me.  It was his last day of visiting, and the next time I would see him would be a month later, after moving to SD.  I was about a buck ten here.

I hope you guys enjoyed it as much as I did.  A few of the people in those photos are MIA... anybody know what's up?