Blast from 2004

I've been thinking a bit about high school lately. This nostalgia, if you can call it that, was brought on in part by a friend talking about her 20th reunion (and the fact that she wasn't attending) as well as going through files on my old laptop as part of an archival project to save my old photos and college papers before it no longer turns on. I think, all things considered, my memories from high school are fairly positive. Granted, I didn't know or particularly like but a small percentage of my graduating class, but I did have some close friends (a handful of which I'm still in touch with) and some fine memories. At any rate, this time warp curiosity led me to check out my old xanga (the now-mostly-defunct blog/tumblr/wordpress platform of the new millennium). Unlike my livejournal from college days, I'd never been ashamed enough of my own angst to take it down. Looking back over it, I see why. There is actually remarkably little angst. In fact, in some ways I seem like a more sunny and optimistic person than I am now. (Then again, reading this blog ten years down the line, I likely won't remember any of the less rosy things of the time either.)

For no reason then, other than because I find my younger self refreshing and kinda cute, I'm publishing a few of my favorite gems from an 18-year-old wordsmith in her senior year of high school in suburban Texas.

The xanga's author at graduation. I had the eyebrows of ten graduates.

On optimisim: Yearbook distribution day and the first swim of the season.  Minus one dead possum and this was an excellent day.

On failing to correlate obvious cause and effect: Today was day 2 of being inexplicably happy.  Nothing's any different but I'm suddenly erily content.  Crazy world.

On a completely unrelated event, I saw The Mikado.

On bat watching: Tonight I went to my mother's friend's house for dinner and bat watching.  Apparently the overpass crossing the beltway in walking distance from her house has been home to a colony of bats for the past 15 years.  Anyway after dinner we sat out under the light of a full moon for some serious bat veiwing.  Imagine if you will a trio of middleaged people and one teenager dressed casually for dinner and carrying wine glasses, tramping merrily through the broken glass and weeds along the beltway.  We must have seemed an odd processional to highway motorists.  While waiting for the natural phenomenon of bat flight we listened to the high pitched symphony of thousands of chirping bats and watched the drama of the beltway unfold.  Some truck lost its cargo of some long bits of metal and huge wooden blocks that took up an entire lane about 100 yards from where we stood.  It was amusing to watch the cars swerve wildly around it until eventually enough of them ran into it head on (causing a delightful crunching and scratching noise) that the wood was ground to splinters.  And in less then 5 minutes a cop was there to stop traffic and remove the remaining debris.  I was impressed by the response time and wondered who had called it in so quickly.  The bats were quite impressive.

On leaving the nest: I woke up and found a baby bird sitting on the table on my porch.  I couldn't figure out how it got there because it didn't look big enough to fly and the table was a good distance from its nest.  Since it was a beautiful day and since I had nothing better to do, I spent the morning monitoring the baby bird.  It left the table and moved to the bushes beside my pool.  Its mother tried to defend it (from my innocent observations) by squawking.  Lucky for me cardinals are relatively wussy birds and she never once tried to dive bomb me or poke my eyes out.  I decided it was my goal to defend this poor creature as I'd begun to really identify with the bird since I too will soon be displaced from my nest.  Anyway two cat attacks and a tumble into my pool later the bird was fairly well traumatized.  We kept my cat inside that night but the next morning we would let him out.  And then it would be only a matter of time.  But while I slept on, Michelle came to my house to defend the little guy.  My mother said she went out a little before 6 and saw Michelle crawling under my trampoline with a flashlight and a basket of twigs.  I really wish I could have seen that.

(This was from my last post before leaving for college.)

On extracurriculars: Earlier I had a "retreat" for the Multicultural Developement Committee.  Turns out a retreat is just an exotic way of saying a 5 hour meeting in which you're stuck in the library seminar room with people you don't know.
(This one is a cheat because it's actually from my first semester of college)


I guess the real point of this is that it served as a reminder to me of why I continue to update this blog. It is nice to have a record of things that isn't stuck in a word document on a dying computer.