On Getting Older

I ususally do a count-down before my birthday. When I was younger, it would start aout 2 months ahead of time. But once I turned 25, I lessened it to a month. After 30 it fell to one week. Now that I'm turning 32 in 12 days, I just don't even want to think about it.

The Big Thing that has got me all nostalgic today is that 16 years ago this weekend was my Sweet 16 birthday party. Holy shit, what a blast. Of course, I was still 15 at the time, but had to have my party that weekend so all my friends (both near and far) could attend.

We also got our very old, very loud, and very scary VCR (that i thought we left behind in Boston) hooked up in the bedroom, so I've been watching old VHS tapes I made over the past 17 years. some make me laugh, most of them make me cringe, and all of them make me wish I were that young again... just for a day. Although I don't know what I was thinking with this outfit:



Did you notice the song playing in the background? Yeah...WTF?

Besides my 16th birthday party, I also have my 22nd birthday party caught on tape. That one is out of control and not fit for broadcasting on the internets. It was the last time that I had a kick-ass birthday party where I was surrounded by a crapload of my closest friends. I miss those days, for sure. I wish I could time travel back to 1997 and tell myself things that I know now. You know, like which men to avoid so they don't ruin 5 years of my life. And I'd like to party with my friends again. That would be awesome.

I also found a tape of my Advanced Speech class where I gave a speech on the recurring themes and characters in Quentin Tarantino films. I was a hard-core Tarantino fan, for sure. That was totally funny to watch. But what was even more funny was the fact that during the four taped speeches, I'm wearing the same outfit, even though they were taped over the course of a semester! HA! I've never been one for fashion, that's for sure.

I don't want to be 32. My life hasn't turned out the way I wanted it to. I'm trying to work on reversing the damage I've done, but I'm not sure if it's possible. And it's true, I dread my birthday now. I hate my 30s. Here's hoping 40s really IS the new 20s.

Total Nostalgia Sunday

Recently my love/hate for Myspace has changed. If you remember correctly, I once wrote about how I hated the Myspace and pretty much everyone on it. Well, I have a new outlook since I connected with my oldest friend through there last week.

I really can't tell you what sparked me searching for him. I'd searched many times for him since 2005 but came up short. I had a dream about this friend a few weeks prior and it was so absurd that I think that's what made me go looking for him. With gusto.

Anyway, long story short, I found him. And the best part was that he said he was searching for me, too. That was a very nice thing to hear.

So we've been emailing back and forth and trying to catch up on 15+ years. I haven't seen him since his high school graduation. It seriously feels like an eternity. Even with all the technology at our disposal, it doesn't seem like we can send email fast enough. Or maybe it's just me and my horrible impatience. Yeah, that's it. I want instant gratification, dammit!

As all my dear readers know, there are some things I will write about on my blog, and other things I keep out. Since I'm sure he reads this (hi there!) I won't get into details about our conversations since it's between the two of us. But we did touch on the subject of music and a rush of memories came flooding back. Isn't that strange? Like entire chunks of your life can be re-visited just by hearing a few notes of a song?

That's one thing about the brain that amazes me.

Anyway, I started scrolling through Youtube and came across a bunch of Hall and Oates videos. I was pretty obsessed with them as a kid. In fact, my 10th birthday party in '85 was all about the Hall and the Oates. I had a bunch of my girl friends come over and we watched this video collection over and over again. My Mom rented it for me, along with some other movie that I cannot remember right now. The only important thing was that I got to watch these videos.


The only other time I was able to see the videos was if I stayed up to watch Friday Night Videos. For you kids out there, that was the MTV for people like me who didn't have cable. My mom would tape that show for me and Saturday morning I'd watch all the videos while eating cereal and fighting with my siblings. Fun.

My mom had almost all their albums and I would take them and play them in my room. This was before I was able to record the LP onto a cassette tape and take it to school with me. So I'd listen to the records over and over while I was supposed to be either 1) doing homework or 2) sleeping. Good times.

I told my friend Brandee about how I totally loved the Hall and Oates when I was a kid and she admitted she loved them, too. Oh no...there goes our street cred.

This evening I spent time downloading most of their music so I can rock out to it on my Zen tomorrow morning on the way to work. I'm not embarrassed to admit I love the Hall and Oates. They play an important part of my childhood-the good part-so I'd like to hold onto those memories for as long as I can.

Here's a video for you. Incidentally, my sister used to think the song "I Can't Go For That" was called "I Cut Coconuts". HAHA!