Janis coming out the speakers, wandering Wikipedia... did you know Kraft Macaroni & Cheese was invented in 1937? It didn't fall under the rationing restrictions of World War 2 because it was made of all artificial ingredients... reassuring, izznit?

A reference to adding cut-up hotdogs to a package of Mac & Cheese brought up a memory from my first true foray into hippie culture when I ran away from home. The folks I was living with were hippies. You learn to appreciate cheap food when you're living in a de-facto commune. We'd make these huge kettles of stew, or use the cheap frozen stir-fry veggies added to a pack of ramen. They had this thing they'd do where you make up a double batch of biscuits with the local cheap version of Bisquick, then add in a whole package of cut-up cheap hotdogs and some cubed cheddar cheese. You mix the whole mess up then plop it by big spoonfuls onto the requisite baking sheet and bake as biscuits. They called them Junkyard Dogs. We'd do stir-fry or big things of spaghetti.

I only lived with them for three weeks before I got the Hobbit Hole. The most tumultuous and euphoric time of my life. No matter how wrong it went later on, for those three weeks and a few months afterward I knew down to the ground that I could do literally anything. I was invincible.

The madness of being 21 and in love.

Went over to North Chatt today, just wandering. Not all the shops were open, of course. New Moon was. Finally got the Loreena McKinnett I've been looking for. I went there because I wanted to be around people like me, then I get there and I can't look anyone in the eye. Beats me why. Maybe it's the social phobia thing. I can't get over how commercialized it is over there now. Hell, I drive down Ringgold Road and I don't hardly recognize East Ridge anymore, and now North Chatt isn't the place where I truly grew up anymore. I liked it the way it was. It was home.

Sometimes I look around and wonder how the hell I got here.

I still remember being that terrified kid in love. I still remember writing at 4 AM, hunched over a laptop at that rickety table in that tiny kitchen.

Now I'm here listening to Simon & Garfunkel's "For Emily" and I'm not sure how I got here. I'm still that kid sitting in the hippie apartment on the hill in North Chatt, writing about cyborgs and wizards. So much water under the bridge. I still don't know how I got here. I still don't know what I'm doing. Or where I'm going.

We always think this moment is forever.