stuff from ten years ago

lately i've been wasting a lot of time playing a computer game: snood. and no i'm not just now discovering this game. i remember i got my freshman roomie hooked on it, oh, about ten years ago, and we were unstoppable. my mom got me re-hooked on it recently, and i'm cursing her right now because it's after midnight and i can't seem to stop playing... and i'm sure andy is cursing me right now because i installed it on his machine too and set all the high scores. somehow he managed to get a score on the list, but i spent another hour playing, knocking his score off. i bet he's up right now trying to beat me.

while i'm thinking about it, here are some other things that i recall being awesome/popular/cool/new from ten+ years ago. i'm sticking to fashion and technology mainly because, uh, i've been wearing clothes for quite some time, and i'm interested in tech stuff. some of these things are indeed awesome, some of them are absolutely ridiculous. read on:

timberland boots

you know the ones. i scored a pair of these because my grandmother bought them for me. not really a bad trend, since they were comfortable and durable. much, much more sensible than jelly shoes.

anoraks from the gap

mmm...packable nylon pullovers. i think this fad was completely worn out by 2000, but when i think about high school i can't help but be reminded of them. anyway, i remember *everyone* wore these things, didn't matter if it was raining or windy. and even though an anorak is a functional piece of outerwear, i recall people wearing these things as regular clothes. like, it was part of the outfit. went with the timberland boots, i guess. i had one that was hunter green. i think i got my mom to buy me one because whitney allgood had one. functional, yes. fashionable...apparently so.

gap overalls

what the hell was this trend about? sadly, it lasted for a few years. i remember all the cheerleaders had these and would often wear them on friday for some sort of school spirit deal. they had to be from the gap though, any other brand was a definite no-no. my mom bought me a pair and even though i felt idiotic, i still wore them. they did come in handy when i got a severe sunburn right at my waistline and couldn't wear regular pants/shorts (pictured above - check out my unusually intense summer glow).

chaco sandals

these weren't quite so mainstream as a lot of this other stuff, but i remember some people going ape-shit over them. maybe they're still popular, i dunno. i will give credit to lauren marcum though, she was the first person i knew who had a pair.

napster

when i think about napster & downloading music the first people that come to mind are justin mills & ryan mcquaig. i had a class with these clowns, and i guess i heard about it first from them. sharing/downloading music and mp3s in general was a whole new thing, at least to me, and the legality of it all wasn't really questioned.

burning/ripping cds - right along there with napster was the art of burning your very own mix cd. totally awesome technology. not everyone had a pc so kids would give ryan mcquaig lists of songs to burn to disc, or he'd copy discs for them. funny how i go ten years without thinking about ryan mcquaig, and then he somehow makes his way onto my blog. twice. huh. when i finally got a computer with a writeable drive i burned myself a copy of "the marshall mathers lp" and i thought i was bad ass.

cell phones that fit in your pocket,

only not really

I had the one on the left for a while, which was pretty small compared to my mom's bag phone but still pretty sizeable. i've still got this thing in a drawer at my mom's house. so awesome. later my dad upgraded me to the small one on the right, which was way cooler because you could almost fit it in the pocket of your gap overalls.

99x big day out - i was uncool for a number of reasons in high school, but i always felt pretty lame because i had never seen a live rock concert. adam ware seemed to have an endless supply of these shirts. when i got to college i think i overcompensated for my lack of attending live shows by attending just one "string cheese incident" show at the tabernacle.

the new kroger - this was the best thing to hit dalton since the steak and shake. well, maybe not, but it was an improvement for sure. i remember blake gober, my brother, & i tailgated in the parking lot the morning that it opened. we bought breakfast and ate it in the bed of his truck. i saved the receipt. again, what the hell?

can't sleep, clown'll eat me.

this might be mildly amusing to those of you who studied computer science at tech - i think i saw mike mccracken in the fedex office store (near intersection of west paces ferry and northside parkway). actually, that's really not that amusing, is it? but i think it's funny because i *still* don't think of tech professors as real people with real lives who have errands to run and all that. if mccracken is still rockin' the bushy mustache, then it was definitely him. i almost said something to him but then realized if it really *was* him, i'd have nothing else to add to the conversation except "hey, thanks for not failing me. cs blows."

is anyone else as disturbed by the meth spots on radio & tv? the first time i saw them on tv i had really vivid nightmares for two nights in a row. the worst is the one with the girl in the shower. yuck.

ok and speaking of nightmares - andy & i were in illnois visiting his family and we saw this creep-o clown thing in a place called pizza villa:

don't watch this if you're scared of clowns.

totally looks like

amy & i were trying to clean some moldy furniture at the office on friday. there was a dish of soapy water that i left sitting for a few minutes. i came back into the room and was all freaked out because it looked like this:

and saturday andy & i had to help a lady move some boxes & furniture out of my office. and since no one else was around i let him ride the segway:

nothin to see here, people. just getting a soda on my segway