A Trip Down Memory Lane

I was just over at my old friends house. He's long since moved away from here, and now primarily lives in another part of the country, but well all seem to return to the source, as it were, for most of the summer. He now lives with his mom, like me, for the better part of the summer. We don't meet much, even tho his head office is in the same town where I live, so it was good to spend some time together and talk about nothing in particular (although we did talk alot about cars), and just hang out. I also got to meet his girl friend who was very nice. And surprise surprise, she's also from the same "hood" as him and me, only they didn't (afaik) meet here, or knew about eachother earlier either. They looked so grown up together. They both have good jobs, and they seemed to occupy a pretty solid place in the world. I, ofcourse, marveled at his wonderful new car (Honda s2000 with me performance stuff that you could possibly imagine) and their bikes (scott full-suspension bikes that cost more than twice what I paid for my first car), and we took the car for a ride. I had a wide boyish grin all over my face from the moment i squeezed into the racing seats.

As we were out there driving, and subsequently when we later collectively walked the dog, we got to reminiscing about the times we had spent together as young children and teenagers, and what this place that we had grown up in really was like. We reached the conclusion that we come, indeed, from a very nice little place in the world. Very still, serene, lush and wonderful. It's not like we grew up in a protected environment or anything, but it dawns on me now that I probably had it better than alot of other kids during that time.

I don't mean to brag either, but when you return to a place like this after not having lived there for a few years, you start comparing it to the world, and the other places you've been, and you start to see things that you didn't know were there. You start to realize that maybe it wasn't as bad as you had once thought. Ok, I never claimed I had it bad growing up, but I don't think I saw the place where I lived for what it really was. My parents, however, have not grown a single bit on me as I have gotten older. They still act like I described in my previous post, and always have.

We walked around the neighborhood and talked of what we used to do, and pointed out all sorts of interesting tidbits to his girlfriend, who had grown up about 1 kilometer from where him and I grew up.

This revelation that this, the place of my birth, was alot more than we had previously imagined it to be, had stuck me and my brother earlier aswell, driving back through the roads we know so well. I almost think that, had there been no other cars around, i could have driven home with my eyes closed.

I also realized who I'm writing this for. Atleast there kind of personal entries. It's not just for the reasons I've mentioned before (jokingly prove to people that I do have a life, and attracting some kind of readership, because I don't really write on any special subject), but it's also just as much for me. I write for me so that I can reflect on the progression of my life. I write for me so that my writing can improve (something both you and I will be grateful for).

I write software aswell, and in many ways, writing software and writing literature is very much the same, but when you're writing software, you constantly go back and refine what you've written. Refine. Revise. Re-write. Redo. Software is more of a constantly evolving and mutating beast than the stuff I write here. My blog writing evolves, as does my life. My software evolves too, but in a different manner.

These ramblings really don't fit anywhere. Maybe I should just call them MindBites(tm). Much like the consciousness file one of the lead characters in MircoSerfs keeps on his powerbook. What the computer would think, if it'd had a mind of it's own.

Recorded, for your viewing pleasure.

--Markus out