I went home for the weekend and saw some old friends.  Jason had a party at his new house.  I hadn’t seen most of those people since college or a little after.  Everyone is always the same mostly, except a little heavier, a little more wrinkled, a little less willing to get piss drunk (myself included).  I talked a lot about people’s kids and their marriage.  I liked it for the most part.

I wore a Halloween costume I last wore in graduate school in 2001 I think.  Its a pimp outfit with leather pants, a white fedora, and a really tight shiny shirt.  Its ridiculous but fun.  I was still able to get into the pants, but I couldn’t button the shirt anymore…not even close.  In fact, I wonder how I ever got into it.

Jason seemed good.  Its strange that so many of my friends are divorced now.  Actually, I guess its just two of them that are…but hey, how many close friends can someone have?  Two is actually a large percentage.

The next night I went to see Josh after shopping all day with my mom.  I bought this really cool piece of furniture that I don’t really need.

I’m going to use it as a TV stand because I can’t figure out any other place to put it.

Anyway, Josh was good.  His kids are super cute.  He was really drunk by the time I got there at 7 having watched the Clemson game.  You know he’s drunk when he starts talking about how good we were at basketball.  I admit its a fun conversation, since we were pretty good…but let’s face it:  I couldn’t throw a basketball in the ocean now…and if I could I’d probably hurt my back doing it.

I used to swear up and down I’d never have the “used to be” conversation, but now that I’m older I see why people have it.  Its like a fish story…it gets better every time you tell it.  You can forget the defeats and remember the victories…embellish here and there.  No one remembers the score anyway, right?  I did dunk on someone in a game one time though.  That’s true: Wes Jackson, I remember.  (Ok, the goal was about 2 inches short of 10 feet, but that’s just a detail to forget next time I tell the story).

Anyway, its weird to go home sometimes and think about all that stuff.  Honestly it seems like it all happened to another person.  Traveling sort of cut my life in half, and the first half is pretty distant sometimes….especially 10 beers in.

I guess I’m thinking about all this today because I went home for the weekend and got a message from some folks on Facebook today that made me think about some things I haven’t thought about in years.

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