My vacation is just about over, now. Sadly, I did not one bit of coding for my side projects this holiday season – sorry about that – but winter is settling in, which should help to keep me in front of a computer (or an Xbox) more often than not. I also took the down time to tweak my ThinkPad: I’ve ordered a replacement modem for my T41 – for some reason, they stacked the internal Bluetooth module onto the modem – and popped in an additional 256MB RAM which brings me up to 1GB. I also pinged IBM for a replacement keyboard and write rest, since they are worn shiny and covered under warrantee…

However, the big reflection came to me while I was driving to my parents’ house last night.

I hung out with my friends in CT for New Year’s Eve, catching up on gossip and happenings – I’ve never been a fan of heading out to bars, restaurants and the like for NYE, honestly. Everything is overpriced, slow and crappy service, getting pushed out of your chair for the next “wave” of diners, and in most cases, as crowded as hell.

Anyway, around 1 am I drove my parents’ car back from Chuck [and Michelle’s] house. Through the center of Huntington, up the back roads of Shelton to Monroe. Passing the spot where I had once destroyed a Ford Granada by rolling it over. Through the four corners where we made our cars stall by trying to perform neutral drops. Up the well paved stretch of Elm Street – remembering that it was once a broken run of asphalt with bumps and potholes – and navigates a bunch of different turns and side roads, before I pulled into my parents’ driveway.

That would have been a likely drive in 1990, and it was one that I made countless times during my high school years. If you described it to me in 1995, I would have told you “oh, yeah, I remember that,” since I was living with my sister in another town, so I almost never returned “home” to my parents’ house. If, at any point in my life, you told me that this scene would describe a night in 2005 – the year of my fifteen-year high school reunion – I would have sent you for a bout of rehab, to curb your crack or LSD addiction. And yet… what was a likely night of years ago is in fact a description of the first morning of 2005, after having spent NYE with friends that I’ve kept in touch with throughout that whole span of time.

It’s a small space-time continuum, after all.