It's either going to be the laughter, the narcoleptic dog, or the broken toilet cover. I don't know which, but I'm leaning toward making it all three. I didn't know her well, but somehow, I think she'd find the combination appropriate.Her name was Duffie. I met her once.

The progression was thus: Jeff invoked spousal rights, thus ensuring I went to his ten-year high school reunion, which I was absolutely certain I would hate. As luck, fate, and reunions would have it, we sat at the table with Samantha, one of Jeff's closer high school friends. As we sat at the back table, merrily snarking our way through the dinner, Jeff and Samantha flipped through the pages of the book to find out what had happened to everyone else.

We were too young to rent this particular movie, but we looked old for our age, and we knew that if we just didn't giggle or make spectacles of ourselves, we'd be fine.

It helped that we had Kerri's mother's movie-rental card, which would allow us to rent anything in the store. We had wandered around the store, browsing the stacks of movies for rent. We didn't have anything in particular we wanted to see, but it was Saturday, and we wanted to watch something.For some reason, approximately 90% of all movie titles start with the letters R, S, or T, and that's where we spent hmost of our browsing time. We'd hold up movies to each other, soliciting opinions, but they'd all be struck down for one reason or another.

We spotted it then, hidden in plain view; a simple, black box. Kerri looked at me quizzically and said words that were such incredible understatements that I'm surprised the world didn't cave in on us right then and there:

When we went house-hunting in 1999, we deliberately chose to look for a three-bedroom house. Not because we planned to have children, but to slake our burgeoning computer habit. A bedroom for us, a bedroom for guests, and a bedroom that we could turn into an office of sorts—a home for our computers.

Realization #598393 that you're older than you feel:

You go to your high school's website. First, you goggle that they've got a website. Then you happen to read through the faculty list and you realize that one of your high school classmates is now teaching there.

Then it dawns on me that the classmate in question—Joshua Harrison—is one I haven't seen in seven years.

Seven years.

Seven years since I moved away. It seems so quick for me, but I know that everyone else in that class has had the same seven years to move on with their lives, as well. Most of them have probably married, settled into their lives, started having children. Since I have not seen most of those people (all 33 of them) since graduation night, my mental image of them is frozen as they were then.

I have trouble picturing some of them married. As parents. As adults. I have no doubts in my mind that they probably picture me the same way—ugh.

Like most native Arkansans, I watched yesterday's inauguration of George W. Bush with a mix of relief and sorrow. For at last, it is over!—and sadly, yes, it is over, and we will probably never see the likes of such attention again. That quiet, rural state has been in the limelight for the past eight years, and what an incredible time it was to be living there when Clinton was first elected.

The closing of this man's presidency closes an eventful chapter in my life, as well.

The first line from one of my favorite books—Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca. Oddly appropriate: a book that starts with a young, confused woman who flees everything she knows—and ends with a grand old building in flames.

My previous entry about this will eventually scroll. For when that happens, here are three pictures:

Fire destroys Bauxite High School
by domesticat. Attempts to save Bauxite High School building
by domesticat. Bauxite High School building in flames
by domesticat.

Let me tell you what it was like to grow up in this place: Bauxite, currently population ~400. So named for the bauxite ore that was available in the area. It became a boom town in World War II. Bauxite, you may remember, is the ore from which aluminum is made—aluminum that was made into lightweight planes that helped win that war.