So here we fly headlong into the next school year. It's been a crazy summer. I didn't want to do a recap because Jamie's really the greatest historian/sociologist of our group, but somehow, I feel like being the one of the last ones leaves me with not much else to do.

God, I'm surprised. Is anyone else? Not in a bad way at all. I came into it the same way I came into Spring Break. I was nervous to be around everyone again. I was wondering how the dynamic would work, if at all, if all we'd do is talk about drinking and how hammered we got in college. I know, I know, it's stupid to think that's how it was going to be, but you know, that was a big change for all of us. It's been done to death on the blogs ever since people started, but that's just because it was such a big shift. I didn't have the bonfire at Meghan's to remind me how things still were. I went into the Spring Break road trips scared out of my mind that all I'd find were people I didn't know anymore and that people would think the same of me. Months later, I came into this summer wondering how the hell all these people who were, for the most part, away from each other for so long could suddenly get back together and interact.

But after all the trivia nights, successful and shitty, the poker games, the movies, the Tech trips, the concerts, the Brusters runs and all the crazy randomly assembled events in between, it has been amazing. I think Jamie's right. This summer, no hangout was forced and I think we did manage some forced ones last year. Maybe we were scared that we'd never have the dynamic again or maybe we wanted something secure in the face of college anxiety. Whatever the case was then, this year, those fears having been painlessly assuaged, we just got together.

And thank God it wasn't just about thie drinking. All kidding aside and no matter how many times I'll still probably look back and wonder when I stopped making that stand, it's not like we've all stumbled drunkenly down the primrose path. Come on, now. And if we hadn't spent several nights together partying, then that might be some part of us that we left at college that we would be ashamed of around each other. Instead, we partied with people we probably trust more than anyone in the world and we take care of each other. And I think others will agree that we had fun. I know I have(Insert crazy Ian laugh).

For me, I think this summer is definitely something I'm going to love remembering as this year goes on. I'm trying to be open to new things in regards to the move, but when that doesn't do it, I at least have the knowledge that I made it work coming back this year and next year will be just as comfortable. Different, but comfortable. They say you can never go home again. I think to a degree that has been true. Every time you leave a place and come back, it's not the same. I'm sure some of you feel that way about school already, how it's not quite as imposing as when you got there last year. And I know we all felt it when we came home several months ago. So even if I was staying in Alpharetta, it would be different next summer. It's just going to be different in a different way...as much sense as that makes.

I had a thought today when I met Daniel Roach at Milton to film for a movie. Milton feels colder than ever now. It's bizarre to go there and I didn't even want to go inside. It has the air of one of those big supermarket storefronts that just closed down and stands completely empty. And they're still in school! Anyway, my thought was that I'm sort of glad that soon Milton will be gone and two new high schools will be running. Sure, it's sad that our high school, our Milton, won't be there to come back to, and maybe in twenty years, I'll wish I could walk its hallowed halls again. But has anyone gone back and really felt nostaglic? It's a different place for different people and yet I for one go back every so often hoping it offers something more. Maybe when there's nothing to go back to, it won't be such a letdown when it doesn't feel the same.

When Meghan and I were walking around Alpharetta High School a few nights ago, I said that it looked like something out of a movie. It really did too. In fact, it reminded me most of the high school from Saved! without all the Christian trimmings. It didn't look or feel like the high school experience we had. That depressed me a bit. For all the bitching about work and the lousy football and all the people we looked down our noses at, God, weren't we lucky?

This has become really stream of consciousness, but I just remembered something I wrote in my Friedman journal about wishing heaven would be a library filled with books of everyone's lives. I feel that because I do want to go back and experience high school again just as I experienced it, or maybe a little omnisciently or whatever. I just get the sense that each moment would be beautiful for what it is, and amazing in the perspective of everything else that happened before or has happened since. Like Senior Trip for instance or the road trips or things that happened at Georgetown, I'd just love to be in the settings again. I think that idea might make sense only to me, but I like that.

So anyway, as this is already FAR too long, I hope no one looks at this summer with regret or disappointment. I, for one, can't believe all that we squeezed in to it, and at the same time, I just can't believe it's been three months. I'll be back next summer, saying the same shit about my year at school, how quick it went and how fun it was. And you know I'm doing my best to stay in Alpharetta next summer for as long as possible, but I think if I find some crazy opportunity to follow a dream, I'm much more likely to seize it this coming summer than I would have been this year. I attribute that to the fact that, anywhere I go for any amount of time, I'll always be able to come back to you guys.

I love you all. Send me pictures, drop me e-mails, tell me stories, PAY ME VISITS, and just generally have a kick-ass year. I'll catch you on the flip side.


"We few, we happy few, we band of brothers."

Here's a big juicy WTF that was too good to pass up. I was assembling shit for school when I came across the handwritten journal I started on last year. Basically, it was a forum for the most honest things in my mind. Some of it was unnerving at times, but that was the point, it covered the stuff I wouldn't normally let myself think about or put on a blog or anything. Anyway, I looked up halfway through it and realized that the CD I was listening to, a gift from my friend Celeste that I had lost all summer until I found it today, was playing Dashboard's "The Places You Have Come to Fear the Most." That really weirded me out because I was definitely paging through the places I don't like to think about....so yeah.

So it's my last day here at Primerica. It's been a good last day so far. I particularly enjoyed when my boss came by and said, "Hey Ian, when are you leaving again?" When I informed him that this was in fact my last day, he said, "Oh, I didn't realize that. I guess we need to put together a quick..." I'm thinking, "don't say 'meeting in my office'" but sure enough he says party. So I have that to look forward to later this afternoon. Then, Grace, who I've been working with this last week, told me the stuff I helped her with is done for right now, so I can surf the net all day since it's my last day. So I grabbed a cup of ice water from the break room, sat back in my swivel chair and decided, for no particular reason, to crack open my blog archives.

I was amazed at some of the stuff I found. Throughout my little odyssey from the end of high school through the present, I relived things I'd forgotten about or had simply remembered in a simpler form. For instance, how could I forget my depiction of my graduation party? I got some weird looks in my cube for laughing at the "Timestamp" gimmick Sterling and I came up with whenever Mic and Kate convinced us to do something. I think we should bring that back. I also forgot all the early Georgetown blogs about alienation, loneliness, fear, loathing, Las Vegas, etc. It was really bizarre to go through it all. I mean, the last time I picked up my Friedman journals, I was sort of taken back, but part of me still hadn't left yet. Reading these, some as recent as May with my grandmother's funeral, I was taken aback. I got a real sense of change throughout the whole thing and it was definitely comforting to this whole first real job, moving away point in my life.

One thing I did notice, and I'm sure Kate will be the first to appreciate this, I can't believe how much I used "Ianish" from like Friedman's class to about mid-freshman year. Almost TOO much. I swear I wasn't trying then to be overly elaborate, I just wrote and I guess my internal monologue worked that way, but looking back, I almost feel ill at how complicated I made some of my words. So yes, sorry if I was ever intentionally obtuse ("What did you call me?" name that quote, y'all), but I guess I have a proclivity towards ornate language. You know how we do.

In other news, my horoscope today says to "close up shop and dance all night" Sounds good to me!

It happened for senior year. It happened for the first year of college. What in God's name is it happening for work? I've reached the end and I can't believe it. One day left after today, and all I can think is "Wow, that went fast." Feels like just yesterday I started bitching about it all (granted, I probably did bitch yesterday). Now that work's coming to a close, all I can think about now is having less than three weeks until I'm back in DC. Less than two weeks, if you take out next week's vacation, to spend time with the gang here at home. And of course, though I keep forgetting this part, only about ten days left in my home. Meaning that it's not just the summer ending, it's my childhood. I'm leaving the only house I can remember, besides those shadows of a staircase or a basement I have from when I was less than 3. It's always been, "Take a left into the Bluffs and I'm the big white house right in front of you." Now the only real roots I feel like I have are being torn up. Of course, just as Mom starts readying the house to sell do I recognize how nice all the rooms are and how I'd love to have only one more summer with no jobs or anything just to live there. Sure, people say I can crash at their houses next year, and that's awesome, but still, what am I gonna do when I come home from work one day and accidentally turn down my street? Check the mail of some stranger, see their name on the envelope and suddenly realize what I'm doing?

The other day, Mom found an old pad of paper Sam Brown and I used to play spies when we were kids. I had made diagrams of the street, how Sam's mom, dad and grandma were positioned on their deck. I even had a roster of the spies, Sam, myself and Max down the street with more empty slots for the 24 people I apparently expected to join us from out of nowhere. It was weird to see something from such a different time and it was even more bizarre to think that it's the same house now as it was then. I already did my green box story, so I'm not gonna go into what the street means to me now, but I do have a feeling that it's going to be hard to read that piece from now on. And I think we can all agree that Alpharetta's already changed and is going to keeping changing without us whether we like it or not. I guess like anyone, I just want more time with everything. You hear stories about people going back and buying their childhood homes, because they love the way it feels. I won't do that. The house itself is wonderful, but not what I'd want to live in for the rest of my life. By the time I buy a house of my own, I'll presumably be emotionally over leaving 203 Mossy Place. But that's the problem. I just don't want to be thinking about the rest of my life yet. I don't want to be thinking about the home I'm going to have, and it seemed like, as long as I would still be on Mossy Place, I wouldn't have to.

I've been thinking about that lately, since I've been thinking more about getting back to school, how being in Alpharetta feels like being in a place where time doesn't move, where life's not going ahead. At school, you're constantly bombarded by people and situations that change your life. You're thinking about your future, whether the newest girl is just a girlfriend or something a lot more serious, whether you should go for that money job or do that thing you always wanted. Here in Alpharetta, everything's reliable. Sure, that sometimes meant reliably boring as all hell. But I guess it was nice not to think about the future all that much. Trouble is, I was enjoying the present, smelling the roses, taking it all in this entire summer and I'm still at the end of it, shaking my head.

Man...

I get the feeling that some day, far into the future hopefully, when I pass away quietly in my sleep and before heading off to whatever afterlife lies in store, I'll be standing over my bed saying, "Wow, that went fast."

Mark (one of my bosses): "Who is printing all of this stuff?"
Me: "Oh, that's me."
Mark: "What is all that?"
Me: "Oh, just the records of all the people whose information is screwed up. That's the kind of job we interns get to work on. I've done thousands of these."
Mark: "Oh, right...Well, you see, we get bonuses based on how much crap work we can come up with for the interns."
Me: "Well, then you're getting very big bonuses this year."

Best part is, Mark just laughed. Nothing like working for a company where you can bitch TO your bosses.

I think I'm gonna stop with the WTF's. I think actually noting each one is ruining the actual experience of "Wow, did that really happen?" and besides, it can't be that interesting to anyone but me. SO, I don't really know where to go from here.

It was a lazy weekend. Friday was fun. Actually, I was thinking, when you live in Metro ATL, there are some things you're just expected to have done. Some things, like visiting the World of Coke, I've done so much I could name every crappy Cambodian ginger soda they have in the International section. However, I saw the Stone Mtn. laser show for the first time this summer. Friday night was the first time I actually heard a Collective Soul song (or at least KNEW it was a Collective Soul song). IT was also the first time I've ever had an F.O. at the Varsity. Lord, how have I lived without that cold orangey goodness? I told Joe I felt like the baseball team in the Adventures of Pete and Pete, with the Orange Julius guy.

I watched a lot of movies this weekend, Bourne Identity, Secret Window, a Few Good Men. Ok, so 3 movies, respectively one I'd seen but couldn't remember (ironically enough), one I'd never seen but bought anyway, and one that I think everyone NEEDS to see before they die.

Bourne Identity is so good, making Matt Damon once again one of the greatest actors ever. You might say, "But Ian, all he does is beat up on some embassy guards," but it's not that. I just can't think of a line that he fudges, you know? Then again, I didn't see All the Pretty Horses or Bagger Vance.

Secret Window was good as well. Depp did a great job, but I saw the ending way too early. I still think for something as often done as...well, if you've seen the movie, you know the gimmick...Secret Window REALLY put together an amazing scene with Mort and Shooter and the hat, etc. And when I watched the special features, the director explained some of the shots and I was amazed that I actually appreciated the film more. Usually I think that if I don't get it from the movie straight-up, then the director didn't bring it across well, but I just missed some key shots. Probably too busy reorganizing the binders (and not autobiographically).

A Few Good Men. What can you say, am I right? God, it's so freakin' amazing to watch. I almost wish I was old enough to have done the play before the movie came out, because doing it now would be so hard. Reiner, Sorkin, Nicholson, Cruise, everyone just was on their game and made a masterpiece. I would have loved to have done it on stage and then had that movie just blow our version out of the water, just for a chance at that wonderful writing. People joke all the time about "You can't handle the truth," but when you see that scene, see Nicholson just rip into Tom Cruise and Cruise just ripping right back, it just blows your mind. Being the special feature junkie that I am, I found out that they shot Jack's monologue about 8 times to do reactions from Tom, Demi, Kevin Pollack, Kevin Bacon, the jury, the accused, etc. EVERY TIME Jack Nicholson gave it his all. He was off camera every time but the last one and he still belted it. When Rob Reiner told him to save some for his screen time, Nicholson said that he was an actor, that he loved to act and that he'd never get the chance to work with material like that again. That's just the coolest story ever. So yeah, love that movie.

"Thanks for playing Should We or Should We Not Follow the Advice of the GALACTICALLY STUPID!!!"

Awesomeness.

PS: One last WTF, my mom had an interview today with a Bill Kronan in New York. (see below)

PPS: Oh, lord, I just ran an insurance application and the guy filled out his wife's name and under "relationship to the insured" put "Wife ('Play mate')" Ok, now there is a time and place for innuendo, but I'm pretty damn sure your INSURANCE APPLICATION is not one of them.