• A book that is missing most of chapter 5
• Lutefisk
• Running into your ex-girlfriend while you are on a first date
• Working on Saturday
• Reading McSweeney’s on more than an occasional basis
• Driving two hours to find out it was an early show
• Accidentally biting into a whole peppercorn
• Discovering the party is hosted by a canned beer fanatic
• Blade: Trinity
• Hot dogs that are slightly overburnt
• June bugs
• Jello salad
• Cats
• Internet Explorer 7
• Mac vs. PC ads
• Swisher Sweets
• Skipping breakfast
• Skipping lunch
• Skip To My Lou
• Marching bands
• Standing in line for the bathroom
• Caucusing
• Lists of things
• Board games
• Icebreaker activities
• Weak coffee
• Ryan Air
• Hair metal
• Hair nets
• A “coming of age” tale
• Doing the dishes
• Pretty much everything

I guess that last item makes it a comprehensive list, but feel free to add your own, anyway.

“That’s a big mushroom.”

Young man, you would not believe the wonders that await you in this world. Corn with kernels that are both yellow and cream in color! Watermelon with no seeds! Pizza that you have to take home and bake yourself!

Kid, I can’t wait until you discover alcohol that has been carefully hidden in Jello. Truly, it will blow your mind. Until then, please keep your finger off of my produce. I was thinking about slicing that mushroom raw into a salad, but I’m pretty sure, now, that I should cook it until it dies.

Dear Cedric Collins,

Good news!

Although you originally ordered Standard (4 to 5 business days) shipping and handling, we have given your order special priority processing in our warehouse and are upgrading the shipping and delivery time frame for your order. Your order will ship out today and be given a special priority shipping status so that you can receive your order even faster than we originally promised!

Please note that this is being done at no additional cost to you. It is simply our way of saying thank you for being our customer.

[... stuff like order number omitted ...]

If you’ve enjoyed your experience with us, please tell your friends and family about Zappos.com!

Thank you!

——————————–
Zappos.com Customer Loyalty Team

Dear Zappos.com,

Done. And I’ll bet I like these shoes even if they don’t fit quite right.

Thank you,
Cedric

Also, I finally bought a halfway decent scanner, so I can get my backlog of 35mm negatives up onto Flickr. I probably have pictures from 2006 that I haven’t even seen, so this should be fun. Watch my Flickr account over the next couple of days.

I wish I could have this motorcycle again.

This place is a goldmine of stories. I once had to inform a girl I knew that the Muzak they played for several years was not even remotely Chinese. In fact, it was mostly horrible instrumental versions of Beatles songs. Mike and Sean used to make up new words to the unrecognizable melodies with such memorable titles as “Hot Monkey Love.” When they switched to 104.1, I kept going on a regular basis because no matter how much Delilah makes me want to shoot myself (seriously, she is awful,) the food was cheap and the tea was free. In 1999, you could get a plate of sesame chicken for $3.99 plus tax, which always came to $4.23. That was almost cheaper than the ISU meal plan.

The menu basically consisted of a choice of beef, pork, or chicken with some kind of interchangeable sauce. In 1999, the food was served still boiling on a fajita plate with Chinese vegetables and a separate plate of white rice. There have been several subtle changes over time, generally not greeted as improvements by old-guard customers, but in general the restaurant has not changed much. Once upon a time, the vegetables included sliced carrot, but now it is all Napa cabbage. The fajita plate and still-boiling presentation have been replaced with a more ordinary white plate. By the time I graduated, the price had been adjusted carefully to ring up to five dollars including tax.

I took Drea here after we moved in together, and it was kind of a shock. There were some new menu items, and a few tables had been replaced with much nicer booths. I was anxious in that particular way that happens when you try to share a deeply nostalgic experience. I could not be sure that Drea would fall in love with the curry chicken or that she would like the tea as much as I did. If the cheap little chopstick skewers gave her splinters, how would I explain the fondness with which I remembered splinters of my own nearly ten years ago? In my preoccupation, I did not notice a lot of the changes.

Tonight, though, I could tell that some time has passed. There were a lot of new dishes available. Most of the entrees are six dollars including tax, still a great value. The tea is still free, and still delicious. I think they just brew Lipton’s, but it tastes especially good. The biggest change is the one most characteristic of a college town: I didn’t recognize a single person working there. In college, I was the kind of regular that the owners knew by face even though they didn’t know my name. When I took Drea, I passed the counter without getting a flicker of recognition. I’ve gotten older, gained weight, grown a beard. Tonight, none of the people I remember were even there. There was a different old guy lounging at the round table closest to the counter, and Mexican music was drifting out of the kitchen.

The sesame pork was exactly the same. The meat was perfectly cooked, the sauce was the same simple mix of vinegar and sugar, the rice held together for my chopsticks without being wet. I was still warm from the tea when I walked back out into the snow. It’s a feeling my roommate used to call “rice happy.”

So I live in Ames, now. The five people who will read this already know that. But it’s cool being back up here. I don’t go out nearly as much as I did before, but the Boheme is closed, and I am not driven out of the house by shear loneliness very often anymore. I’m living in a place with a lawn and a driveway for the first time since I moved out of my parents’ house. I spent most of the summer sitting in a camp chair in the driveway, sipping from a cold bottle of beer, and getting up now and then to check the grill and say, “Yep, should be done, soon.” That’s pretty much the best summer ever. Thanks to Drea for the giant grill. That was a good birthday present.

I’m a little bummed that it’s getting colder already, but I think we ended the summer well. On Labor Day weekend, Megan came down from Minnesota, and Drea and I invited some people over for a pork barbeque. The whole thing probably lasted twelve hours, the weather was beautiful, and a couple of people with dogs even visited. After it got dark, we saw some kind of floating flame drift overhead. Brian thought it was a candle tied to a helium balloon, but it was hard to tell how far away it was or how big, so basically this was the first party I’ve ever been to where everyone stood around looking at a UFO. Beat that.

I’d like to take one more long weekend motorcycle ride before it gets too cold, but everything seems to be moving a little faster this year. Is it just me or did summer never really get going?