WHAT THE HELL ...

I was trying to work on some lecture notes, but my dog Nina had other ideas about what I should have been doing. She was nudging me with her nose, not unlike what my girlfriend does when she wants me to do something else. So I put my work aside and we (Nina and I) went outside. It was a nice fall evening; unseasonably warm but wet and humid from two days of rain.

Thanks to daylight savings time, it was quite dark at 7 PM, so we both peed because that's what bachelors and their dogs do outside. Then we stood and watched life going on. The neighborhood driveways and street were filled with parked cars, since no one has room in their garage for a vehicle. Garages have become storage areas for unused or rarely used junk that we don't know where else to put. My nearest neighbors just purchased a vacation home at the Jersey shore, and they have been moving stuff from their garage to the new home in hopes of getting one of their two cars in the garage. It may happen for a short while, but soon they will have two homes and two garages filled with junk. I speak from personal experience.

Lights were on and people were in their homes eating dinner or watching television. All in all, it was a quiet evening in the suburbs; much like each of the last 19 years has been since I moved here. It got me to wondering what it all means.

Nothing really has changed, for me or the neighborhood, in the last 19 years. I have gotten 19 years older, I've worked at the same job, I've acquired a lot more stuff, and I've had some really great experiences as well as some bad ones. My dog and I are still peeing in the yard (albeit a different dog), we are still looking at the same, unchanged neighborhood, and I really don't have anything meaningful to show for those 19 years except the memories in my head... and the memories of what is no longer on my head.

Coming up with no answers, and basically getting a bit depressed about it, I looked at Nina and said, "What the hell... let's go back in side"