Whoever said that you can’t go home again, I’m here to say bollocks! You most certainly can go home again. I do it all the time! Okay, maybe not all the time. I’m sure my mother would argue that I don’t do it quite often enough (of course, if she had her way, I would still be living with my parents, thus fulfilling the ultimate nerd stereotype).

I departed from the safety of the lair bright and early Friday morning, and remained off the Interwebs grid for most of the weekend. It was a delightful break, as it always is. My parental units still reside in their undisclosed North Carolina location, so I got to go Southern for the weekend, which is always a treat. First stop, of course, was the nearest Sonic, to satiate my Cherry Vanilla Dr. Pepper lust. Also, while down there, I replenished my supply of Cheerwine as well as sought out another six-pack of the official beer of the lair, White Wolf Golden Ale. I tend to enjoy the darker, richer side of the beer spectrum, but this is actually a pretty tasty ale (which was a great surprise, considering the fact that I only originally bought a bottle because of the obvious attraction to the name).

Oh, rewinding a little: Cheerwine is one of the staples of my childhood memories of summer vacation. That and Sundrop were the two drinks that we always brought back with us from visiting my grandparents. Not necessarily because they’re unique (Cheerwine is a cherry soft drink and Sundrop is a less syrupy Mountain Dew), but just because we couldn’t get them here in the Old Line State. Still can’t (although I found a store near my office that sold Cheerwine for a while).

I remember the summer when we couldn’t find Cheerwine. It was the second most traumatic summer vacation of my youth, surpassed only by the summer I was bitten by a dog. Yes, I love Cheerwine that much. It wasn’t until years later that I realized why we couldn’t find Cheerwine. Remember the red dye cancer scare in the 80s? Cheerwine was colored with that dye, just like the red M&Ms. Thankfully, Cheerwine wasn’t gone from our lives as long as the red M&Ms were.

For those of you who found your way back to the lair from my Angry Blogger^TM days, you’ll be happy to know that my lovely Doodle-Cat, Mr. Data, is still chugging along. He’ll be 17 years old sometime in June. He looks a bit more bedraggled than he once did in his glorious fluffy kitty days, but I love him to death. He’s my sweet little gutter rescue. He’s a lot surlier than he was, but that’s allowed since he is now officially an old man. He just wants to be left to sleep on a comfy chair positioned in the afternoon sunlight and to be tolerated when he bites your elbow when he wants you to feed him or turn on the faucet in the kitchen sink. Nothing unreasonable, right?

This was also the trip that I finally decided to sort through all the boxes and bags that my parents transported with them from my old room when they moved. I had originally packed everything up in a hasty, half-assed sort of way, promising that I would go through everything once they were settled in their new place. This was almost five years ago. There was a lovely patina of attic dust all over everything (as well as the slightly mummified remains of a field mouse hidden beneath the piles of trash bags…eek!).

I was honestly surprised at how much fun I had going through my old stuff. I didn’t keep a whole lot from my adolescence, but I kept a lot more than I remembered. And, of course, the bulk of what I kept was delightfully geeky. I took plenty of photos, which I suspect will make excellent submissions for future “Flashback Friday” entries.

I also found two remnants from my high school days that I had completely forgotten I’d saved: my varsity jacket and my graduation cap and gown, complete with my National Honor Society collar (which still looks to me like one of those toilet seat sanitary rings you find in public restrooms). Yes, I was a geek/jock hybrid. Of course, at a school as small as the one from which I graduated, everyone sort of had to chip in and wear a multitude of different hats just to keep the ship from sinking (as if that would have been a terrible thing).

Strangely, I couldn’t find either my homecoming queen tiara or my senior yearbook. I must have them stored somewhere here in the lair. Where, though, I’m not quite certain…”Just hang a right at the Gates McFadden hypospray shrine, go straight until you see the Todd McFarlane Masters of Horror statues, then take a left. The tiara and yearbook should be somewhere around there, near the geek chic T-shirt rack.”

Of the high school things I found, I think the only thing that gave me a twinge of reminiscent joy was my varsity jacket. I loved that silly thing, with its pleather sleeves and all the pins on my letter. Here’s Loba Geeky Confession Number 8,648,097: I used to imagine that the bars were like TNG collar pips. As you can tell here, by the end of my high school sports career, I had reached the Starfleet rank of Captain (to go with the “real” Captain pins I earned). My increasingly creaky knees will attest to this ranking.

I suppose I should end this entry. I’m getting ready to break the 1,000 word barrier and all on utter silliness about my weekend. I will, however, leave you with the following as my parting shot. This was stuck to one of the drawers on my dad’s tool chest. It’s something he typed up while playing around with an old label maker that he found in his garage. See? I come by my geekiness quite honestly 😉