My friend Furlong tagged me in this photo today on Facebook. Please forgive the gratuitous vulgarity. I did a lot of tasteless things for no good reason when I was younger.
In retrospect, 2000 was a pretty good year. I partied a lot, stayed up late, read Kafka's The Castle, Henry Miller's Sexus, Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Cat's Cradle by Vonnegut and Benjamin Kuras' Czechs and Balances. I only got 3/4 of the way through The Idiot, and I haven't returned to it. I spent Christmas 1999 in Svratka and New Year's Eve at Stara Osada in Brno, where I was drunkenly hugging the toilet by 12:30 AM. In April I got a sweet job working the backshift at the Ultramar across the street from my apartment on Chebucto road (where this photo was taken) and I'd get off work at 8:00 Monday morning (which was my "Friday night") and sit on the front steps in flip flops and a straw hat, watching all the commuters on their way to work and drinking moonshine out of a 3 litre jug (it took me over a month to drink all 3 litres). Caitlin was born that June.
Part of me asks, "Has it really been 8 years?" but another part wants to know, "Has it only been 8 years?"
