Tag Archives: nostalgia

I just finished rewatching the entire series of Friends. 236 episodes. I never watched more than 1 a day and sometimes would go a week or longer without watching an episode so it took at least a couple of years.

May 6 was the 20 year anniversary since the airing of the series finale.

I’ve seen a few episodes here and there since then but I never did a re-watch from beginning to end. The show holds up for me. I think Season 5 is the best — every episode is a classic.

For individual episodes: the one with Phoebe’s “my eyes! my eyes!”, the one with Monica and Ross’s routine, and the one with “PIVOT!” are my favorite.

At work, if we’re ever in a meeting and someone uses pivot, my colleague and I will spend the rest of the day exclaiming “PIVOT!” with Ross intonation and die laughing every time.

We lost Matthew Perry during my rewatch. I had already decided to skip his memoir but I ended up getting the audiobook- which he reads. It wasn’t sad in the moment because while he was reading it to me, he was there. But the end was super sad because he was so optimistic about his future. I should rephrase this because the memoir itself is really sad. This guy had troubles from a young age and I think getting so much fame and money so early on top of that made things tough for him.

After all that I re-watched the reunion show which was aired in 2021 so the audience is sparse and many are wearing masks. The reunion show was so enjoyable and well done. I could watch the cast reacting to their own bloopers all day. The other night I dreamed I was watching Friends with Matt LeBlanc. He was very nice and we were both laughing hysterically.

I wish I had some clever concluding thoughts but as always, this has been sitting half-written for two days and if I don’t finish now, I don’t know when I can get back to it. I will say this, the show was whatever the opposite of a perfect storm would be: the creators, writers and cast were fabulous and came together perfectly. There is no other show like it.

This is what a busy intersection in downtown Portland looks like on a weekday during quarantine. It was painful not to be able to take advantage of all that street parking.

When I was in elementary school the playground had a set of hanging rings in a circle — I can’t believe I can’t find a photo of this type of thing to link to. I guess this isn’t hasn’t been normal playground equipment in eons.

They were tricky to do — you had to learn how to swing your body around to get from one to the next and then you needed to time it just right so you could re-catch the swinging rings once you completed the circle and were going for another round.

I finally learned how to do it. I think maybe me and a friend rode our bikes over there on weekends to practice? I don’t think there would have been enough time at recess. There was always a line to get on and if you were taking a turn and you missed the next ring you had to jump off and let the next person go.

On Fridays after school there was a contest on the playground for who could catch the most rings and I thought I had a chance. I was really timid in elementary school (or my entire life) so it was a big deal that I even tried.

I made it the first lap around but couldn’t figure out the timing and I can still clearly see myself hanging from one arm back and forth trying to catch that swinging ring.

The girl who won was one grade ahead and the mean older sibling of one of my friends. She won the contest every week. I can’t remember the prize. Candy?

These are my flowerbeds 2 weeks ago. It would have been headline news if not for all the other stuff going on. Long gone by now.

When I was a freshman in high school I arrived at my locker one morning and someone had hastily scrawled “plastic and pasty” in pencil across it in small letters.

Because of course I did, I fretted about this.

Was this intended for me? If so, what did it mean? It’s a strange insult.

Did people thing I was plastic? Or pasty? I didn’t have a huge circle of friends or enemies. I kept to myself so it was unlikely that I had stirred up trouble with someone.

Plastic I can guess — phony? At that age anyone can be accused of acting phony. But pasty? Pale?

I didn’t erase it, I left it there. I mostly hoped the message wasn’t aimed at me.

But 40 something years later I still remember it. I can picture the exact location of my locker — I can’t remember my locker location for any other year.

Bob getting this life-changing gift years ago. I would be surprised to learn that any other iPod in history was as well used as that one. Even after he got his first iPhone he hung onto that until it gasped its last gasp but I bet it’s still in a drawer downstairs.

The three kids on the right are all grown up now. That’s my head on the kid with the brown dress and wearing a ginormous backpack (?) who was visiting and I don’t remember anything about her. I thought it would be hilarious to photoshop my head into all the photos for November but lost interest after this one.

I’ve had this picture scanned and in my main photo folder for months. I can’t remember what the intent was.

This is my room in college in 1985. Normally four people would be in this room and I would have had to confine my stuff to only one of those closet things — what are they called? Armoires?

I don’t think I was always this messy. I think I was crazy busy with school and jobs and social stuff.

Almost all those photos taped to the walls and armoire doors are of Def Leppard.