Back down in Santa Cruz for a few days to get some things settled and run some errands, and I caught a ride with my housemate, the Rockstar. There are times when he drives me completely insane, but lately he's been pretty cool, mellowed out or something. He has this big funky van with carpeting on the walls, and I sat in the back while he drove madly down highway 1, blasting Sonic Youth and singing along while his girlfriend fed him potato salad. It was actually kind of cool, the ride down 1 made me strangely nostalgic.

It made me think about the good things about Santa Cruz, the weird children-of-hippies vibe that everyone my age who grew up around here seems to exude, the scenery everyone takes for granted, the quiet, the smells...

Then I started thinking about how different everything is now, how much I've changed.