A combination of Blogger outages and an insane workload prevented me from tackling the Friday Five last week, and although I kept meaning to do it over the weekend, somehow I never did. Rather than let it slide completely, I’m going to pretend it’s still Friday and do it anyway.
1. What makes you homesick? As I mentioned last week, I haven’t been on an extended trip in a very long time, so I really haven’t had the opportunity to experience homesickness.
2. Where is “home” for you? Is it where you are living now, or somewhere else (ie: Mom & Dad’s house, particular state/city)? Home is the Research Triangle area of North Carolina. Marie and I lived in Columbia for most of a decade, but it never felt permanent; as students living in dorms, and then as a married couple living in various apartments, it always had a transient feeling, as if we were just passing through. After we moved here in 1987, I finally started to feel that I had put down roots.
Home used to be Rock Hill, but that town has changed so much since I left for college that I barely recognize it any more. The Triangle has changed just as much, of course, but I’ve watched it happen. Rock Hill transformed while I wasn’t looking, and on some unconscious level I still expect it to look the way it did in 1981.
3. What makes it home for you? People? Things? People. Specifically, GNO. Moving to North Carolina was made much easier by the fact that Virgil and Denise were already here. And gradually, over the next decade or so, the four of us managed to accumulate a group of like-minded people that defies description, except to say that I never get tired of spending time with them. This place is home because they are here. (Although, in point of fact, some of them aren’t physically here any more.)
4. Where is the furthest you’ve been from home, miles-wise? In 1968, my family (which lived in Monroe, Louisiana at the time) set out on a summer vacation across the southwestern USA. We got as far as Nevada before turning back. That’s definitely as far as I’ve ever been from my current home, and probably farther from Monroe than I ever get from Holly Springs these days.
5. What are your plans for this weekend? Well, the weekend in question is already over, but most of it was taken up with the final installment of Ben’s 13th birthday celebration. (When I was a kid, you got one party, on the actual anniversary of your birth. When did birthday celebrations become multipart affairs than last in excess of a week? Somewhere along the line, I got cheated.) We took Ben and a bunch of his friends bowling on Saturday, and they stayed at our house overnight and well into Sunday, playing video and computer games and trying out Ben’s new paintball equipment. (Now you know why I didn’t post anything over the weekend: I couldn’t get near the computer!)