The Fountain of Youth

It's official. I'm addicted to ebay.
Today, I was just sitting in front of the computer, minding my own business surfing some of the auctions. I saw something that I was somewhat interested in--TV on DVD, of course. I was like, oh, $18.00. That's not too much. I'll just bid that, to push the price up a little. But no, whoever was bidding decided not to set a higher bid, so I discovered that I was suddenly the high bidder. I sat there, slowly understanding that there were only 2 minutes left to the auction, understanding I had a good chance of winning something I was kind of into but not really anticipating receiving. I refreshed the page over and over again, literally praying to God that someone--anyone--would bid at 18.50.
Needless to say, 2 minutes later, I found myself the unproud (in fact, somewhat sniveling) owner of Angel: Season One.

Maybe it's a good thing that my dad's tying up the internet 24/7.
WHY do I do these things to myself? WHY?

The real raison d'etre I'm posting: I went for a bike ride yesterday.
For me, bike riding is like stepping in a time machine. (Oh no, you're thinking. Not saccarine, childhood reminiscence. What do you expect from someone who likes Buffy?) My BFF and I used to bike ride to each other's houses all the time in elementary school. (I have the scars on my kness to prove it.) Once, I fell off in a grape vineyard (one of the many b/w our houses) and ripped a chank out of the knee cap. So cool. Blood dripping down my leg, and it really did look thick as corn syrup. It stained the cuffs of my socks. Another time, we were joining her cul-de-sac's bike club (Yes, the suburbs are lame.) for a ride until I ran over some woman's cabbage-flower-looking thing. She yelled out her front door after me.
Bad omen 1 when I was getting my Huffy Helios ready for departure was the chain had come off the front gears, so when I rode it was in perpetual first gear. (Those of you who know your bike physics know what the problem is with this: lots of work with little result.) Bad omen 2 was cleared up with an electric air pump.
Seriously, though, I haven't ridden my bike all the way to Shomont in about, say 5 or 6 years. I used to all the time, and the part of me that gets reminiscent (usually, in very short, separate instances of my life) was very happy yesterday. And, of course, what's funny is what I felt reminiscent about:
1. the excrememt smell of the ditches on the side of the road (bc we have the highest water table in Erie county, and some ppl's septic systems rise to the surface more easily than is healthy)
2. the slight curve in the road (nothing to a car, almost nothing on a bike), the hardly-noticeable dips up-and-down in the tar and chip
3. When I was little and I got my bike going really fast, I thought I saw in the tar and chip road a cartoon man with a large nose and handlebar mustache (that stuck out at his sides like stiff cat whiskers). He was perpetually sneezing. I saw him again yesterday. It's one of those things: you never know you miss it until you think about it. Then, it's like some part of you is hurting. That's what happened at school when I had my catalogued, few and far b/w reminiscent moments. Always the strangest things. Always objects or specific moments in time. Never attached, never fitting one into the other like a string of pop-beads. *

*For Cynthia--

Pop beads are the things that babies play with. Also, they can be fake beaded necklaces that come in various shapes and sizes for anyone ages 1 to 100.