Crash and I were sitting in my room watching a rerun of The Practice the other night when it suddenly occurred to me that my room won't be mine all that much longer.

In a rush, like a tidal wave, it hit me. In, like, 40 days, I'm going to have to pack all my shit and move. Granted, I'm only going an hour away, but I'm taking everything with me. The Play-Doh I got on sale because it reminded me of Earth and Space Science with Pious Boy, the boom box (are we still calling it a boom box? It's 2003. Is there no cool new name for it now?) Moonshadow got me for Christmas, the Little Foot plush doll my grandma gave me when I was three -- all of this will be boxed up again, just like it was two and a half years ago.

I remember hating this room with a passion. I hated the color, I hated the wallpaper border, I hated that the vents were in the ceiling instead of on the floor. I hated that the closet door in this house actually opened and shut like it was supposed to.

And it wasn't just the new bedroom. It was the whole house. I cursed the designer for not including a basement. Where was I supposed to sneak off and watch TV late at night? I hated that the dog wasn't allowed inside the new house. Just like that, he became an "outside dog." He hates me now, I think. Maybe he doesn't hate me, but I don't spend nearly as much time with him as I used to, primarily because he can't come in the house anymore. I hated that we had a dining room I knew we'd never use. Two and a half years later, there is a new table in the dining room, but I can count on one hand the times I've eaten in there. I hated the walls for not having nails already in them. They were just making it more complicated to hang my pictures.

Now I know this house like I knew the one before it. I know where the "keys" are hidden if someone has locked a door. I know where we keep the glue and Scotch tape. I know how to sneak in at night without anyone noticing. Finally, after two and a half years, I know where Mom hides chocolate and Swedish Fish.

It would be easy to say none of that matters anymore, because now I have to pack everything up and start all over again. It does matter, though. The way the stairs creaked in the old house, the way that lightswitch never works in the living room at the new house...these are the weird things I'll remember randomly late at night. And I think moving is like anything else: the more you do it, the better you get at it. Hopefully I won't still have unpacked boxes in the dorm two years from now.

I guess the hard part was never the physical, actual moving, though. It's the emotional jet lag that sneaks up on you when you're by yourself in the bookstore, reminding you of the time you and L. and R. stayed in Borders all night, listening to music and mocking romance novels. It's the first time you walked into the new house and fought over who got what bedroom that you'll keep with you when you finally get your own place. It's not about the distance in miles as much as it is the distance in memories. How far have I come in two and a half years? More importantly, where do I go from here?

["Okay, someone needs to lay off the My So-Called Life. Not everything has deep philosophical implications." - Dr. S]

I knew that guy was trouble the first second I heard about him. "Conservative" radio talk show host and author ("The Savage Nation") Michael Savage has been fired from his weekend show on cable's MSNBC. Why? Because he called a gay caller a "sodomite" and told him to "get AIDS and die." What a jackass.

Reading: Just finished Why Girls Are Weird, which made me both laugh and cry. You should totally go buy the book or check out Pamie's Bookslut interview in which she uses the phrase "Vagina Babble." Watching: A rerun of Profiler Listening to: David Gray Eating: Lay's Dill Pickle flavored potato chips Surfing: Lost in Metropolis