Woah. 2009.

Having realized that it is now 2009, I feel required to look back on who I was, and the general state of society itself, in the year of our Lord, 1999.

The bowl cut had recently faded into memory. Hair gel and looking like a character out of Dragon Ball Z was all the rage. As in damn near everyone had a bottle of green goop that they squeezed half a gallon out of every morning, and used to essentially mess up damp (but not wet, mind you) hair as much as possible.

1999 also found me in a relationship. Not the worst thing that ever happened to me, but definitely not the best. This began a long streak of bending over backwards for girls/women, a habit I've kicked by simply not talking to them (women) in general.

Sports. High school sports changed my self-perception. I'm still a small POS, but as a result of wrestling/cross country/track/soccer, and now cycling, I'm fairly confident in my natural abilities, in the hunter/gatherer sense of the word.

Ninety-nine was also the year of the Y2K freakout. Everyone was worried that the world as we knew it was going to come to a grinding, screeching halt when our increasingly computerized world came crashing down around us as a result of worldwide computer failures. Microsoft, Apple, and everyone else were shitting themselves, people were re-stocking their parents' 1950's-era bomb shelters, and there was a general feeling of "what if" doom-and-gloom. Post-apocalyptic radiation aside, and taking into account the previous paragraph, I'd like to think life would treat me better than most if we were suddenly thrust back to, oh, 1200 A.D.

I can't remember too much else from 1999. Whether my mind is saving me by repressing memories, or I've simply forgotten a rather boring year in my life, that's unknown.