When you feel like you're watching your life on TV.

This past weekend I went to Boone/Blowing Rock to attend a Life Celebration service for the brother of one of my best friends. It was really an amazing ceremony and gathering, the perfect way for family and friends to remember a person. In such a beautiful place as well.
Growing up in Connecticut, I lived in a place surrounded by landforms. Everywhere you looked on the horizon was a taller hill or mountain. (Yet I was about an hour or a little more from NYC) I believe it is technically the foothills of the Berkshire ranges, but I could be very wrong. Anyways, driving on the highway, I noticed an increased presence of mountains and was just really taken aback. I really haven't seen more than flat land in about 4 years. I think the overall feeling of the week had me very detached, and when I saw something familiar I was very moved by it.


(via BlackBerry)

After the ceremony, I met some of my friend's high school friends. I always like meeting people's friends from high school if I only knew them from college, and hearing like names of the people who were hot or thought they were soooooo cool back in the day. I hope someday to introduce the couple of remaining northerners I keep in touch with to my southern friends. I think we would all get along.

The whole feeling of watching my life on tv really occurred when a local friend took us to the party of one of his friends in a house near downtown. I feel like we all walked in and were totally puzzled, confused, detached from that situation. It really reminded me of this one time in Greenville where I went to a similar party with LWJ and it was like that Stealer's Wheel song, "clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right, here I am, stuck in the middle with you." You're there, but you're separate from the situation. There were Marine and German flags all over the house, which really took me back to another part of my life as well, one that I don't like visiting. Overall it was just strange. We were all there, but at the same time, really just observers.

Back in Raleigh now, the weekend made me really want to go home again. I also was talking to one of my friends from home that I have known since preschool. She was saying there was a bar with my last name that they all frequent. I think that is a sign more than any that I should probably take some time soon to head back home. I don't think I could do cold weather again, living in a place where you have to start your car 30 mins before you leave home, but I could use a trip up there. I need my fill of landforms and elevation for the next few years.