The Wandering Mind of a Rolling Stone

Our strongest memories are tied to smell and taste largely because those senses are tied more directly to the amygdala and hippocampus than the others; the hippocampus, in particular, is the part of the brain that transfers short-term memory to long-term memory. There's a point to all this. Supermarkets loom largely in my own developmental memories; it was rare that my mother went out to get groceries without me and/or my sister growing up and she worked at one herself during her time her in the United States. Perhaps the most vibrant memories, in that regard, tend to come from Asian supermarkets because they're so markedly different than something like Safeway or Giant. And a lot of that absolutely comes from the smells and tastes from that little slice of East Asia that had come to Northern Virginia. Walking in the door, you're being greeted with a whole host of aromas that aren't particularly common in America; a blend of garlic powder, Korean red pepper, and some

One of the nicest bits of kismet in my life is that my 21st birthday fell on a weekend. What that meant is that the gloves could come off but I also wanted to enjoy the event so that was something I was aware of going in. I had a couple of close calls during my first semester of college so I largely abstained from controlled substances those first couple years really only drinking overseas when the age limit was no longer really an issue. That meant my tolerance was incredibly low which probably would make the whole thing more (more likely less) memorable. While a handful of my friends were older than me, it was decided to keep the action to a house party rather than a bar to accommodate the most people; birthdays are always meant to be spent with friends. So we stocked up with enough wine, beer, and liquor to satisfy approximately a dozen people for a full weekend within reason. A bit surprisingly, I largely kept to wine that weekend. I had just come back from a study abroad trip

There was always something about having a birthday smack dab in the middle of the dog days of summer. Being a couple weeks out from the beginning of school, a lot of families would try to get that one last vacation in right around the time I hit a birthday. Which isn't to say that birthdays were necessarily spent alone but it taught me pretty early on that people aren't going to drop what they're doing just to ring another one in; they've got priorities and prior commitments and that's absolutely okay. And as much as I enjoy a good birthday, it really is just another candle on the cake; at the end of the day, the only thing that changes is the date. Before we moved to Fairfax, a lot of birthdays were spent in random historical sights in the greater DC and Virginia areas. A free, air-conditioned museum is a great place to keep a toddler occupied in the middle of August so my parents and grandparents would take me to various Smithsonian Institute facilities includin