This summer, I had the pleasure of running into an old high school chum, Mike Magnusson. We hadn't seen each other since he and his family left England for the States in '93. I didn't know Mike really well. We played football together. His sister Amy was in my class. Still, it's always great to run into an acquaintance of old. It always fazes and amazes me how memories of another time and another place seem more like a story I read than my actual life in the past.
Anyway, I worked with Mike's wife Vanessa at Starbucks this summer. I mentioned that I grew up in England, she said her husband had attended high school there, and through a little elementary deduction, I was amazed to find that she was married to Mike. Quelle coincidence! He's in the Coast Guard and was training at NAS Pensacola. They finally got orders to their next duty station, somewhere near Houston. This suits Mike just fine, because their families are in Texas. And St. Arnold's Brewery is in Houston.
I got to hang out with Mike a couple nights ago before he left. We ate at the venerable Goatlips (a favorite haunt of Pensacola archaeologists and historians), picked up a couple of cigars from Cordova Cigars (handpicked by John D. Melvin III himself - and only $3!), and enjoyed some Dogfish Head Indian Brown Ale while we discussed beer, England, and Albuquerque (another place we've both lived, though at different times).
Here's a blurry phone-camera pic at my pad:
It should be noted that Mike once wore a neutral-coloured wetsuit in a little cove in Ibiza (youth group trip - yes, to Ibiza) with black stitching down his backside that made him look entirely nude from a distance. I'm not sure he was aware of this at the time.
And here's high school Mike ('93):
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