15 years ago: June 1989 - I was 11, and just finishing sixth grade. My family spent all of that July traveling around the country seeing national parks and family members.

10 years ago: June 1994 - the end of 11th grade. I had an immense crush on a friend, who by then had mostly stopped talking to me (he didn't get nasty until the following fall). My brother had broken an arm and a leg at a school dance, and was probably actually in the hospital on this date. He was a pet rock most of the summer. That August, I did college tours and interviews, and decided I wanted to go to Drew.

9 years ago: June 1995 - Classes were over, and I was preparing for graduation, mostly consisting of writing out a speech I'd been composing for several years. I was dating oidhche, and in fact I think June 3 may have been the day of my senior prom.

8 years ago: June 1996 - I was very sad to be at home after my first year of college, and spent a lot of the summer writing letters to everyone I knew. I worked at one of the Hallmark stores in the Pheasant Lane Mall in Nashua, NH, with Melissa. My grandfather died that June. I had an amazingly serious crush on someone I'd recently met and never expected to see again, and a much smaller one on someone I'd been sort of involved with, which I focused on to try to get the other guy out of my head. It didn't work.

7 years ago: June 1997 - I was in Egypt. The new experiences and completely different environment served to break me out of the deep depression and fog I'd been in since deciding I had to break up with caniswolfie. I learned a lot about who I was, and who I wanted to be.

6 years ago: June 1998 - spent my summer at Drew, working for Telecom. While cleaning phones wasn't the best job in the world, the summer was unforgettable. I was collecting soupkills's mail for him, and it was quite an education!

5 years ago: June 1999 - Shortly after graduation from Drew, by June 3, I would have been back in NJ and into the frenetic preparations for amy_pearlman and blackfog's wedding. I had no fixed plans for my future, but was hoping to find a job and move back to NJ, mostly to be closer to amy_pearlman and demongrey, and everyone else. It's funny, they say history never repeats itself, but sometimes it can look remarkably similar.

4 years ago: June 2000 - living in New Providence with caniswolfie and johnstevensaul. I was very happily dating daernhelm, who was living on campus for the summer. That must have been the summer of The Summer Campaign, a highly successful D&D game that left lasting impressions on all involved.

3 years ago: June 2001 - still living in New Providence and still with daernhelm, who by then had been living in Alexandria, VA with his parents for most of a year. The long distance relationship wasn't what either of us would have chosen, but we made it work fairly well. It was probably sometime in June, plus or minus a few weeks, that I signed on to the Lois McMaster Bujold mailing list, since I know by mid-July I'd been reading it long enough to recognize the styles of some of the regular listees. Three years later, I'm still waiting for the terribly insightful comment that I can make that no one else got to first.

2 years ago: June 2002 - This was the month of nothing but moving; on June 3, I had just taken possession of my Madison apartment and was learning the joys of bleach in an attempt to make it habitable before I moved. daernhelm moved up that August; in the meantime, I had my very own home.

1 year ago: June 2003 - we were preparing for the cruise to Alaska, a trip that was well worth the time and energy. There was only about a month left in my relationship with daernhelm, and hindsight says I should have seen the warning signs, but at the time I still believed I was happy. I was also quite thoroughly and happily LiveJournal-addicted.

Today: I'm in a holding pattern, which I need to break as soon as possible, but not until after the gardner_wedding in just over two weeks. I need to find a new job and move, and since daernhelm has a move date, it's now a real time pressure. As usual, the closer I get to a major change, the more doubt and anxiety I experience, but the time has come.