The woman heroically coordinating my 20th high school reunion sent a mass email requesting RSVPs. The putative event is a year away. I’m inclined to just say “yes,” but with my life, it’s hard to estimate my ability to attend something like a high school reunion as much as a year in advance. A year ago, we were living in China with no kids, no car, no house, and no furniture. We have since corrected those omissions.

Tomorrow marks the one-year anniversary of our return from China. We literally descended through fireworks; I saw Independence Day 2007 from above.

It’s been a busy year. I haven’t been on airplane at all in the last 12 months.

From 1995 to 2003, somehow I managed to visit Eugene at least once a year. For eight years, when I thought of “Oregon” the place I pictured, instinctively (and a little bit sadly), was “Eugene.” Since my brother moved to Portland, I haven’t so much as driven through.

I haven’t been back to Nebraska — my home state — since the summer of 2004. Thus marking the longest period of my life that I’ve gone without setting foot on native soil.

Ten years ago, I had every intention of attending my 10-year reunion. I even paid for a ticket, filled out an entry for the facebook, and everything. Then I was laid off from what would be my last-ever archaeology job ... which layoff was approximately coincident with a move from Southern California (back) to Oregon; my first wedding (the less said, the better); and launching a glorious new career in web design. I pretty literally forgot I had a high school reunion to attend.

I almost ran into Sarah Jessica Parker in West Hollywood. She was coming out of a boutique. As she walked past me I said to myself: “I think that was Sarah Jessica Parker.” This was probably 1999, so before Sex in the City? So I knew her from...Square Pegs? Mars Attacks? L.A. Story? Also: she was theees beeeg [holds thumb and forefinger very close together]

I also nearly ran into Pete Buck in Belltown, Seattle, in 1999.

While riding my bike past Powell’s Books on the day of the Rose Parade (2002) I saw David Cross talking to someone. I didn’t know David Cross’ name at that point in my life, but I remembered seeing Mr. Show about four years earlier. I wanted to say “hey I know who you are,” except course I didn’t so I shouted “Mustardayonnaise!” at him. He gave me a smile-and-nod, the kind of motion you make when a drunken friend yells at you from across the beach.

In 2002 I went with a date to a reading by Michael Ondaatje at Powell’s. My date knew his son, and he recognized her. We only had one date.

I saw Robin Williams running through the Presidio in 1992. He was very sweaty and very hairy. This was at some great distance so I didn’t yell anything at him.

Sitting in front of my office in Old Town in 2000 I saw Tommy Larkin walk by with someone else dressed in leather. I thought, “hey, I could get Tommy Larkin’s autograph.” Then Jonathan Richman walked by. I was far too excited to think anything at all, and completely failed to get his autograph.

At the Rimrock Mall in Billings, Montana (late 1997), I passed a man who presented a kind of conspicuous inconspicuousness. He wore a plaid jacket, a baseball cap, and round eyeglasses. Something about his style and carriage seemed all wrong for Billings, Montana, as if he were a Martian anthropologist trying desperately to look like a Montanan. When I got to County Seat (the shop in the mall where I habitually bought blue jeans) all the County Seat shopgirls were standing outside the shop tittering. Apparently Mel Gibson was in the mall and they were trying to catch a glimpse of him. I think the Martian anthropologist may have been Mel Gibson.

At an all-ages show at Duffy’s Tavern (Lincoln, Nebraska) in 1991, Lori Allison of the Millions sang a capella while standing on an overturned bucket and leaning on me.

I saw Art Alexakis (of Everclear) at a movie in 2003 or 2004. Around the same time I saw Janet Weiss (of Sleater-Kinney) on Hawthorne Blvd. I also saw Marlee Matlin on the North Park Blocks, where they were filming What the Bleep Do We Know.

At Duffy’s in 1990, Nirvana sat at the bar before their set and watched their first episode ever of the Simpsons. I wasn’t there, but Krist Novoselic told this story between songs during the In Utero tour show at Ak-Sar-Ben in Omaha Nebraska in 1994, and I was there.

I never once, not ever, had the presence of mind to ask any celebrity for their autograph.

I spent a portion of my weekend sorting and cleaning some of my old bike tools. Mixed in with which were the bare core of my archaeological field kit. Said discovery occasioned me to reflect on a life I used to have: I used to be an archaeologist.

I left that life behind nine years ago. After seven years of chasing work around the country, I wanted to put myself into a place first, and a job second. That’s when I took up the website-making stuff.

When people learn about this past life, they wonder either or both of two things:

1. Why I ever left it for web design
2. How my archaeological work prepared me conceptually for web design

The answer to the first question is easy: because it’s so much easier to find jobs designing websites. This is not, for me, a matter of income: I could (and did) happily live on my archaeologist salary. No, what makes website design a better career is that no one, ever, has said to me “you’re lucky even to have a job.” I think I heard this phrase, or variations thereof, from nearly all of my archaeology bosses, even the good ones whom I liked and who valued my abilities. The sad fact of having a job title like “archaeologist” is that the supply of people with that title far outstrips the demand.

The answer to the second question is also easy, but most people don’t like to hear it. So I don’t tell them. I think studying anthropology excellently prepared me for heavy-duty brain work, as I’ve written about previously. (Grad school also gave me another headstart on web design, but the reason was historical. I started grad school in 1995 when the web was young and unfettered high-speed Internet access kind of tricky to come by. By virtue of my status as a grad student at the University of Oregon, I had time-share access to Unix web servers, and fast ethernet.) But really, I’d have had (most of) this preparation if I’d have gone straight from my undergraduate degree, through grad school, and into the non-anthropology workforce. It has more to do with the great ability of a liberal education to prepare a person for nothing and everything all at once, provided that person is actually paying attention.

One perceptive person once deduced that archaeology — especially geoarchaeology, which I was pretty good at — conditioned the mind to think four-dimensionally, which was useful lateral training for work with computers. Everyone else sees some connection between the patience or care they imagine archaeologists use in excavation, and web design. I don’t buy that at all, because archaeology really doesn’t require that much patience or attention (just good note-taking), and web design doesn’t require it at all.

No, the real (and very prosaic) answer to “how did your archaeological work prepare you conceptually for web design” is “because it got me working with databases.” That’s really the only connection between what I used to do a decade ago and what I do now.

I often miss archaeology, because it’s a very satisfying job in its daily details. I particularly miss working and living outdoors. The career also provided a good mix of brainwork and hard physical labor, a combination lacking in most other (any other?) jobs. For the sake of reminiscence, I scanned a few old photos of my archaeology self, shaggy hair, beard, sunburn and all.

With a kid on the way I’ve been thinking a lot about my own childhood and the way I was raised. In particular, I’m kind of floored at how few freedoms modern children have. I think a large part of the person I am today — fearless, independent, improvisational, and yet careful and relatively cautious — is a direct result of the latitude I enjoyed as a young person.

New York Post columnist Lenore Skenazy recently let her 9-year-old ride the subway home from Bloomingdale’s, a surprisingly newsworthy event. She described it on NPR as being the equivalent of “Nine Year Old Makes Toast”

the following is crossposted as a comment on Lenore’s website, Free Range Kids.

I stood outside the door of Pickles Records, waiting for opening time, on the day of Document’s release in 1987. (It was also, coincidentally, the day before my 16th birthday.) That event began a pattern that continued through 1988’s Green (released on Election Day), 1991’s Out of Time (sometime in early spring — oh, March 12, thank you Wikipedia!), and 1992’s Automatic for the People (October 6): I would buy R.E.M.’s newest album on its release day.

Archaeological fieldwork (in the vicinity of Buffalo, Texas) delayed my purchase of 1994’s Monster (September 27), but I resumed my habit for New Adventures is Hi-Fi (September 10, 1996). The last R.E.M. album I bought on its release date was the post–Bill Berry Up (October 27, 1998). During the same year, someone at a party asked me who my favorite band was and my then-girlfriend answered for me: “Stereolab.” I recall being a little put off — where did she get off saying my favorite band wasn’t R.E.M., which was certainly the case since at least 1986’s Lifes Rich Pageant? But the hell of it was, she was right.

I bought Reveal several months after its release (May 15, 2001). I knew of its existence during the entire time, but the uneven quality of the band’s last two albums dulled my enthusiasm a little. I eventually bought it on CD — one of the last albums on bought on CD, actually.

I can’t recall when I bought 2004’s Around the Sun. I think I noticed some unfamiliar R.E.M. songs on a coworker’s shared iTunes library, which prompted me to wonder — “did R.E.M. release a new album and I didn’t even know about it?” Yup, that’s what happened. I downloaded the album from iTunes mainly out of loyalty. By that time — probably early 2005 — R.E.M. occupied the same place in my pop culture universe as The Simpsons...their early work had essentially bought them a lifetime free pass in my opinion.

I feel pretty good about being only three days late for Accelerate, which is a stronger effort than any R.E.M. album since 1996. Like U2’s How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, it’s a return-to-form album, with none of the electronic experimentation of Up or the soft-rock coasting of the previous two albums. So in the sense of “resembles older, better R.E.M. albums,” it’s pretty good. On the other hand, at least until 2004, the one thing you could safely say about the newest R.E.M. album was that it wouldn’t sound much like any R.E.M. album before it.

When I was 16, I wrote a screed about classic rock radio called “Fuck Radio” for a friend’s zine (the Subterranean). It used to infuriate me that a young person could turn on the radio and hear great rock and roll coming from at least five F.M. stations, but that none of that great rock and roll was newer than about 1978. I thought I was living through the halcyon years of rock and roll, which had been revitalized first by punk rock in the late 70s and then again by New Wave and the R & B–influenced pop of the early 1980s. I held especial contempt for the Rolling Stones and Eric Claption, both of whom I regarded as way past their prime, holding back rock and roll, filling the airwaves and critical attention with stuff that had already been done. This was part of a larger rubric in my head that kind of loathed the remaindered 60s culture of then-thirtysomethings. What little airspace was left for pop music seemed to be filled with execrable hair metal and junky throwaway pop.

I wonder where that screed is now? I bet it’s funny.