Belated Friday five.

Eeking my way through the magic book goal with three days left, I ran across two time-related ideas. The first is five things from this decade (well, I added the "five" part) that I would put in a time capsule, if I were to make a time capsule, in no particular order:

• the Euro
  
• emo fashion
  
• the Lord of the Rings movies (followed closely by all the Harry Potter books)
  
• a Prius
  
• Wii
  

It was really hard to narrow that down to five. I tried to pick things that will likely be obsolete - or really, really cheap and therefore worthless - in ten years. (I suspect people will remember that "back in my day, gas was almost $5 a gallon, Antarctica was melting and no one cared, and we had a monkey for a president!" for years and years and years to come though.)

The second requires that I call upon my memory to document "where I was when...", so here are the more interesting ones:

• I was in 6th grade touring the White House when the Challenger exploded. My science teacher was chaperoning the tour. When we got back to my elementary school my science teacher herded us into the library to watch the news on TV. I remember her crying. I think I remember this because on any other usual day she was a total bitch, and this made her very human.
  
• I was in 11th grade Latin class when I heard that Magic Johnson announced he was HIV positive. My (absurdly insane but totally cool) Latin teacher suspended lesson plans for a few days to demystify HIV, AIDS, homosexuality, bigotry and safe sex for us. I learned more from her in those few days than I ever learned from any sex education class. (I can't say the Latin helped me in any aspect of my life, though.)
  
• I had been in Oakland for two years when the Columbine tragedy hit. But probably more interesting is that I worked with a couple of Columbine High School students the semester I lived in Colorado back in 1996. Littleton, Blacksburg... you've got to be careful in those small towns. Pay attention to the youth. Make sure they are engaged in society and have no access to deadly firearms.
  
• Bush declared war on Iraq the day I crossed the international date line on my way to Sydney, so technically that day did not exist for me. I wish I could say I've been living in a parallel war-free, death-free, debt-free universe ever since, but alas.
• I'm saving #5 for November 4th - either the day our country elects our first African-American president, or the day I finally decide once and for all to move to Canada. Either way I'll probably be in my Portland apartment when the verdict drops.