Friday we revisited a long-defunct tradition: Monopoly at Buf and MA's. When they lived in Towson we did this once a month, and kept it up for a while after they shuffled off to Parkton, but it had been more than a year since we played.
As usual, I kicked ass.
Before the game we walked a couple miles out their country lane to its end as their two boys rode scooters ahead of us. I found this very pleasant, and as Buf told me about a cemetery he found while following the Gunpowder River trails I became agitated because I know that spot well--I used to go there when dating EC in high school, sometimes with E, sometimes with her twin sister L who dated Julio at the time. I took the Hulk there on Halloween once when there was a full moon and he got so freaked out he took off running down Upper Beckleysville Road.
I really enjoyed being a teenager in bum-fuck, and miss being able to walk out the door of my house, catch a horse trail along the river, and get lost in the woods. I used to find all sorts of weird foundations in the middle of nowhere. That cemetery was from the Hoffmanville settlement and the graves went back to the early 1700s, and there used to be a huge paper mill in the 1800s but it blew up because someone used an iron hammer which sparked a conflagration. Last time I saw the cemetary some moron had restored the stones by cementing the broken ones back together, re-doing the fence, and putting a ghastly monument up. Completely destroyed the aesthetics of the place, though the giant elm tree growing up through one of the graves was still there. Cha and I used to regularly wander around those trails and get up to no good, and once I even took the Dazzling Urbanite back a few miles and had to navigate us out in the dark. Fortunately I know how to "see" trails at night.
But I also like delivered food, walking to work, and living near museums and shops.
