# 13 May 2008, 11:30PM: The Last Mile:
One final down, one to go. Tidbit from studying: 1961 was the last year that defense comprised half or more of US federal spending.
Yesterday in a brainstorming meeting I mentioned Oregon Trail and a bunch of us squeed. Sharing pop culture touchstones is hardly a substitute for living one's entire childhood in a single social and geographical milieu, but it's what I have so that's where my nostalgia goes. One of the company's owners and a 24-year-old colleague didn't know about Oregon Trail. I must have played it for a hundred hours, after school at Sorrento Springs Elementary near St. Louis. Was that the second or third school I'd been to in two years? It was fourth or fifth grade, so it had been at least a year since we moved from Pennsylvania. Had I already slowed down on the whole making-friends endeavor? No, no, that wasn't yet, I only really got socially bewildered after moving to California. Maybe I should have taken more oxen.
Cogito, Ergo Sumana by Sumana Harihareswara is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available by emailing the author at sumanah@panix.com.