Where it all began...

Just got back from a nice weeklong trip to my hometown of Birmingham, Alabama. Took my daughters to visit with the fam and we had a blast. Great to be back in San Diego tho. I'm ready to work (not that I didn't work over the break, but it;s great to be back in my office, dev kit by my side, ready to crank). One thing I wanted to share first:

My dad and I took my kids to Brookwood Mall, the mall that was my hangout from probably 6-18 years old. Readers of the blog have heard me talk about the mall before, probably in very amateur but still loving poetic terms. But I can't help it: this mall was crucial to my creative development. It's where I spent thousands of my parent's quarters at Aladdin Castle, where I poured over game and movie magazines at Bookworld, where I fell in love with the imagery and vibe of heavy metal album covers at Musicland, where I practiced my basic programming and made little adventure games in the walled off area of the Radio Shack, where I stared longingly thru the glass case at Atari 2600 games at Circus World, where I fell in love with Chick-Fil-A waffle fries, and where I- at this little end of the mall that you see in the above picture- discovered my creative soul.

It doesn't look like much now (the big mall- which went thru a major renovation a few years back- is on the other side...this picture shows shows just a little side arm of the place. And it hasn't been touched. It looks pretty much just like it did 30 years ago!).

Yeah, it's just a little strip mall area but for me, this place is mythic. It's the shell of the movie theater where I saw Raiders of the Lost Ark, ET, Excalibur, and many more seminal geek movies. It's where I- as a 10 year old boy- discovered my passion for living a creative life. And it was good- just for a moment this week- to be back there.

I used to be a pretty nostalgic person. Not so much anymore. Having kids cured me of that. Now I like to  live for today, tomorrow. But it was still neat to go back, see the old place.

Ok, just wanted to share. Gotta get to work. Chat later in the week!

David