You CAN'T go home again

Turns out Thomas Wolfe was right; you can't go home again, figuratively anyway. When you try to revisit the past, it just doesn't work.

Many many moons ago (OK, about 4 years) I worked in a really cool place (still for the Hospital, just a different office) smack in the middle of downtown Carrboro. Now, the offices were trashed; don't ever let someone tell you that a 150 year old textile mill can be adequately cleaned up for human habitation. But, it was a great location; walking distance from plenty of cheap, yummy places to eat.

My friend Phil and I used to go to Amante's pizza for their lunch special every couple of weeks or so. The special was a lunch sized pizza with one topping and a drink for $4.00. I always got artichoke hearts as my one topping, because no one else in my family at that time liked them.

What was truly cool, though, was that if you paid with a 5, you got 77 cents in change, which was exactly enough to get a cookie at Weaver Street (which was conveniently located across the street from Amante's and downstairs from our office).

So, for a grand total of five dollars, you got a good 'za, fountain beverage of your choice, and a cookie! What a deal!

I always got the peanut butter chocolate chip cookies. They were huge (like half the size of my head), and terribly yummy.

Well, tonight, as is usual for a Thursday, was a bit of a logistic nightmare: choir practice from 5:45 - 6:30, then Peter had baseball from 6:30 to 8:00. I've gotten to the point that I just assume we'll eat somewhere on Franklin Street on Thursday nights, because frequently one of the kids has SOMETHING going on right after choir.

If I leave the decision up to the kids, we eat at Firehouse subs. Tonight, though, I rebelled. Peter did get his Hook and Ladder combo, since he had to be at practice, but Grace and I decided to go to Weaver Street for dinner. We grabbed our food, bought chocolate Silk for Grace and coffee for me, then grabbed dessert.

For old times sake, I got a peanut butter chocolate chip cookie.

And it just wasn't good.

I still ate about 3 quarters of it, mainly trying to figure out what had gone wrong. I finally came to the conclusion that they've begun using a more 'natural' peanut butter, with less salt, and they're using a different chocolate, too. Not a bittersweet, necessarily, but it almost had a burned taste to it.

But it was very sad. I LOVED those cookies! They should still be good!