Continuing with the cleansing theme of the day ...

I came across some old receipts in a folder in my file cabinet. I have plenty of receipts and order forms worth keeping, but some of these, I have no idea why they're still around. But just like the letters I found before -- of which I have not yet reread all, but that might make for some good bedtime reading in a few minutes -- they've jogged my memory.

There's one for three tickets to a Shawn Colvin concert in New Brunswick, July 23, 1997. I went with my sister and our friend Jaime, and though it wasn't the Indigo Girls type of crowd, it was probably about even -- men/women couples and women/women couples. Why I remember that from the concert, I really can't tell you. I do remember, that after months of hearing "Barely Breathing" overplayed on the radio, I appreciated it again after hearing it live when Duncan Sheik opened. Jaime thought Duncan was cute, and after she came out of the bathroom after the show, he was standing there in the lobby of the theater, signing autographs and talking with fans. Shawn put on a good show too.

Next, a 1996 invoice for the Map'n'Go computer software I bought, but no longer use. It's obsolete now, no need to pay for it when I can find maps online.

A May 17, 1997, receipt from a stay at a Holiday Inn in DuBois, Pa. I had to stop there on the drive home from school after Senior Week. I'd been up late the night before, and it took me longer to pack the car that day, so I got a late start. I reached DuBois around maybe 7 p.m. and took a room at the hotel. I think it was the night the Knicks and Heat brawled in the playoffs, causing Patrick Ewing to whine for the next year about how the NBA took his championship away from him because it suspended all the players involved -- a punishment explicitly described in the rules: You leave the bench to fight, you miss a game. Ewing's big beef, though, was that the games that the various players missed (there were so many that they were spread over two games, for both teams) were Games 6 and 7, I believe, of the Eastern Conference quarterfinals. Shut up, Patrick.

Another hotel receipt, Dec. 20, 1996. This one was really interesting, and got me interested in figuring out what these others were for. Driving home for Christmas in 1996, my junior year, I gave a ride to the sister of the roommate of a hometown friend. More clearly: My friend Jaime (from the Colvin concert) at Penn State had a roommate, Jen. Jen's sister, Jackie, was a freshman at Notre Dame that year. Jen and Jackie lived outside of Philadelphia, so I agreed to take Jackie home for the holidays. The plan was to leave South Bend in the morning, drive to Philly, and I'd spend the night at Jackie's house.

Well, around about I-79 and Pittsburgh, it started to snow. Hard. Pretty soon, I had no idea where the road was, I was merely following the trucks. Since it was the Pennsylvania Turnpike, the exits were few, and far between. When we finally came to the next one, Exit 10, I could barely see six feet in front of my car, and had tailgated a truck to the off ramp. A Ramada Inn lay just off the exit, so we got a room -- after letting her parents know where we were, and checking to see that they didn't mind if we shared a room (separate beds, of course). We watched Must See TV -- for some reason, that part of it came easily to me -- and in the morning, as I'm clearing the snow off my car, I find that the reason my headlights were so useless the night before was because there was four inches of snow caked on them. Half an hour east, there was hardly any snow on the roadside. Had we been able to plow on, we would've gotten through the storm in maybe an hour the night before.

I found the receipt to my class ring. Think I will continue to hold onto this one.

October 23, 1996, the Toronto Colony Hotel. The room was reserved in Bryan's name, but I paid for it, as we were splitting the costs on this fall break road trip. We spent three days in Toronto, where we were of drinking age and our money went further. We met two girls from a small school in Pennsylvania who were studying to become hotel managers or travel agents or something. They were on a school outing, or maybe they had flown for free or something. USAir. We met them in a club with pool tables and video games, where Bryan and I would hit the driving games after we were sufficiently drunk. Jan was one girl's name, because she pointed it out when "Standing Outside a Broken Phone Booth With Money In My Hand" started playing, a song which was one of our theme songs that semester.

Looking at the hotel bill, we bought a pay-per-view movie one night, but it doesn't give the title -- #545, which cost $10.30 Canadian. Three nights' parking was C$51, and the total was C$333.46.

The highlight of the Toronto trip, if it wasn't the window seat at the Hard Rock in the SkyDome, where we watched a preseason Raptors game and got dinner and drinks all for C$26 each, was walking to the big downtown mall and seeing a line of ... let's say independent people lined up outside a record store. They were all dressed in black, with various piercings, tattoos, and other decorations and forms of expressions on their persons. Inside the mall, we were coming from the restrooms down a side hallway and had to pass the telephones on our way back to the stores. A man whom we first thought was a woman, all dressed in black with long hair, was facing us, then saw us coming and turned away, toward the wall as if he didn't want us looking at him.

The next morning, while flipping through the television, I came to MTV and saw that the man who desperately did not want us to talk to him was Marilyn Manson. Sure, like two guys who look like they're on a break from the J. Crew catalog would pester Marilyn Manson in a Toronto mall.

A Sports Illustrated Store receipt for a Cal Ripken t-shirt, which I bought after he broke Lou Gehrig's consecutive-games-played streak. I can't find that shirt now.

The ND Security Police report from when my wallet and other items were stolen out of my room while my roommate and I slept one of the first mornings we were on campus. What a welcome. But it was freshman orientation weekend, and it was likely by townies, not students. Seemed that way afterwards, when a man several blocks from campus called after having found my wallet, without the money of course, a few weeks later. ... Oops, wait. I just read the other items listed on this report, and this one is from Oct. 31, 1995, when my blue pullover jacket was taken from the football locker room after practice. I was a manager and had just finished working practice. My job now was to help the other managers clean up the locker room after the players had showered and gone to dinner. We generally just have to pick up towels, soap, rearrange the stools, etc. I'd left the jacket in the middle of the floor, in the open room, and don't remember leaving. I noticed it was gone after there had only been a few players left, but one of them had been known for taking things before. He once stole a bicycle from a rack outside a classroom building and stored it in his dorm room. Only the owner of the bike lived down the hall, and saw his stolen bike in the player's room one day when the door was open. I got a call that night from a student who'd found my wallet and keys (no money or jacket) on a sidewalk behind the dining hall, directly on the route I'd -- and the players -- had taken from the locker room to dinner.

And finally, a sheet of address labels with the 1767 Irish Way address from my senior year in college. This folder included random things from sophomore through senior years. But that year at Campus View, 1767 Irish Way, was perhaps the best nine months of my life to this point. All I remember now from those days is the good times, the fun, the parties, and none of the stress, the homework, the responsibilities.

So far from those days now ...