On Saturday, I broke from my diet rhythm; I didn't break my diet, that is, a night-long orgy of provocative fat, sensuous sugar, and that ever so seductive salt.

No, I didn't do ANY of that!

However, I DID miss out on my daily meal of spinach, broccoli, and sauerkraut. While that meal is a big contributor to my nutritional approach, I didn't miss out on much. In a context where my net carbs dipped hard from 20.8 to 13.5 g, it amuses me that the biggest hit was...sodium. I only ingested 81.7 mg, the equivalent of walking into a Pizza Hut.

Saturday was a bit of a travel day for me. I estimate I clocked in a total of around 180-190 miles in my truck. I went down to Greenbelt Park in Memphis to toss an Aerobie and followed that up with time spent in my Tiger jersey watching my alma mater take on UCF. I spent 1½ around the Liberty Bowl before the game started, took in the 1st half, and all but the last 2 minutes of halftime until it began to rain, so I headed out the door with us up 30-17. I'm not responsible for any lack of scoring thereafter in that 31-30 defeat! I drove home the entire time shrouded by the rain.

While in the Memphis area, I spent time visiting my old haunts: my childhood neighborhood, the Wolfchase mall, and the nearby Target among others. It's funny: though I really do miss those days of old and wish I could capture them and bring them to the present, while I was physically within those familiar spaces, it was surreal—they didn't feel like my home; they felt different. I was reminded of the Hickory Hill era circa the late '90s—as it has been sang, "Where is the life that I recognize? Gone away."

I grew up in that area and watched how a quiet intersection of Germantown Rd and Hwy 64 became a traffic-congested commercial center. What was once a pine hill with a train caboose, became a mall in the spring of 1997. I remember, for I skipped my college classes that morning on its first day. There was a time when I did an opening stint with the Store of Knowledge and two Christmas tours with the World of Science, '97-'98 and '98-'99. I even kept the job for funzies for about a month into my new job as an intern with Kraft in March of that year despite it paying half of what I made in my new job.

None of that is around anymore, of course. And that mall no longer feels like my mall. And to my wide-eyed surprise, when I drove by the Raleigh Springs Mall area, that area and the old Service Merchandise on the corner across from it was just flattened out—not even the parking lot remained. Just this dirt expanse. Malls invariably die, of course, and this mall had significance for me way back in the '80s. Even later, on the day I turned 16, I drove up there and bought a pair of Dan Post, black cowboy boots for $150―that's like $255 in today's money. Perhaps my last purchase at the mall was for a tux rental for my senior prom. It was never a surprise to me that the mall would spiral downward, but nevertheless, I didn't expect to see it wiped off the face of the planet.

I drove by the old K-Mart building down the street, remembering how I played my first NES there, absolutely blown away by how Super Mario Bros outclassed my Atari. Down the road, the Super K-Mart that had replaced it has been abandoned.

And while I loved my time downtown as I've had some great memories made there around that park—and OF COURSE my time at the Liberty Bowl for the University of Memphis has made such a HUGE impact in my life both personally and professionally—its stadium even feels the same as '96 and '97, sans seating and jumbotron upgrades—I was dismayed how I felt about what was once my hometown of Bartlett. It feels the same but it doesn't...it didn't feel like home. It is just a two-dimensional representation of what I once knew, for the depth of a third dimension of living emotion was noticeably absent.

The next day as I was doing some chores around the house, I spent a moment gazing across a cotton field as the cool autumn breeze swept across my brow. I realized I'm glad I live out in the country.