My Paris ’98 Story… Sort Of
Okay, so someone mentioned ’98 Paris’ the other day, and it just unlocked a whole memory bank. Not exactly about being in Paris, though. See, I was all set to go that summer. Big plans, the whole deal. My buddy and I were saving up, looking at cheap hostels, dreaming about seeing the World Cup final atmosphere, even if we didn’t have tickets for the actual game.
We spent months planning this thing out. I remember printing maps from MapQuest, probably. High tech back then! We had this whole itinerary sketched out on loose-leaf paper. Practiced saying “Bonjour” and “Merci” terribly.
The Big Letdown
Then, bam. Life happens. My buddy’s job situation changed suddenly, couldn’t get the time off. And me? My car decided to completely die. Like, engine kaput, transmission gone. Needed replacing, basically. So, my entire Paris fund evaporated overnight. Just gone.
Man, I was so bummed out. Seriously down about it. Ended up watching the final at home on my crappy little TV. Felt miles away from where I wanted to be.
What I Did Instead
Instead of wandering around Montmartre, I ended up spending that summer doing something completely different. Needed a project to distract myself, you know? So, I decided to finally organize all my old music tapes and CDs. Sounds thrilling, right?
- Dragged out these massive boxes from the closet.
- Tried setting up some kind of database. Think I used Microsoft Access? It was clunky.
- Spent hours typing in track lists, artist names, genres.
- Even tried to make little cover art scans with a flatbed scanner that took ages.
It was tedious work, honestly. Kept thinking, “Should be eating a croissant right now.” But I kept at it. Filled up notebooks with details when the database thing got too annoying. It was my own little ‘project’ born out of disappointment.
Looking back, that whole ’98 Paris’ thing feels like a weird turning point. Didn’t get the trip I planned, but I did tackle that messy music collection. Found some great old tunes I’d forgotten about. The database file is long gone, probably corrupted on some old floppy disk somewhere. But hey, the memory of planning for Paris ’98 and then spending the summer alphabetizing cassette tapes? That’s stuck around.