It’s Christmas of 1999, upstairs in my apartment over the middle school, in my last year in Greenwich. Mom and Dad came down from Alaska, Scott and his fiancee Sarah came up from Virginia, and we celebrated with an incredibly dinky tree I undoubtedly bought at Caldor, decorated with a Y2K preparedness card used to advertise end-of-the-millennium supplies at Stop & Shop.

My big TV/VCR combo is there, on which I watched countless Yankees games, including David Cone’s perfect game that summer, as well as movie after movie from the Greenwich library’s VHS collection. My camera collection has started, filling up a few shelves thanks to some eBay finds.

And finally, the contacts era has begun, which would last for a few years, until I got tired of dry eyes and lengthy nighttime rituals.