Satellite.

Was reading an article today on AOL News (don't judge me) about bloggers using Google Earth to find weird stuff you can only see from satellite. By this I do not mean the enormous Eva Longoria thingie in the desert.

This caused me to go download Google Earth because I am nothing if not easily influenced. And there was no intent of finding the lost city of Atlantis by my keen observations of topographic features. I learned to use Auto-CAD back in the day to trace satellite maps to make usable maps to use for an archaeological expedition (I know, I sound fancy, but really...not). Anyway, Auto-CAD confused the crap out of me until someone said "Just trace the lines." Et voila! Roads, towns, other stuff! Amazing. So can't imagine my skills at recognizing other crap on satellite photos is going to be all that impressive. If you have low expectations, then you get to surprise yourself! Or something.

Anyway, so downloaded Google Earth and then promptly looked up my address and was a tad disturbed that I could recognize cars in the parking lot. It was obviously an image from a while ago, but still. This has got to be a great stalkers' tool. Not that I think about things like that or anything.

Then looked up my parents' address. And became weirdly nostalgic and ooey and comforted. Because there was the house I grew up in, my family still lives in, the neighborhood I know like the layout of Target. There is the little shed my dad put up because we, as a collective whole, are pack rats and acquisitive and believe in the adage that whoever dies with the most stuff, wins. There's the line of trees that one summer looked like a dragon cruising the sky. There's the house on the corner that we think is a meth lab or house of prostitution or possibly both. Because the inhabitants "keep to themselves" and didn't have any window coverings for months and months after they moved in. Ergo, meth lab.

Images didn't have the shopping plaza that sprang up last year. Or the larger shopping plaza that was completed earlier this year. Or the other one that came three years ago. Or the construction going on to widen the road.

I don't know what the point is, but Joni Mitchell does.