Tonight we're gonna party like it's 1999.

There are certain things making me feel old lately. The first is that Joe Sakic retired today. Joe was drafted before Sidney Crosby was even born. I grew up watching him. In the late 90s, I was addicted to the Red Wings/Avalanche rivalry, and never missed one of those games. The players I most loved watching in those games - Sergei Federov, Steve Yzerman, & Sakic - have now all left the NHL. The other players I remember watching all my life - most notably Jaromir Jagr - are nearly all gone. I'm not complaining in any way about our guys now, but with Sakic's retirement, it really feels like the end of an area.

I had tickets to an Avalanche/Capitals game last year, and was ecstatic. Sakic got hurt just a few games before and didn't play. I was devastated that I never got to see him play live.

The second, as I posted on Facebook last night, was the realization that The Blair Witch Project came out 10 years ago this month. I suppose I already knew that, since I very distinctly remember seeing the film the summer between high school and college. I remember all the hype - the creation of a website that seemed very, very real, the wondering if it was fake or not, and the jam-packed theater I saw it in. (We were stuck in the 3rd row or so and my neck hurt for days afterwards.) I also remember feeling very freaked out by the movie. Not scared, but freaked. My friend Sarah didn't want to drive her boyfriend home because he lived pretty much in the middle of nowhere and didn't want to go near the woods that night.

Being reminded of how novel, how fresh that movie felt, especially this week when we're being bombarded with ads for Bruno, another faux-documentary, makes it feel so long ago. I know this is going to sound very old-ladyish, but that was before cell phones. Before Facebook. Before digital cameras. AIM was high tech for us. Napster was still a few months away. The concept of promoting a movie primarily using the internet was still very, very novel. And when we left high school back then, we really left, because we didn't have social networking sites to keep tabs on everyone. It wasn't until last year or so that I reconnected with a lot of people through Facebook. But then, that summer was honestly a complete split from where I'd previously been and where I was going to college.

So maybe that's why the realization really hit me - that movie was one of the last things I did as a high schooler, with the people I was spending time with then, at the places we were hanging out. And that was 10 years ago. Holy crap, we're getting old.