Thursday, May 06, 2004

Things I Think about while Running

Today it was "Jesus Christ, can it possibly be any greener than this?!?!"

These first couple of weeks of May are my second favorite time of year, close behind the first couple of weeks of October. One reason is of course the birthday of My Reason for Living (TM) JennySlash, but there's more to it than that. Since I arrived in Chapel Hill umpty-ump years ago, this time of year has had a special resonance exemplified for me by the incredible green that the whole town seems to turn that really only lasts until the heat and the inevitable summer drought put a layer of haze and dust over everything.

Yeah, it meant finals (studying all night and wandering through the pre-dawn through the trees on McCorkle Place to Franklin Street in search of strong coffee, which was MUCH harder to do back in the day before Starbucks and Caribou and Strong's, etc.) but it also meant that delicious time when I was done with my finals but Jean or Kevin or Donna or Steve or Peggy or one of the rest of the gang waiting to go to Myrtle Beach were still finishing theirs, so there were two or three or four days of ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO but sit around the pool at Tar Heel Manor, wander downtown through quickly thinning bar crowds for a couple of beers at He's Not Here or a few rounds of quarters at Troll's 'til closing time, then stumble to Subway for a double meat 12" BMT or to Hector's for a Greek grilled cheese. I mean, it's not like the rest of the year wasn't a lot like that too, we just didn't have that vaguely guilty feeling about it during the week between finals and graduation!

And under the old academic calendar, the week after graduation was even better. There was a week break between graduation and the start of summer session back then and in a time when there were many fewer Chapel Hill residents that were NOT associated with the University, the town just freaking emptied out. Suddenly the high school kids ruled Franklin Street and the bars that didn't declare a little hiatus were pretty much empty. It was a great time to hit the bars that were in the process of going under - I recall drinking $1 call brand highballs at Harrison's a couple of nights in a row with Chaz and Handsome Dave as they were about to lose their liquor license and were trying to get rid of their inventory.

So pardon me if my motivation to work or exert myself for the next few days seems lacking - all I really want to do is wake up at 11 am-ish long enough to flop down on a lounge chair in the back yard and go back to sleep until 3, get up and shower, find a pizza somewhere and then just hang out at the Cave or East End or Woody's until somebody gets me a cab home and I do it all over again. I promise it won't last more than another week or so...

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