Myspace Re-Post #11: The Summer of 2006

Note: Re-posted from my now-defunct Myspace blog, where it was originally posted on July 30th, 2006.

The summer of 2006 has been a summer of bikes and cars and prodigious sweat.

It has been a summer of frequent trips to Brookline for kosher meat and excitement. A summer of Saturday-night ice-cream escapades and midnight birthday celebrations. and constantly missing turns onto mislabeled streets and poring over maps in the middle of traffic.

This was the summer I spent fifteen minutes in Maine and several hours in New Hampshire. The road was clear though the sky was cloudy, and with only my thoughts for company, I covered ground on backgrounds along the ocean's front.

The summer of 2006 is a summer of long hours in a lab on the fourteenth floor of a tall white building that stands stark against the sky, where machinations take place behind closed office doors and summer interns joke and play pranks in the central control room.

This has been the summer when my spring romance ended. Much hope and talk and late-night obsession ended in a two-hour phone call across continents. And a summer when new possibilities arose, when a talkative girl with intricate curls drew my interest in spite of the mockery of my friends.

On sunny days I occasionally undertook bike missions - once to a storied arboretum and a necklace of parks. other times I sat in my apartment and labored at getting myself to work.

Somedays I rose at nine, other days at twelve. A few days I rose later. I distinctly doubt that I ever rose earlier.

This summer the Shabboses are long and mostly lazy. They begin with a frenetic Friday night, a brightly-lit communal meal at one or another of the region's apartments. The day stretches on into eternity and the reading only puts me to sleep.

This has been the summer of my first trip to suburban Long Island. The visit became an impromptu shabbaton when one of my chicago friends was stuck in new york due to cancelled flights. and the beach was the scene of unexpected sunshine and nerf-football and the ever-present waves.

This summer I have learned to keep thoughts unspoken, and to resent room mates with poor hygenic habits. The apartment politics became too involved at times to articulate, but at the end of the day, in truth, the war was one.

The summer of 2006 has been better than the summer of 2005 and other summers past. Take no offense, fair Chicago, but it was certainly time for a change. and the future stretches out, with one more month, before the end of the final summer of my college years.