Summer in the PRB*

Yes, I know how to read a calendar. Yes, I know it technically is not summer yet. But there are signs of it here in the PRB.

It started with the excess amounts of furniture along the curb. Every year the city sends out notices about how it's illegal to leave your furniture, and other stuff, on the curb. Every year in May, large amounts of furniture hits the curb. Usually it disappears within 24 hours or so. The sofa pictured? It's been there at least a week.

The next sign was that I no longer do the torturous search for parking. In fact, now there is often an abundance of "good" parking spaces. I know that come August I will hate the return of the students for this very reason.

Also it's been kind of warm around as of late. The kind of warmth that allows one to walk around with sleeveless stuff in the evenings. It's the kind of weather that reminds me of all those evenings last summer that my neighbors and I spent on the front stoop drinking wine and talking about whatever. (Well, with most of the women I talked about body image. And we discovered over the summer that many of us have had some serious issues with food.) If you are not familiar with the Bay Area, then let me just say that we cherish those kind of days. Until we return home to our apartments and houses that are not air-conditioned. Then we pray for fog.


And speaking of sleeveless evenings, Saturday night was the great dinner with Zombie Mom and Fluffycat -- in celebration of Fluffycat's birthday. After dinner, I dropped Zombie Mom at the taxi stand downtown. And of course at that point I was only a couple of blocks from my favorite spot. And the night was young.

The band for the evening was playing jazz. I ordered my usual from my bartender and headed for the small courtyard. Because one can smoke and drink there. I instantly ran into Random Boy (Emphasis on the "boy." We won't even get into the age of this one. Although I did threaten to trade him in for a younger model.) who was kind enough to pay for my drinks the evening of Zombie Mom's birthday celebration.

His first question? "Where are the leather pants?" I explained that the leather pants make limited appearances because they are dangerous. He then remembered some guy getting choked that same night. I explained why the guy got choked. Proof that the leather pants are indeed a dangerous thing. And Random Boy just might be around in the weeks to come.

And thus another sign of summer. The fact that there are boys around who are worthy of nicknames. If this past Saturday is any indicator, we're in store for a pretty wild summer.

On a completely different topic, I also came to another realization this morning. There seems to be some correlation with going out on the weekend and starting off Monday with feeling that I'm going to have a skinny week. (And back to Random Boy. You know you have no super ego when you start telling some guy that you think you're fat even though everything rational is telling you that it isn't true. His response? "Yeah, you're going to need to drop some pounds if you want to hang out with me." And when he said that, I was actually able to take it as a joke. Unlike my mother's comments.) But let's be real about the skinny week feeling. When I go out and party, I tend to eat less. Sure there is a lot of consumption of empty calories but still at the end of it all, I drop some pounds. And there was no puking involved in my weekend. Just to make sure y'all understand. So yeah, I will be getting up off my lazy ass a lot more and heading out. Like I used to.

And I'll keep you posted on Random Boy. It's been some time since I've hung out with a guy who's main interests are hunting, fishing, Nascar, and bourbon.

*PRB is the People's Republic of Berkeley.