Liquor is best when it hurts.

Yesterday I woke up with a great hangover. They absolutely exist, as consequences to a great time. As Steinbeck says, I take my hangovers as a consequence, not a punishment. They’re even better when they’re on rainy Sundays when you’ve got all the water in the borough to drink and season 2 of Buffy on DVD.

But you know when hangovers are really the best?

When you’re in college, surrounded by your best friends, and you’re all in the same boat.

(Read on, and I apologize for the rushed ending, I got tired.)

Work can wait; there are keys under the library.

No wonder I’m a writer. God has given me the best subjects. I can’t make this up. Be prepared for a long, journal-style entry that provides nothing but the greatest entertainment.

Yesterday, Matt Howard turned 23. The most ideal way to spend a birthday? At St. Bonaventure University, of course. He picked me up around noon. It was my one day off this week; we had to drive home early this morning so I could get into the office at a normal hour. After a semi-uneventful car ride during which we called everyone within a 100-mile radius to come join us (no one came), we arrived at Townhouse 21, my former residence and the place my wonderful roommate Jennifer was living.

Ain’t much, it’s only everything.

I understand it’s that time in my life–and the lives of my colleagues–that we’re spazzing out, desperately panicking over the impending fall. In a time of year overflowing with back-to-school shopping, first graders wearing index cards with their names and addresses pinned to their shirts and parents warily examining 60-year-old dorm rooms, for the first time, we’re not involved.

Wait, I take that back. I’m not involved. Many of my dearest, closest friends are heading back to Bonaventure.

It makes me wonder if it’s because the Bona Bubble is so conducive to keeping people comfortable that they’re scurrying back to safety rather than exploring the unknown.

I think the call from Jason was the worst.

Hindsight shouldn’t be so clear

Had to wake up for work this morning. As I do every Saturday, but this morning it was to get to the grounds EARLY for the Women’s Club flea market. The theater company needs new bikes, so we were commissioned (on breakfast at the diner) to run with the bulls and snag some used rides. Really, people starting lining up and staking claims at 8 a.m., and the ropes were finally let down at 9. We got bikes, mugs, glasses, silverware — all for restocking the company. Then I shopped books. Got a copy of Merton’s The Seven Storey Mountain, because for as much as it didn’t really affect me in Intellectual Journey, I thought it may do something for me now.

I read half a chapter from somewhere in the middle of the book, and Merton talked about visited the grotto while the Bonaventure students and teachers were enjoying a movie in Alumni Hall. He meditates on the campus and the faith community, and I’m starting to think there’s a lot I failed to grasp in my four years.