A beautiful day in the neighborhood

Today is obviously an encore performance of yesterday, which was the first beautiful day of 2006. If birds start chirping, I’m not sure what I will do with myself, because this weather the past two days has been almost too phenomenal. And when it’s 76 °F outside and the sky is as big and blue as could possibly be, it makes you wish you knew how to properly throw a frisbee without it falling sharply to the ground after briefly being airborne, giving you no choice but to chase after it in circles.

The timing of a day like this is impeccable because I was just starting to get tired of living on a college campus, where at age 24 I realize that I got too old for all of this silliness about two years ago, and where nothing about the people on campus ever seems to change. Well... sort of. The other day when I was walking home from my 11 AM class, I passed by a girl sobbing on the steps of her sorority house. She looked intoxicated, and the two striped-shirt, hat-on-backwards frat boys that were consoling her looked like they had been boozing it up all morning as well. She spoke loudly and worried about whether her friend made it back home alright, while the two frat boys rubbed her back and told her that they made sure “Crystal” got a ride home and that someone would be there to hold her head on top of the toilet. Never seeing anything like this happen in broad daylight before, all I could think was Holy shit, you couldn’t even save the drama for late Saturday night, huh?

But other than that scene, I haven’t been too stimulated by my environment lately. That is, until yesterday and today’s beautiful weather. The best part about the first spring-like day of the year is walking through campus and finding to your delightful surprise that every single girl looks HOT, wearing their tanktops and shorts, and sporting their fresh new tans they got from spring-breaking last week.

The chance to go to the bars to see all the pretty girls and not worry about bringing a jacket for the first time this year really made last night a crazy one for Champaign. I swear the line to Brother’s extended all the way down to the end of Fifth St. at one point.

The only bad thing I have to say about the weather today is that it is EXTREMELY windy, which works fine as a nice breeze if you’re indoors with the windows open, but if you’re outside trying to read a newspaper: good luck. It’s so windy, all the gel in the world couldn’t stop me from coming into class with hair like Clay Aiken’s this morning.

But maybe the wind isn’t necessarily a bad thing. This morning I saw a girl try to walk to class with a skirt on. She looked like Marilyn Monroe out there, trying her damnedest to stop her skirt from flying up in front of all the anxious male spectators. On top of that, when I was having lunch with a friend earlier at Potbelly’s, we saw a pair of girl’s undies flying down Green St. It was the college equivalent to tumbleweed, and it was a testament to how crazy it was here on campus last night. My friend and I shared a good laugh, then high-fived, then laughed some more. I might be too old for living on a college campus, but I’m never too old to appreciate great weather and flying panties.