68 degrees yesterday with just a tinge of humidity.  Nice.  Mildly overcast, but just enough to keep the sun from being annoying.  Right about now, I should be writing about how I pulled the bike out of retirement and made a trip down to Riverfront Park (now that it’s only a short hop from my employer, I plan on visiting daily during the week).  But I didn’t, so that ends that.

With Yet Another Blizzard in the forecast for the coming days, these three days of near-summer-like conditions brought back memories of 85-degree afternoons on the deck at Duke’s, from noon until 2 (am).  Trips to State College to enjoy $3 pitchers (big, non-KoKoMo’s ones at that) of Long Island at The Deli.  Even the smell of ocean against a backdrop of beach and gulls, which is odd because I’m really not a beach person.

Then there are the countless festivals, carnivals, games, bashes, parties, fireworks, showcases, and other events that result in one section or another of downtown being either mostly inaccessable or closed off alltogether.  There’s nothing like that $10 gigantic leg o’ turkey at Kipona, other than knowing full well that you ridiculously overpaid for that $8 sausage but it’s worth it because come on, this only happens once a year and you already fought traffic for 18 hours just to get here, let alone park, so why the hell shouldn’t you pay a 4000% markup?  And what’s up with Pizza Hut — does anyone go to Kipona thinking “Man, I can’t wait to get me some o’ that $5-a-slice plain cheese pizza”?

There’s also something about walking past a club or lounge and getting smacked in the face by the escaping cold air laced with the smells of stale fog, old cigarette smoke, and burnt electronics (am I the only one who smells that in the older clubs?).  Up until last year, summer also meant that it was time for me to crawl up into the trussing and do my semi-annual alcohol-and-distilled-water-bath cleaning of Dragonfly’s lightshow.  Nothing like hanging out in the ceiling of the second floor of what basically amounts to a big oven on an August afternoon.

And there’s something about watching the progression from mid-day business lunches to late-night downtown intensity on Second Street.  I can’t quite put my finger on that one, but I plan on spending a few weekends at The Quarter (while I still can) in order to perform further, more thorough research.

Just a few more weeks.