17:45 - August 13, 2003 hi
words come difficult when land formations are enough to fill the brain.
10:25 - August 10, 2003 farewell
Packing up the computer now (again), so.... this is the last Evanston entry. (Deja vu, anyone?) I had to say goodbye to everyone yesterday. Everyone meaning Nikki, Nora, and Mike, but really, aside from Rachel, who's coming today to say goodbye, and Erik, who left for Amsterdam two weeks ago, that's everyone that I felt the need to say goodbye to. (Possibly I've forgotten a terrible amount of important people who will all be mad at me.) Camille I see in Colorado, so she doesn't count. .... it was really difficult, I mean... really more difficult than I imagined. I thought we were all used to saying goodbye to each other from last year, after laser tag, for me at least, which was arguable one of the hardest goodbyes I've ever said. But the thing is, this is the summer we all raved about online during last year, and used to placate homesickness, and fears about us drifting apart. I wish I could find the link on Nora's page that said something about us all curling up at Erik's in front of the fire forever, but her archives are broken. Not that this summer didn't live up, but we didn't all see each other nearly as much as I, at least wanted. It's a tangle of reasons, none of which are anyone's fault, but Erik was with Mary, Nikki was with Bree, I had work all the time, Nora had work all the time, and, at the end, Rachel was with Adam. Not that it mattered by then, anyway, as I was too busy to even see my house for more than a half hour at a time. The only people I saw at all regularly were Mike and Camille. Mike and I would joke about it, the two most antisocial people in the entire group by far, the only ones who would hang out. We climbed almost every night. I'm having a hard time thinking about not seeing him until Christmas if only just because it's a serious overturning of normalcy. I've gotten used to it. And I never got to know Nora as well as I did this summer (as we put it, we probably hung out more this summer than all the other summers combined, which is most definitely true) so it's harder to leave her than it ever was as well. Nikki and I are used to not seeing each other for ages, so it almost feels normal, but I still wish I'd seen her more.
So ends the Evanston reminiscing party. I leave in five hours. I arrive in Boulder on August 18th. (long road trip, yes, yes it is. Wisconsin Dells, Badlands, Black Hills, Yellowstone, Grand Teton Nat'l Forest, Steamboat Spgs., Boulder. The looong way around the country, with my dad, his girlfriend, and her daughter in a rented minivan with each of us getting an hour of time allotment for music at a time.) No updates, probably, unless I can hook into a hotel phone line.
