Red to Green

The importance of being idle.
It's been nearly a fortnight since I’ve been done with school. Last Monday I turned in all my papers and projects and finals. Last Monday, for the first time in two years, I turned my GTalk chat status to green. And that’s significant. You see, after being busy for two years, with always something or the other to look forward to, it is really weird to see nothing on my outlook calendar now (except golf lessons and social engagements).

I spent the first few days of freedom not knowing what to do and just really getting annoying with the slow pace of the clock ticking! A group of us have begun golf lessons but the rains have been ruining our plans for the last three days now. Several brunches, dinners, coffees later, I see my cash reserves depleting faster than I can control. I have also been trying to make sense of all the stuff I have collected over my two years here, all the way from the four foot stack of cases and course packs, to tee shirts to magazines and a bunch of other odds and ends. It’s unbelievable how much stuff I’ve accumulated. I discovered things in my closet that I had forgotten I had. Darden’s last Outreach program of the year was the clothes and food drive and I managed to give away a bunch of gently used shirts and sweaters away – I figured if I had not worn them in the last year, I probably was not going to miss them either!

This week a classmate organized what he called the Charlottesville Goodbye Tour – a week of dining at restaurants in the town that we have not been to in the last two years (mostly out of budget constraints). And although I couldn’t make it all the evenings, I had the opportunity to dine (maybe for the last time) at one of my favorite places at the downtown mall.

Ivy Gardens already seems quieter and lonelier, with the number of UHauls pulling up as people move. Facebook is full of people finding apartments and basically setting themselves up for the transition to the adult world. While I am looking forward to it myself – it would be great to have a paycheck – the weight of the job search and the uncertainty has been causing a good deal of stress.

The family arrives in town for graduation next week. I’m looking forward to spending some quality time with them this time around, showing them places of significance from my two glorious years here at the Ville.

The Veggie Tower dish at Bizou, Downtown Mall