It's so easy to forget

... how beautiful it is in Denver, like, all the time. The past two days have been so nice that part of me wishes I could stick around here another week maybe, slow the pace of things down. Everything here is so nice--the people are friendly, the sky is soooooo blue, the weather is gorgeous (even the Rocky Mountain afternoon thunderstorms), I'm going tonight to one of the best ballparks in baseball, we've figured out over the years where the good food is, and so forth. Although I've been saying for a number of years that I didn't plan to come back to Denver as an adult, I think that I really meant I didn't want to return to my childhood/adolescence, which is tied up so tightly with the streets and character of the city. It seems like it wouldn't be hard to get a fresh start if I came back after school or years down the line, lived in an apartment somewhere near downtown. Well, I guess I can't always cross things off the list of possibilities I've been carrying around for the past couple years (live in Philadelphia? work in finance? ride a bike for recreation?); sometimes you need a little perspective on things. Actually, you always need a lot of perspective on anything, and it's a shame you don't always have the liberty to get it.

The drive back wasn't bad. The first day to Chicago was a pretty good drive through PA and Ohio, but I was far from impressed with Indiana. We had a great time in Chicago--John and I met up with Laura from school, and we wandered a little bit around downtown, then took the ell to the White Sox game (it was Elvis night, and Contreras pitched a three-hit shutout for the Sox). The next morning, I picked up my dad from the airport so he could help me drive the last day, hitting him in stride as he left the concourse, and we left. Iowa was actually kind of nice, although I may just be saying that because I got flirted with by the waitress at the little barbeque place where we stopped for lunch in Iowa City. Nebraska, on the other hand... let's just say I was also resolutely unimpressed with Lincoln, and the storm we hit further west was no good. The most surprising part of the trip, though, was discovering that my dad and I actually do agree on a lot of things. I don't know whether it's because he's finally decided the GOP didn't match up with his ideals anymore, or whether I've become an even more bitter moderate than before, or some combination of the two, but we did pretty well sitting in a car talking for sixteen hours. Let's just hope we can keep it up tomorrow, when he's helping me with the road through las vegas (it turns out that one-ways are a lot cheaper from there than from Ontario).

Meanwhile, I have some packing to do. Fortunately, I didn't bother to unpack everything from PA, which makes life a little easier. On the other hand, I may now feel obligated to actually put in order all those papers and ticket stubs I've accumulated over the years and stubbornly resisted throwing out. As much a barometer on how well I'll do living on my own as anything else, the last unsettled question before I get back to campus is whether or not I can get my shit in order, figure out which electronic toys are important and which are so unnecessary, get better at judging whether I will ever, ever again use those notes/books/files.

Oh, and the car did ok, but I'm not expecting much more out of it than making it to LA.

Final thoughts from PA

So my partner Dan and I have our half-hour presentation tomorrow on everything we did this summer (math-wise), which of course means I'm procrastinating by writing an entry. So far, we're planning on talking a lot about definitions, avoiding any mention of "practical applications" (none exist that we're aware of), and answering any tough questions with "Then the terrorists win." Basically, I'm wholly ready to go back to campus. This town is too small, the food is no good, and I'm burned out on math. That said, now that things are wrapping up--I drive to Chicago on friday, Denver on saturday, and then LA on tuesday--I feel like it's time to offer a few thoughts.

First off, my car is getting old. After the NYC scare (which only lasted til tuesday afternoon) and general feelings of malaise, I finally looked around and noticed that there aren't many cars her age on the road anymore. Family discussions had mentioned the possibility that another car may be tied to graduation (discussions I always declined to participate in for fear of jinxing the Subie) within the past couple years, and I'm finally willing to sit down at the table and talk about it. It seems to me that LA is a great place to look for a used car--everyone drives, 'everyone' includes millions of carowners, people seem to get new ones fairly frequently, and car bodies don't rust out the way they apparently do in this part of the country--and, although you can't let it slip to my baby, we may have to let her go soon. The Kelly Blue Book is getting to the point where a simple repair runs the risk of totalling the car, which I have a feeling has something to do with the several recent repairs that have each run just under $1000; doing all of them at once would certainly put the Subie out of commission in our insurer's eyes. As long as we can hold on through these next 3000 miles, I feel like I'll have gotten all I can reasonably ask out of her. It'll be the end of an era, an era characterized by that deep restlessness and need for the road, later adolescence, in which that car is one of the main ties between my life now and my life back in high school (more so certainly than visiting my re-furnished and now repainted bedroom).

Second, math and I just aren't going to work out. The elegance with which even the upper-div courses are structured and taught, the frequent clever proofs, even the shock of insight when working through an exam are all artificial, math as it exists in the classroom. Math in the real world, or at least in the wilds of not-well-charted territory where we've spent the summer, is a lot less profound, less clever, and requires a lot more patience than anything I'd dealt with before. Sure, I may have gotten a bit of a bad draw with my project, but methodology is as significant a cause in my disillusionment as the specifics of our work. Right now, I'm looking at a preemptive sitting for the LSAT in october, trying to land one of those private-sector jobs for next summer and beyond, and turning back to school when I get sick of whatever I'm doing. In addition to genuinely wanting "young, irresponsible, disposable income" years and wanting to try living in, say, New York or San Francisco or Seattle or, who knows, overseas, I'm honestly a little scared of debt. Balancing precariously large law or grad school loans on top of my comparatively modest undergrad debt doesn't sit well with me, and anyway if I don't have money in the bank before school, even day-to-day expenses will have to come from somewhere. While I am in no way a stickler for budgeting (or above dropping way more than I intended at a bar), I have a healthy enough fear of consumer debt to want a little bit of stability and/or real-world experience before committing to the time- and money-intensive educational process.

Three, there are just some friends you want to hold on to. The kind of people with whom 'catching up' isn't a forced process, it's a natural desire to share some highlights of life since the last time you saw them, which may even be years, but the distance is something you have to keep reminding yourself of instead of a barrier you feel the need to vault or breach. This summer seemed to me to be a great balance between visiting the people I wanted to stay in touch with and meeting new people--in addition to the REU people, I've enjoying meeting steph's roommates, Dima (the crazy 19-year-old ex-russian mobster we met at a bar in DC last weekend), and even the mechanic who took care of the Subie in New Jersey. I want to always be expanding where I've been, where I know, what I've tried, and it's been a great summer for exploring.

Jazzed up for fall? persze, persze.