Sign of the Times

I finished up work today and headed out to the car. It had been a good week, but a tough week as well, and even the rain drops dotting my arm couldn’t wash away my anticipation for the newly arrived weekend. Ahh, “weekend;” the sweetest word in the working language. My foot punched the clutch of the Protégé and I set off to do battle with the gruesome specter of 394 during a Friday rush hour.

I made my way through downtown and northeast en route to Dinkytown where I was meeting my mom, dad, Andrew, and Kristen for dinner at Vescios. It never ceases to amaze me how a city can look both so desolate and so alive during a spring rain; like a living ying-yang symbol painted in greens, blues, blacks, and grays, smudged by the falling rain and twisted by my imagination. I turned down University and nimbly dodged around a city bus that had become sprawled across two lanes in its efforts to pick up some riders, pressing the accelerator downward in my sprint for spaghetti.

Dinner was enjoyable with the only disappointment being that Dad did not get enough meat in his “meat sauce.” We all agreed that this was a less than ideal situation (after all, isn’t the meat the most coveted part of any meat sauce? I mean, it’s in the freakin’ title!), but eventually decided to follow Chris Rock’s famous advice and let it slide.

Andrew and Kristen drove home with me in the Protégé where we were meeting our folks to surrender the Christmas tree we had borrowed back in December. On the way into the house from the driveway, Andrew turned and looked across the street into the neighbors yard and announced that there were ducks in their yard. “Really?” said Kristen and I. “Yes” replied Andrew, “two mallards it looks like.” “That’s so Brokeback” I responded as the garage door closed around our laughter echoing through the garage.