May Day
Yesterday was May Day, and at 6am I shot out of bed because of all the noise in the dorm. Some girls in yellow ponchos were running through the halls blowing whistles and yelling for everyone to get up, causing an unholy racket. I leapt out of bed and yelled at them "What are y'all doing that for?" I didn't have on my glasses or much besides a tee shirt.

"It's May Day!" they yelled, "It's tradition!"

So I yelled "Screw tradition!" at them and tried to go back to sleep. I later regretted yelling at them when I had time to wake up later on. It's just that they were doing this in the graduate dorm, and being undergrads had no idea that our finals had all ready begun while they were outside hooting and yelling and taking part in what looked like a good crack of dawn kind of party. Later that morning as I and my neighbors passed in and out of the big bathroom on our floor, we all agreed that someone should have warned us. None of us had known about the 6am party, and maybe some of us would have gone if we had. But nobody told us; it was an undergraduate thing. Also, many people who work and go to school were bitter about being woken up for no good reason. And none of us understood the "tradition" thing, most of us coming from schools where there were no traditions to speak of.

Everyone knows that the first day of summer is not the day when the weatherman says it is; the first real day of summer is the day you get out of school for the year. So today is my first real day of summer, and just to be nice to me Boston has decided to warm up. Of course, I'm stuck inside working most of the day, but the thought was nice on the city's part. Outside the trees are so full of blooms that when the wind blows it looks like it's snowing pink and white petals down Commonwealth and Brookline Avenue. The flowers and all the leaves are back and it's beautifully warm and if I weren't a responsible adult I would have called in sick today and gone down to the Esplanade to read comic books on a blanket by the river.

But I am all stuck in the slightly cold climate controlled archive that preserves books and doesn't let the sun in at all. When I get off work I have to start packing for the move this weekend. Things are going to get a lot better and a lot less busy after I move; school is out, my internship is over, and I found out there's a 98% chance I have enough student loan money to go to school in June and July. Now I just have to find the dough to furnish my new place, and write about a hundred letters to people that I keep meaning to keep up with, and get my wonderful cat Mr. Puck back.

After I do these things I will buy comic books and walk down to the Charles River and read and let the sun sweat out all the bad things that winter built up in me. And then I will be warm again, right down to my bones.