There were a few occasions over the weekend that helped to confirm my status as a full-fledged “grown-up,” out of touch w/ the kids and no longer able to abuse myself in the same old ways.

I went out on Friday night w/ a bunch of Res Life staff folk, including Jim Droste, Peter Brooks, Chrissy Lambie, Arcetta Butler, and a young woman named Kelly, who, as it turns out, goes to Stout and is friends with my kid sister. I met the group out at the French Quarter, and it was the first time I was in there in over two years. They have Pabst on tap now. Pabst has gotten very cool once again. I can’t really explain it, but I’m sure it has something to do with Ashton Kutcher.

So, we threw some darts at the Quarter, and I won, but only on the strength of one very good round early in the game (Kevin would’ve come back and beaten me), and then by 11, 11:30 or so, everyone was leaving, except Jim and a couple of the young women, who wanted to go to Molly’s.

It was at Molly’s that I realized I was too old to be hanging out in these bars. And I no longer recognized *anybody* who was there; Lorch and Wordy can back me up on this: if you make a habit of going to the same bars every weekend or so, you see the same people out there all the time, and everything feels more natural and familiar when you can say things like, “hey, there’s Hot Girl,” or “did you see Fun Girl at the Quarter?” but these days are now gone. I lasted all of 20 minutes at Molly’s, but it was nice of Jim to buy me a beer.

The next morning I felt like hell. Well, not so much “like hell,” but just not like “myself,” and for possibly the first time, I realized, “man, I’d feel a lot better if I hadn’t been out drinking half the night.” That was a little bit startling. It’s not like I’ve never felt crappy and gotten basically nothing done the day after a “party night” before, but this was the first time I could remember actually caring about it.

Later that day, I went to the Paper Tiger with Jim, we bought cigars and smoked them outside his newly empty residence hall. He’s got the whole bloody thing to himself for the summer. I commented that the campus was so quiet, I half expected to see a tumbleweed rolling through. The empty Wal-Mart? bag was close enough.

To round out the weekend, I did get to see Amanda, Karla, Bryan, Katie Mac, Devin, and Marj (who has a very nice new apartment in the building next door to my new apartment). I also helped Lorch, Jamie & Taylor move to a new house, fortunately only about three blocks from their old house.

Ultimately, I didn’t get as much done during the weekend as I’d originally hoped, but my undeniable social popularity over these three days made up for it. I like to see people, so…

I have a ton of reading to get accomplished this week, because next week starts my summer class. I have to check into a car rental for next weekend…

There’s not much to see, but you can take a glance at the newest domain in The 80’s Rewind Network.