Record high temperatures, flowering trees, chirping birds who really need to shut up…

The long hell of spring and summer is coming. Sigh.

I always get a little depressed this time of year (usually in March, but sometimes in February when we have a warm spell like this) because I know the summer season will arrive soon, with all its sunshine and pollen, its stinky cut grass and humidity, and its general unpleasantness. I think it goes back to when I was a kid and started dreading the time of year when I would be expected to play outside on occasion. I don’t like playing outside, especially in the summer when it’s miserably uncomfortable.

Interestingly enough, I do like walking around extensively amid the built environment (i.e. in big cities) in the fall and winter. That’s pretty much the only time I like to be outside. Otherwise, that whole winter hibernation mode thing works just fine for me.

Oh well. Set the AC on sub-arctic. The bad weather months have arrived.

Random thoughts on that most annoying of all holidays:

• Other than the years when I was long-term coupled, I can only remember one time in my life when I was actively dating someone on Valentine’s Day. I was 20 years old at the time, and didn’t much care for it. I don’t even remember how he and I celebrated the big day.
• I have a friend with whom I spend a lot of time. We’re often told we seem like an old married couple. When I think about it, I realize that (1) we frequently eat at the cafeteria, (2) she criticizes my driving all the time, and (3) we never have sex. So yeah, we pretty much are just like an old married couple.
• As Valentine’s Day civil disobedience options go, this one was a pretty cool (if soggy) one to be part of.
• The suckiest thing about middle age is that no one gets crushes on you anymore. I don’t care about the romance particularly, but the ego boost was always nice. Not that it happened all that often even before I hit middle age…
• At least I’m not having a Valentine’s Day colonoscopy this year.
• Screw the candy. Give me pie. And apple fritters.

According to the Date Duration Calculator, today marks the point where I’ve lived back in North Carolina for as long as I lived in California. That works out to twelve years, eight months, and change.

Time flies when you’re having fun.

I thought this was it going to be deeper and more wordy. Maybe later…

I’ve never been much for holiday travels. I rarely came home for the holidays when I lived in California, preferring to visit in January when things were calmer. That said, I’ve really come to love my annual post-Christmas trek to Virginia Beach over the past six visits.

I started this “new tradition” in 2012. The university is closed that week, so I always have the time off. That year, i decided that Virginia beach would be a good option. I’d been threatening to do a week there in the winter ever since a mildly drama-laden trip to the area with the ex a few years earlier. I figured I could get a nice room pretty inexpensively and just hang out reading, relaxing, and looking at the ocean. I like the beach in winter–and really hate it during the summer. My regular vacations tend to be anything but relaxing; I’m pretty actively exploring most of the time with very little downtime. Plus, Virginia Beach offered a nearby urban setting were I to get bored with all that relaxation.

It seemed perfect. And it was.

I still look forward to that my holiday beach trip every year. I strike a good balance of inertia and activity, and I’ve found a few restaurants I really love (notably this one). I usually polish off a book or two and often end up seeing a movie at the Naro. And I watch Perry Mason reruns on MeTV. It’s great and gets me in the right frame of mind to start the new year at work.

It’s strange how that whole area has almost come to seem like another home base to me. It joins Toronto and Los Angeles in that elite group, though its two big brothers are sexier and more exciting.

This year, I popped back via Richmond so I could do some research there. I always enjoy being in Richmond too, and have always thought it might be an interesting place to live should the opportunity ever arise. Ironically (since it was the capital of the Confederacy and all) Richmond feels to me like the specific point where the South stops being the South and starts being the urban Northeast, with rowhouses, walkable neighborhoods, and a different cultural feel. Of course, many might disagree with me on that and suggest that its a very vanilla sort of place. Sorry…

But yeah, I like it. And evidently, I like holiday travel a lot more when it’s not cross-country and doesn’t involve airplanes.