A Long Line of Cars

I'm back from the mountains. Pictures will follow soon, although I already have an album devoted to it on Facebook. It was a pretty interesting/tiring adventure, but I think I'll go into more detail with the added visual element at a later date. Instead, I'd like to discuss the Fourth of July, or more specifically the appropriately-timed exodus of my good friend Tony Rampello.

Actually, to back track, yesterday's "goodbye" was the second I witnessed in the past few days. On the way to New Hampshire we dropped off Raffy in Boston to take a flight back to Brazil. I didn't know him that well, certainly not as well as Tony, but it was still pretty un-cool. And an airport is a icky place to say goodbye to someone with all the security and stuff. You see a person off and then they round some fenced corridors and you're standing right next to them again, albeit separted by a cloth partition. Pretty soon they're on the other side of the metal detectors, but the physical closeness does not go well with the first proclamations of departure, so you exclaim a second half-goodbye, a deeply insufficient final outburst, and watch as they vanish around a corner. Yea, an airport is an icky place to say goodbye.

I'm not really looking forward to August -- though, I am very much am looking forward to college -- because it seems like it will be dominated by going-away gatherings, partings, et cetera, and since I'm probably the last to leave for school I'm going to have to be party to every one of them. Last night Kevin said that he hoped he was the next one to leave, admitting that he didn't want to have to keep on seeing people off. I share the sentiment, but accept that I'm certainly not the next one to leave or even somewhere in the middle of the lineup. Thanks NYU for the late start date, I'm right smackdab at the end. I forgot how close Eric is leaving, which makes me really nervous about movie completion, but I'll just have to find a way to get it done. I think I'll edit like a machine the next few days, taking this last day as my final day off for a while, and just get through it.

Ah, well. I've really lost the desire to discuss any more of this for the time being. It's the first goodbye, not the last, so I'm sure there will be plenty more opportunities to bring it up. I'm proud of Tony, though, even if I never agreed with his decisions about the Army. It's his life, and I've always thought that determination and drive towards anyting is more valuable than weak movement towards a "superior" goal.