Dec 20 2005
Back in mostly one piece
Back from Durham, and with a bit of mixed feelings. I had a great time with Sharlene/Barb and Hilary/Marcus - great like-visiting-family-put-you-in-the-spare-room and make you homecooked food times…something I unexpectedly miss from when I was little, apparently. Great to see Ricardo and RR and old works people like Kevin and Hank and Dan…and good dim sum that I haven’t found in either Atlanta or Seattle, strangely.
At the same time, the whole trip rather reminded me of what made my time there so great - namely, the people. Bonnie and I thought about what we used to do, and it was mostly being with each other, seeing people, eating, or going to coffeeshops/BN. I loved it there, I think, cuz I was in a very happy living situation with my friends nearby too. That made everything better (especially the terrible driving there and the fact that everything’s closed on Sunday, it seems). And with NCLYN going down, there’s nothing there that I did that’s really left. This year’s the last year of people at the dorm I know…people are scattered and there are new buildings and construction oncampus as well as in Durham. Even Railroad has become a shop called the Maxxx or something (”A Frisky Business store”). Come on…Railroad was a Durham fixture!
Ah, well. It just has impressed upon me how much it’s about the people more than the place. Before we went up there, we thought, hmm, maybe we’ll live there again someday - we liked it. Afterwards, not so sure. We’ll see where people, including us, land.
But it’s still better than Atlanta 
