The warm weather the last few days has been really amazing.  It seems like people were on the streets late into the night last night, just enjoying the warmth of the air. I rode through campus and people were walking through the night gabbing loudly on cell phones as they walked, a combination of giddy excitement for those who had completed their finals and concern for those who hadn’t. It gave me that strange meloncholy feeling that I remembered from when I was in school at the end of terms when you would have this fast transition around campus between frantic activity and a lonely desolation. The nice thing about living in a small town is that people are instantly recognizeable, even from a distance, and as I was headed back towards Boxcar, I saw the outline of Tyson wizzing around the block on a skateboard, his motion relaxed and fluid.
I stopped at the post office and saw the lady who usually sleeps there resting, as usual, by standing up and letting the weight of her upper body fall on her shopping cart. As I entered the post office, I noticed a sign on the door reporting that later in the week, the lobby would start closing at 8:00PM and reopen at 3:00AM. Surely this is a measure to keep people experiencing homelessness from sleeping in the lobby. It’s sad because I always thought it was a nice arrangement, how the post office unknowingly offered shelter to people from the rain or cold in a way that used no additional resources, and for some, seemed to work better for their lives than a formal shelter ever could. I guess those days are over, and I hope that it stays warm long enough for people to find a new lobby somewhere.