opening day

I'm sitting in the courtyard outside school, basking in the warm afternoon air, celebrating the first day in I-don't-even-know-how-many-godforsaken-weeks that I've dared to leave the house without a coat. My friend Emma comes marching up and drops her bag dramatically at my feet. "Spring fever is REAL," she announces, without preamble.

"I can't get anything done," she goes on, in response to my lifted eyebrow. "I just want to make out all the time. And I'm always looking around...." She trails off as a guy in a v-neck tee shirt strolls past, nicely defined biceps on display.

I'm still sitting in the same place half an hour later when my friend Vijay walks by. He stops to chat about how nice the weather is, and it isn't more than 60 seconds before he declares happily, "It's Opening Day!"

"It's...what now?"

"Opening Day! The first really warm day of spring, when all the girls overcompensate by wearing booty shorts and...you know." Apparently he's been participating in an email chain with his buddies all morning discussing instances of this very phenomenon. I'm just as happy not knowing specifics.

But this all tallies pretty exactly with my experience last night, when I came home from a sunset run and shouted to my roommate, "Every hot guy in lower Manhattan is out jogging this evening! It is BEAUTIFUL!"

Spring's here at last. My first east coast winter was tough. But maybe it's time to get back in this game.