I'm back - I got back earlier this afternoon.

I really needed the break. I didn't totally realize how badly I needed it. I get like that sometimes - I get so wrapped up in the minutiae of work that I can't see how drained I'm getting, how worn.

I knew something was up because I wasn't immediately happy to be on break. At first, all I kept thinking of was, "but I have to go back to work this coming Monday." And I just didn't feel ready. At one point, I even thought to myself, "If you don't start feeling better a week or so after you get back, you better find a doctor and get checked out to make sure you don't have some kind of low-level infection or are starting perimenopause or are experiencing clinical depression."

And then the middle of the day on Thursday, I kind of popped back and thought, "I'm ready to go back to work on Monday."

Part of it I think was getting to see the person who was my graduate advisor. We still have a couple of ongoing projects - I had sent him the most recent manuscript of one about a month ago and never heard back. And I was a little worried that either
a. He thought it was not worth pursuing

or

b. He had made comments, sent it back, my server ate it (it has been known to do such things) and he'd be angry at me for the delay.

But it turns out he had just been really busy. For one thing, he gave the departmental seminar last week (the campus where he teaches had spring break the week before me). (It was at the seminar that I saw him.)

I also saw a lot of the people I had known when I was in grad school. A few are a little greyer, a few are a little balder, one or two are a little thinner, most of them look pretty much the same. (One of them - a German woman who came a couple years before I finished up - ran up to me and said, "You haven't changed at all!" [I've been gone from there 7 years now]. I decided not to point out the few grey hairs...I can see them when I look in the mirror but I guess other people don't).

I don't know but somehow it's comforting to go back and see that little basically has changed.

(I can't say the same for the town itself. There have been a few people that my dad calls "legacy builders" elected to the town council and a frightening amount of tearing-down of old but otherwise sound buildings [which, IMHO, could have been nicely renovated for less money than the tear-down] in the downtown [or as they now insist on calling it, "uptown"] and the entry of several very upscale businesses...apparently the students are no longer the desired demographic...the thing is, there's NO FREAKING PARKING in this new "uptown" - so I fear it's doomed to failure; the kind of people they expect to drive in in their Jags and BMWs are not going to angle-park on the street next to the few remaining bars...

I don't know. When I was a student the downtown (which I will always call it, "legacy builders" be danged) was kind of funky and nice. There was a vegetarian restaurant/coffeehouse that was a good place to meet with friends, there was an excellent used book store (which is moving; apparently he's been priced out of "uptown." Too bad.), there was a little Thai restaurant/coffeeshop, there was an art supply store, there was a good little pizza place ("Garcia's pizza." Perhaps the whole chain is out of business now but I liked their pizza), there was a neat gourmet/gift shop....most of them are gone, now, closed and replaced by Yuppified places.

Oh, and they're going to have lofts downtown. Newly built lofts made to look like old industrial buildings.

The pretention of that aside, I'm not sure I'd want to live right in a downtown area any more - especially not one close to several bars, the train tracks, and the intersection of three trafficky streets.

I don't know. I have issues with the whole "planned-of-a-piece" method of urban renewal - I think it's much more successful when you get a couple of gung ho entrepeneurs who come in and are successful and then attract other businesses. I think the changes are happening too fast, and I'm afraid that the new businesses are going to be pricing a lot of their nearby audience (college students) right out of the market.

And frankly? If I were a student I'd kind of take it as a slap in the face to see my old pizza hangout torn down and replaced by a restaurant with a maitre d' and a menu that starts at $20.

I guess my conclusion is this: it was nice to get back for a while but I definitely think I wouldn't want to live there again, not with the way the town seems to be going in for buying out businesses with a history, bulldozing them, and replacing them with things that look kind of cloned from the tonier areas of Chicago.