Remembering Louisville

Saturday afforded me the chance to return to my college town.  Keisha had a Pampered Chef conference downtown and she had to be there early.  I offered to drive, and together we hit the road before 5am, crossing the CST/EST time zone and journeying into the future.  I dropped her off at the site, walked her to the door, and spent the rest of the day largely alone.

I say alone.  Perhaps I should use a different word, as I wasn't alone, per se, but I was in no one's immediate company, either.  Truly, in a city as populated as Louisville, being alone is probably a thing more of the mind.  Anyway, I spent the morning in my favorite coffee shop, Sunergos.  I enjoyed going there and studying, listening to the mellow tunes and breathing the pleasing aroma of coffee.  So I ordered me a plain coffee and sat at a table and read for four hours.  I started with a little bible study, and after that I read a massive chunk of the unpublished manuscript I'm reviewing.  All I can say is that it's a piece of solid writing with a very interesting magical system and some fascinating world history.  I wish the author the best at getting it published.

As lunch time neared, I packed up my stuff and headed off to my favorite deli, Franks.  It's hard to describe how perfect, how amazing Frank's is.  Their cold-cut sandwiches are cheap and unbeatable in taste.  I got a roast beef and colby with lettuce on wheat for $3.  That may seem high, but the claim to fame for Frank's is that there's enough meat and filling on the sandwiches that it's hard to finish.  I've ordered sandwiches from there before and taken off enough meat to fix me another lunch from the excess.  This sandwich was a good 4.5-5.5" thick, if not more, and it was very filling.

After I had my lunch I drove to campus and parked behind the engineering buildings.  Saturday was nice and sunny, not too cool, so I walked from the parking lot over to the library, taking my time and remembering campus.  A lot's changed since I graduated.  It's been two years since I sat foot on UofL's grounds, but it was still very much the same campus.  My afternoon at the library went a lot like the morning.  I ate and read, a little from the STAR WARS book, but mostly from the manuscript.

This doesn't sound terribly exciting, spending a day cooped up inside reading, but I have to say, I quite enjoyed myself.  The joy ended when Keisha and I decided to drive to the mall.  The mall of St. Matthews is a somewhat special place to us.  You see, I proposed to my wife at this mall.  I didn't plan to propose at this mall, but it just kinda happened.

I planned to propose beneath the fireworks and heavenly spectacle of Thunder Over Louisville.  I planned to take her to the river and get down on one knee.  Instead, that darned ring in my pocket kept whispering things to me, making vain promises and offering visions of grandeur.  We were at the mall, sitting outside the JC Pennys beneath a copse of indoor trees and beside a mediocre fountain.  Things get a little blurry, but I vaguely remember kneeling and mumbling and talking and saying a bunch of stuff about love and that stuff and pulling out a ring and people looking at us and her face and...  Yeah.  I hadn't planned on proposing there, but it just happened.  The Precious willed it so...

I don't know why, but the city's entire population was converged at or near the St. Matthews mall.  We idled in traffic for a long time before finally getting to the mall, and then we idled more as we waited forever to find a parking spot.  Red Robbin (yum) was good for dinner, but after that we were ready to get the heck out of the city.

It's a shame.  There are so many wonderful things about Louisville that I love and miss.  However, there's plenty there to keep me far away, too, like the radiation.  I guess now that the meteor's fallen and decimated the town I'll never get to go back again.  Too bad, too.  I wonder if my alma mater will rise above the wastes and request donations to help rebuild?  Did the coffee shop survive?  News reports say that there weren't many survivors, and those that did have some kind of weird glow about them now and they're all quarantined in some secret location.  I guess it's good that we got out of the city before it happened, eh?

Happy Valentine's day!