9/2/05 12:12am Gas at the corner of Crescent and New Scotland cost $3.55 a gallon last I checked, but that didn't stop me from driving to Boston and back today. I finally got to walk around inside Strathmore, and it's really not that bad a place. I had an opportunity to hang out and talk with three out of four of my roommates, I unpacked a fraction of my belongings, and I measured out the postage stamp container that they call my room. It's cozy, but I really don't think it'll be that bad.
I'm starting to get excited about the whole Boston situation. I rode the 'C' line from my apartment near Cleveland Circle to Park Street downtown, and I got really psyched about living in a big city. I wanted to walk into basically every little shop and restaurant along Beacon in Brookline, which is the municipality I'll be calling home for at least the next year. Walking across the graveyard of the old elevated stretch of I-93 and into Boston's North End, I remembered lots of random trips with Boy Scouts and my family to a city that amazed and excited me when I was a kid, and it's all flooding back to me. I met up with my Uncle John late this afternoon in Harvard Square, went to dinner with him and Chris, walked around the requisite touristy stuff, had some of the best cannoli of the year, and paid my respects to Paul Revere and the Old North Church. I drove home in the dark, singing way too loudly to Duran Duran, Roy Orbison, and Carly Simon. Seeing Albany again made me kind of sad, and thinking about not being able to hang out in the Little Theatre clubroom and not coming home to Derek Weibel reading a Stephen King novel made me even sadder. The Byrds popped on the radio just as I was pulling onto Krumkill Road, though, and I guess it's all going to be all right. To everything there is a season.

8/28/05 6:25pm Whatever this summer was, however long it took, whoever saw me grinding my way through it, it's all inconsequential, because the last two weeks of my life really did provide the happy ending that I've been pulling for the whole time. I picked up my best friend at Logan Airport just over two weeks ago, and the wonders didn't cease until I found myself back in that same terminal yesterday evening, stuck in the middle of one of the most difficult goodbyes I've ever experienced. There was Albany, a walk along the Helderberg Escarpment, my last Capture the Flag of the summer, different sights and sounds and a whole lot of "we met at Festivus" in the beginning and "I'll see you at Festivus" at the end. France was around, so we hit The Fountain. Ice cream from Stewart's, Follow That Bird, childhoods collided, we did manage to scratch the new van with the canoe after all, the traditional four-in-the-morning departure time was observed, I glanced back across her face and over the Hudson as my capital city faded away behind us. The Cape was everything I had hoped for, everything I needed, and as perfect a blend of rest and adventure as I could have asked for in between a summer of work and an autumn of God-only-knows-what. I spent most of my time slogging through Brian Greene's The Fabric of the Cosmos in precipitate and starry-eyed awe, swimming around various ponds, stretching out on beach towels, playing the Yahtz, irritating my sister by engaging in various mild public displays of affection with my girlfriend, eating anything and everything you could put in front of me, and generally having a great time. Jenn seemed to have a lot of fun, and she fit right in with the family], who pulled out all (or at least most) of the stops when it came to playing various pranks and tricks on her, including but not limited to studying up on Cape Cod trivia and dazzling the two of us with answers like "winter flounder" and "The Bourne Canalmen," creepy twilight visits from a talking angel doll, and several scattered tests of gullibility. In short, the girl was initiated into the tribe, and it was hilarious. Tom and Kennedy came up for a good stretch of time, made even stretchier by Tom's failure to locate his car keys on what would have been his second-to-last day, Rex did indeed bring a regulation Frisbee, and it was summarily concluded that science and religion are not mutually exclusive, much to Tom's chagrin and disappointment. My mother turned 50. Jenn and I attended a "hero and villain"-themed pride parade, rode in a sightseeing airplane, walked around a pond or two, and ate way too much (but never enough) bacon. The weather was phenomenal, I went sailing and took the canoe out, got a new anklet, visited Woods Hole for the first time, saw the moon rise over the North Atlantic, the sun set over Cape Cod Bay, three shooting stars, and smiles all the way around. I spent yesterday walking around Boston, it was a ridiculously powerful day, watched the ducks in the Public Gardens, a street show at Quincy Market, visited the Harvard Square Coop, we held hands, reflected on the best situation ever, took the 'T' back to Logan, and that was it. I finally got the happy ending I've been looking for.
On an unrelated but nevertheless important note, I telephoned Bob Grabowski yesterday evening (he phone-tagged me back not long after two in the morning) to let him know that I finally understand what it feels like to not start school at Canisius College at the end of August. My friends are all back in action for classes tomorrow morning, and I'm not there. FUSION and Little Theatre had their tables up at the Student Activities Fair last night, and I wasn't running between the two of them. It's all there, but I'm not. This is more difficult than I expected. To all of my friends back in Buffalo, then... good luck, guys. Enjoy it, savor it while it lasts, because every second at that school can be worth your while if you pay attention to the community around you. Go for broke!

8/10/05 11:07pm I belong to a family for whom mourning can include a trip to Water Safari. I belong to a family for whom fiftieth birthdays ought to involve massive conspiracies. I belong to a family that can muster pastries from every reputable Italian bakery in Utica, that can blaze the Thruway like nobody's business, that can surprise you with an encore after a very long weekend, that can be respectful, spontaneous, hospitable, supportive, and light-hearted, even through some of the diciest times. As my Mohawk Valley cousins might say, this past weekend was wicked crazy, a veritable Kane family marathon, but we all made it through, and I digress.
My relationship with Cold Stone Stuyvesant and Measured Progress are officially over. It's been fun, it's been brutal, it's over. I am officially on my summer vacation, which will run for the next sixteen days. The e-mails to and from Harvard are already flying hot and heavy, I'm already beginning to concern myself with course selection and field education placement and my housing situation and this, that, and the other thing, but I'm going to try my very best to put it all on hold, take two weeks, take my family, friends, and girlfriend, and just breathe. To quote Colonel Jessep, I believe I've earned it.

8/1/05 11:16pm An evening away from my worn down workaholic existence tonight, more thunder and lightning, and most of it underscored by the biggest possible questions -- questions about the end of a full and remarkable life, the responsibilities of family, and the dignity and wonder inherent in death. Mike joined me for a trip across our most well-traveled stretch of I-90, Aunt Terri met us in a bowling alley parking lot underneath an asphalt grey sky, and suddenly all of our musings and our conjectures and our concerns about the situation at hand fell by the wayside, utterly stripped away before the all-too-real countenance of a life cycle's twilight. Driving back in the darkness, lightning still flashing all around us, we talked our way through the future, and about what dreams may come before and after we both settle back in Boston in another month. Most of my summer, however, has been framed by a look back at exactly how dramatically things have developed and changed for me in the past year. As far as I still have yet to climb, my coming of age, at least for the first time in a clear and distinct manner as a "young man" in the most proper sense of the term, can practically be assigned to the past year and to the past year alone.
I don't know if I can do justice to this transformation here, but I can definitely say that it's been a tangible force, a definite something worth acknowledging and understanding. A lot of things have happened, but I feel like I'm finally starting to walk upright on my own two feet. The mandatory bits of my life as an American child of privilege -- my early education, high school, college, the summer jobs, assorted rites of passage -- are all over and done. I'm headed into the world, and really, into the "big leagues" for the first time in my life, and it's all in my own hands. So far, I've chosen to put my emo Uncle Scrooge nose to the grindstone for an entire summer, without much more than crippling exhaustion and a few extra dollars in my pocket to show for it. I've used my newfound independence to defy important adult authority figures in my life, fly to Georgia for purely reckless and romantic purposes, set myself up within a future living situation that can be described as unpredictable and precarious at best, pin most of my hopes and emotions on a long-distance relationship, and spend the better part of three months flouting most of the dietary and other consumption laws that I spent so long painstakingly reasoning out, testing, and building up. For Christ's sake, I have a cell phone. I am not last year's David Bard.
The particulars of the past few weeks are probably really important, but there's no way I can recount them here. I've worked literally every day since landing back in the Hudson Valley on July 18th -- I'm currently nearing the end of a nineteen day work week -- and meanwhile my family and friends are going about their own business, and largely without me, even though I've been within a few miles of my house for almost the whole season. The end of this madness, though, is in sight. In little more than a week, my grand labor experiment will be dead, Sarah Dunn won't have to yell at me anymore for being a tired and whiny man, and I will finally have time to spend with my family, my friends, the young woman I love, and the wonderful places I've called home throughout my lifetime. This interlude is finally nearing the conclusion that I've been anticipating since May, and as emotionally charged and vivid as the season has been, I can't shake the feeling that it's all about to open up into something much more fantastic. This young man, though temporarily weary and angsty, is going to be ready in the worst way come September.

7/11/05 10:14pm With my recent trip to Buffalo and the apparent end of the fourth grade essay grading project, my summer has begun to pivot away from its grueling midpoint and towards what I hope will be a smoother second half. As heinously frustrated and exhausted as I've gotten, though, I've had an awful lot to be happy about and thankful for. The end of June saw a tremendous two-day celebration of the marriage of my grandparents, which provided a much-needed break as well as a powerful reminder of the importance and prominence of family in my life. I had time to talk to family and friends that I don't see very often, time to crawl with Kaj around the walls of the deep end, time to snicker as Michelle picked all of the mushrooms out of her dinner, time to represent Buffalo with the Weiksnars, and time to reflect on the rich differences between the different segments of my extended family. Common to all of those segments, however, is mutual commitment, respect, and support, which form the roots of the proverbial tree that the other David Bard seemed to want to talk so much about. It was a great event.
Three Bard brothers piled into their assigned seats in the Montana for the last time on Independence Day, which was another beacon of mirth in the past few weeks. I had almost forgotten what it was like to crawl into the third row passenger side, clad in my flip-flops, on a beautiful day, listening to Jon grumbling and assessing various structural and natural phenomena via raised eyebrows with Mike Bard. We went to North South Lake, we had a modest barbecue, went swimming, looked out over the escarpment, worked on our tans (barely), and spit cherry pits. Owens decided to stick it out on the parking garage roof, but me and Mike ventured along with Zonk and Billy to the Plaza that night, a clear night with a good breeze that made standing even among thousands of people not such a big deal somehow. Say what you want about our country and its leadership, but I felt good to be a member of my family, my friends, and my community on that day, and that, I think, is pretty important.
Exhausted from too many hours of work in too few days, I tore across the Empire State with my best friend's voice in my ear and plunged myself into a sea (a basin?) of nostalgia, her water tower loomed over the 290 interchange, I struggled to hold back the mist in my eyes, Zac welcomed me with open arms, and there was The Blur and Kelly and a Pano's hat trick, Bill Flann's hospitality, Tony, Dan Lance, Steve, Aleigha, Rachel and Gina, we trekked into the country on Saturday to bring Kelly into the city, Johnny joined us for A Taste of Buffalo, and there I was on an absolutely gorgeous day in Niagara Square, everything was completely familiar but somehow I was standing in the middle of the future, Hasheen rocketed out of nowhere to join us as we left the waterfront, we had been sitting on the jetty, looking out of the tower, comparisons were drawn to Bunker Hill, and at that moment, sitting in the sky with my friends and looking out at the sun reflected on the open water, looking in at the Queen City in 2005, I understood how absolutely blessed I was and still am to this very day. My Saturday in Buffalo was hands down the best day of my summer thus far, I tiptoed around Andy in the morning to rouse some people for the Bob Grabowski Brunch, I fled to an afternoon stopover shindig in Sauquoit, and an upstate breeze on another perfect July day brought me right back to where I'd started. The folks at Cold Stone had no idea what strange and wonderful energy had gotten into me that night.
In sum, I guess, I think it's safe to say that I've gotten my mental state well under control, and sometimes it just takes a trip or three back to who you are in order to get centered again. This summer just turned in a new direction, I think, and it's only a matter of weeks now before it opens up into the next part of my story, wherever that might lead.

7/7/05 12:18am Really, really grumpy tonight. I rattled off most of my problems to some random kid at Cold Stone this evening, and the basic gist of her response was that I need to stop working every time I get a free second. In all fairness, I'm taking one whole day off to go to Buffalo this weekend, and I'm probably going to take at least a day or two next weekend to blast through the next Harry Potter book. Yeah, I guess I have a problem. Maybe I'll calm the hell down by the end of July, because I've only got two Albany weeks in August before hitting the Cape and the big move to Suffolk County. I need to go to bed. Also, I need to remember how to write a decent blog entry.

7/4/05 11:32pm One of the better Independence Days I've ever experienced.

7/1/05 7:27pm I officially believe in psychosomatic illness; thunder and lightning are crashing outside Berncliffe, but they're far worse in my own head and heart. My head is spinning, my mouth is dry, I'm completely exhausted, I stumbled out of Cold Stone a full five hours early, I can't deal with it anymore, and it pretty much feels like my soul just collapsed, white dwarf-style. I need a cool washcloth and a hug, and it looks like I ain't getting either.

6/17/05 4:21pm I decided that I need my heart to be able to get more oxygen to my muscles. I was trying to get my bike up Old Krumkill Road, and I was getting pretty major lactic acid buildup in my legs, so I made that decision. Anaerobic respiration sucks. This is going to take a little bit of work.

6/14/05 2:50pm It's been a little too hot out, there's been a little too much on my mind, and every day brings me deeper into this awkward summer, which is just as new and different as it is worn and familiar. On the one hand, this is a really unique situation because it's probably my last Berncliffe summer, I'm in between two great chapters of my life, and most of my productivity in these three months is being geared toward preparation for Harvard and beyond. On the other hand, I'm surrounded by familiar faces, traditional activities, and other aspects of summers past, so a lot of it feels like just another go through the same old stuff. The Canisius books were officially closed on Sunday by my graduation party, which was modestly but meaningfully attended by a good mix of family members, Albany friends, and Buffalo representatives. Most of the time was spent playing Trivial Pursuit, speculating about my future with my relatives, and eating not enough of the tons of food that my parents had prepared. My Uncle Brian was there, which meant a lot, and my Aunt Linda gave me a beautiful leather-bound journal, although I confess that I'm afraid to start writing in it, partly out of not knowing how to begin and partly out of not wanting to ruin such a pristine object by spilling ink inside it. All in all, it was a great day, and I was glad that everyone who was able to make it chose to do so.
Most of my energy this summer has been focused on making a little bit of money, in the hope that I can preemptively decrease some of the severity of my grad school loans. To this end, I'm juggling three different evening jobs, at least at the moment, and trying to find a way to become gainfully employed during the daytime as well. My days are far from wasted, however, since I've been running errands, shuttling my siblings around, trying to work out a financial strategy for the next couple of years, attacking my summer reading list, and attempting to realize my summer goal of becoming at least as buff as Napoleon Dynamite. Really, my objectives for these three months are all centered around personal improvement, and I'm starting to get into a groove that is suitable for making it all happen. I'm pretty pleased about that.
The most difficult part about my situation right now, of course, is that I've been abruptly separated from everyone and everything I knew during the last four years of my life, and I miss everyone pretty terribly, especially Jenn. Three weeks have gone by, and I'm currently in the worst stages of Buffalo withdrawl, which I didn't even think was possible. I would give pretty much anything for a trip to Pano's with the LT crowd or a midnight stroll through Wegman's with my girlfriend, as weird as it might sound. It was great to see Tony, Liz, Johnny, and The Blur this weekend, and I'm headed out to Buffalo to see everyone in July. My deeper needs, however, will have to go unmet for some time beyond that. At the risk of sounding pathetic, I guess I never realized the effects that a significant romantic relationship might actually have on me. I miss that girl something fierce.

5/29/05 11:57am I just went to check the weather online, and I punched in "14208" for my ZIP code before realizing that I don't live there anymore. Then, I got really sad.

5/25/05 10:45pm I probably just need to lighten up. Graduation weekend came and went with relatively little fanfare; I spent most of it in the frenzy of packing, caught between my family and my girlfriend each insisting that I spend time with the other, and trying to put four great years into some kind of manageable perspective. The result, I guess, was a terrible anticlimax, my goodbyes were too few and too hasty, and the sun literally has not shone since I left Buffalo on Sunday morning. It wasn't all bad, of course. Dinner with the boys and our families on Saturday provided a great cap on everything, Jenn rocked out with her speech, John Bucki was outside after the ceremony to provide one last handshake, and amidst the cascade of balloons from the rafters and people rushing everywhere and cameras flashing all around me, I came to understand that no matter what was going on or how I felt on that day, the last four years have been a time of tremendous growth and success, and not even a category five commencement hurricane (or some comparable unruly disaster) could take that away. Completely exhausted, I shrugged, gave it all a quick kiss goodbye, and allowed Mike Bard to shuttle me back across the Empire State... I didn't really feel like driving much, anyway. I'm back in Albany now, trying to cobble together the next two months of my life from an odd array of part-time jobs, projects, road trips, and other minor goals. I spent three glorious days offline after returning home, and devoted most of that time to going through my room and throwing out several cubic feet of my life. The old crowd is mostly back in town, but I'm definitely getting the feeling that this is finally the beginning of the end of the Albany of my youth. A walk around the Plaza with Mark this evening led me right back to recognizing the reality behind the immense transition in which we're all caught up... ready or not, here it comes. It may not have had the perfect ending, but Canisius was still the perfect adventure. It's time to turn the page, Bob Seger-style, and carry everything I've learned with me. Thanks, everyone.