The Stoop's Too Big Without You

Our friend Tracy moved away. We miss her. We're delighted that she got a job in Boston as a middle school technology teacher, though, because she has just the right combination of cleverness, sense of humor, bullshit filter, and inexplicable fondness for people under the age of 14 to be entrusted with the important and difficult role of teaching. She taught us to appreciate the front stoop, through her own habit of sitting outside grading papers, reading forest service-themed mysteries, or just drinkin a cold one in all variety of weather, day or night.

To add insult to injury, it appeared that Tracy had been replaced by someone driving a car with one of those Christian fish on the back and Texas license plates. Thank Jesus, it turns out the car belongs to Kat, graduate student from London, who moved to New Haven to complete the second half of a year-long fellowship which began at Texas A&M. She bought the car as-is on Craigslist. I don't think she knows what the Christian fish means, and I don't yet know her well enough to tell her. She assured me she doesn't have any guns though.

But back to Tracy. We really got to know her when we expressed our interest in checking out the Mohegan Sun casino in eastern Connecticut, and she proposed combining an excursion with a camping trip. Camping 'n' gambling is not unlike Tracy's many other innovations, one of which will certainly earn her her future fortune. I've never seen someone delight equally in spotting a turtle in an inland salt pond and settling in at a "Wheel of Fortune" half-cent slot machine.

So anyway, tonight when we got home from seeing Superbad (two thumbs up!) to escape the (global climate change) 90-degree September heat, we gave the stoop a post-Tracy try. We had no way to open the beers we had just bought, and it was downhill from there. We haven't given up on stoop-sitting yet, but the concrete will definitely not be nearly so cozy without T-racy.