Infrequent Partaker of the Night Life

Last night, I threw all caution to the wind and stayed up past 9:00 pm. Way past.

My sister was in town so we decided to all go out to dinner after we got home from work and school. We ended up at Manakeesh, a fantastic Lebanese joint just a block from our house. I ordered way too much food, which is not hard to do at this place, given how visually appealing everything is and how sizeable the portions are. At any rate, we had a great time.

After the kids went to bed, I pounded out some work on my laptop, and then my sister and I headed down the street to the local movie theater to catch the movie "Moneyball" on its opening night. It was the 10:30 pm show, and, given that the hour was over two hours long, and that there were 15 minutes of previews at the beginning, we didn't get home until after 1:00 am.

Walking home at an hour I haven't seen in awhile, the area on and just off campus was still bustling, with college kids socializing on front stoops and house parties spilling out into the street. To be sure, there's a downside to neighborhoods like University City: the smell of stale beer, kids urinating in the alleys, trash everywhere the morning after. But I still liked that we could walk home well after midnight and capture a little bit of the vibrancy of an urban setting, never feeling unsafe because there were plenty of people out and about, and not having to deal with the stultifying routine of getting in a car and driving home.

I may not be a frequent partaker of the night life here in this big city, but one of the perks of living here is that it's out there. It doesn't miss me if, 999 out of 1,000 nights, I'm fast asleep. But the one night I'm out - to watch a movie in the theater, too, for crying out loud - it's there to help round out the whole experience. That's a nice perk.