Feels like Easter Sunday today. Sunny, bright, with melting snow covering most of the ground. Patches of wet green here and there.

That's my house at Easter, of course. Easter morning. By the afternoon we were usually in Coon Rapids, my Gramma's house, where there was less snow.

This weekend: low-key? Sometimes I say "low-key" when I mean "boring," because describing any period of time as boring makes me feel like a failure. I can make my own fun; that's never been much of a problem. But then I have to explain the boredom.

As fellow Brainerdites and other small-towners already know, there's a big difference between sitting around by yourself and doing something relatively pointless — I spent most of Saturday working on the Dan Digital Archive Project — and sitting around with a group of people who all want to do something but can't think of anything satisfying. The latter is incredibly frustrating.

I'm fine sitting around and watching something or talking, but there's always someone sighing and wondering aloud what we're going to do. It's contagious. Soon I'm dissatisfied, brainstorming.

And brainstorming only exacerbates the situation because you have ideas, and you're throwing them away because yes, they don't seem good enough, but if you're throwing away ideas there's more pressure to do something really great.

At one point, for a few months or so, I tried an experiment with Jenna. We would have default activity and unless we came up with a better plan, we'd do that. Sometimes we'd try to make it really boring, so we'd be pressured to come up with something better. Playing GTA, watching tv at Graham's, hanging out at Rafferty's Pizza in the mall.

(Flo, my goth German-exchange student, once told me that "Rafferty" was Italian for someone who steals your money. Good pizza, though.)

Friday we did nothing. The Politician had tried all day to organize a poker game, but I was apathetic and at nine only one other person showed up to play. We collected another (uninvited) guest, and sat around for a few hours drinking and half-talking until everyone left for bed.

Everyone else asleep or gone, Jubb, a few of his climbing friends, and Our Bold Hero watched "The Village" on my computer. Better than "Signs," at least logically, it would have been more enjoyable had Climbing Matt not dropped hints about the end.

I still felt like I'd done nothing, afterwards. Most of that night was boring.

Saturday, however, was low-key; I spent a few hours sitting around, contentedly watching old episodes of "The Simpsons" and scanning old notebooks for the DDAP, with no one peeping in my ear about activities. Enjoy life as your expectations dictate, kids.

Jubb and I watched another one of my recent acquisitions, a good suspense film called "The Machinist," and ended up at the Viking Room with the Politician and Zack, who I'm tempted to start calling "The Apologist" because it was an apt suggestion. I miss making characters.

I don't think I can understate the importance our campus bar, the source of so many low-key nights this term. The days of Wednesday-night Mariokart with Ben and Rock Show Girl are over, as are the big Halo 2 games on the campus network. We don't watch very many movies anymore; this weekend was an exception.

The VR is to Lawrence what pot was to Brainerd. Everyone is still sitting around, but magically, all the whining is gone. We're "doing something." It's like a social loophole, where you can just sit around and talk without being bored.