Ye Olde Alma Mater

Lounging in Bill's backyard at Amherst was exactly what I wanted to do after yesterday morning's 17-mile run. Greta was cute and charming until the afternoon turned into the evening and sitting around was no longer amusing enough for her. She tried to make things more fun by dumping her little bowl of salad onto the seat of one of the green, plastic lawn chairs and mushing it around, but this stunt didn't attract enough attention, so she decided to whip out the toddler's secret weapon: her lungs. Still, her little cries and yelps were nowhere near as grating as the ones let loose by the screaming children at the Holyoke Mall earlier that afternoon.

We ordered food from various Amherst take-out establishments, which was mediocre, but it didn't really matter. (No offense to those who remain loyal to Fresh Side, but I should've stuck with Bueno...) Before leaving town, we made the obligatory stop at Rao's, which has now swallowed up the Indian restaurant that used to be next door, and then took a quick driving tour of campus.

Let me just say that the term "under construction" vastly understates the situation right now at the fairest college. The two new dorms located where Milliken used to be are almost finished and look pretty nice, hulking though they may be; a foundation for a new building of some sort was plopped right on the hillside between Fayerweather and A and B dorms; and, most shocking of all, James and Stearns are... gone!

I feel as if all of my freshman year memories have been erased. No more will eager young 18-year-olds haul kegs up four flights of stairs, yelling, "Fourth floor Stearns is the paw-tee floor!" In place of those two much-revered "cooler" freshman dorms is nothing but a pile of dirt. It's enough to bring a tear to my eye...