the rain is drizzling and so is the chocolate

I'm at my five-year college reunion right now. It's been raining all day, and at the first break in the rain I took a run around Occum Pond, which I never did as an undergraduate. The air is so much cleaner here; perhaps I can expel from my lungs some of the New York diesel that has accumulated there.

As always, I am uncomfortable in crowds of strangers; that's why I tend to find myself on stages, where I have a clearly defined Thing to Accomplish.

I have an article coming out soon in the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine, about my being the first woman captain of the boxing team. This afternoon I ran into Alex, a fellow alumnus who was mentioned in the article -- specifically, the guy who beat the hell out of me. It was a fair fight, too; he was in my weight class, and I got thoroughly whomped.

In our class tent, they handed out souvenir towels and water bottles. Carrying mine back to my old co-ed house, I looked like I was somehow on my way to the pool. We had dinner in the class tent -- lots of free beer, pizza, and lasagna.

I stopped off in the alumni welcome center (free Dartmouth lint brushes in the lobby!), where an attendant tipped me off that the class of '94 had a chocolate fountain in their tent, so I crashed their party a bit and dipped peanut butter balls and banana slices into the chocolate drizzle. If anyone gets married and invites me, get a chocolate fountain. That's all you need for a memorable wedding.

I was holding my umbrella while transferring chocolate-dipped morsels from the fountain to my plate, and I dripped chocolate on my umbrella, making it look like I had been through some Willy Wonka chocolate river fun ride of alumnitude.