ode to blitz

it's been a long time since i logged in to my blitz account multiple times a day and my blitz name didn't have a class year attached to it but with blitz being replaced for good i read this article on dartbeat and had a wave of nostalgia for 'the way we were' and had to comment:

it's impossible to put into words how much blitz shaped my dartmouth experience (class of 2005 here) esp since i was on campus when cell phones weren't at all prevalent. from blitz bombing roommates, creative nicknames (whatwouldjimmybuffettdo), blitz wars that opened 30 emails on your screen the second you logged in after your 12, the familiar 'ping' of an incoming blitz, hitting ctrl m to send, accidentally blitzing the wrong message to your prof or coach, having your non-dartmouth friends look at you like you were crazy when you talked about blitzing someone, rapid fire convos about meeting for lunch, take me off this list, contracting pink eye from the blitz terminals (avoid eye contact!), agonizing over language while crafting morning after blitzes, running up the basement stairs to check blitz mid-pong game, checking blitz while out on a saturday night to find the people you were meeting up with on frat row, dedicated blitz computers on the first floor of frats/sororities, the unique ability to highlight text and reply with a 'you wrote and end quote' - blitz defined my college experience. i'm sad that future dartmouth generations will miss out on the experience of blitz. 

good bye old friend. thanks for the memories.

why hello

i know i know - i am such a deliniquent. if it weren't for megh guilt tripping me into posting about his fabulous dinner party on sunday i probably still would be MIA, but in the words of america 'i've been one poor correspondent, i've been too too hard to find but it doesn't mean you ain't been on my mind'

in chronological order:

• '07 reunion - quite simply, it was a blast. highlight was the impromptu dance party that went down in the sd basement on saturday night. we took down the first pong table and turned off the lights and kevin and i were running up and down the stairs dj'ing ('we found love' and 'call me maybe' were the heavy favorites). we also stashed a justin case of keystone in the dryer - also pretty awesome. walked down to the river with laurak to go skinny dipping, played a two table game of social at 4 am and then strip pong (we were winning by so much that eventually we just got naked). capped off the night with a trip to lou's at 7 am. we were all drunk and falling asleep in our maple syrup but it was epic. got in a quick nap between 8:30 and 10:30 am and then caught a ride home with cody. it was so great to be hanging out on campus with 'the pledges' again and campus looked so much warmer and greener then it had even a few weeks earlier. so so so much fun. i'm going to continue crashing reunions in the future. 

• jimmy buffett '12x - also a blast. christine had borrowed a tent for the occassion, which was incredibly clutch considering it was super hot out. i took a ton of pictures on my phone and managed not to lose it (a jb miracle) and vik got most valuable partier for reasons i will not detail here in case vin reads the blog. great group of people, amazing set list and concert number 12 under my belt. christine and went down to the cape for a few hours on sunday to go out on her boat - we were bummed we had to go back to real life on sunday night but it was such a lovely trip and very necessary for our sanity.

• vacation! - my 10 or so days on the cape were incredible - we def hit the vacation weather jackpot as each day was sunny and hot. i went to the beach just about every day. christine and i did the lobster special at the raw bar and oyster harbor fireworks on her boat ('my neck is cramping from looking up at the fireworks #capecodproblems') and my siblings were home so i got to catch up with them. i did a ton of manual labor for my parents - cleaning and tidying the house and yard for the company - i took the philosophical approach that i pay a lot of money for that kind of exercise in nyc. rowena came up on thursday and we beached and boozed for a few days and sang 'intergalactic' to much applause during saturday night karaoke at the foxhole. laurak is currently in woods hole, so she came down to hang out for saturday night as well and we ended up in osterville after hours at my brother's friend's house boozing and having a few laughs. great way to end a fabulous break from the big city.

lots of friend time lately - as i mentioned megh is now back in nyc and had mulley, kjbb + the boy and me over to his new apartment for a dinner party on sunday night. he made some delicious appetizers and roasted a chicken with lemon - we were all impressed and enjoyed his new digs. glad he's back in the city!

next up is ceppos' bachelorette party in nyc this weekend. i'm getting excited to hang out and be silly with some girlfriends - we're going to see the 80s cover band rubix kube on sat night. i will def post my comments, learnings and suggestions after the weekend is over so that others can learn from my experiences as well.

i also rented '21 jump street' over the weekend and loved it. it was hilarious, quotable and had a great soundtrack. highly highly recommend. one of my favorite quotes was 'what are you wearing?' 'potassium nitrate - thanks for noticing' ;-P

that's the news! stay (cool) and classy friends! :)

refreshing and youthful

the best part of the superbowl BY FAR was during the half-time show when the opening notes of 'like a prayer' were played in indianapolis. i was watching it with ceppos and both of us screamed 'like a prayer'! it seems sigma delts the world over had a similar response. had sort of forgotten madonna sang that song and it was potentially an option for superbowl, but it will be forever ingrained in our blood thanks to sigma delt rush as undergrads. it's funny that's one of the things that ties sigma delts together. you can't discount the value of bench dancing and music in the heart of a sigma delt. i thought madonna did a pretty good job with the half-time show - the medley of songs and guest appearances were awesome and julia's brother was wondering if it was too late to sign some of the gladiators who carried madonna on to the stage to the patriots secondary (it was. rip patriots).

speaking of sd, headed up to campus tonight for winter carnival festivities and club officers weekend. not sure if they did this when we were undergrads but the alumni office does a program for club officers and volunteers on campus this weekend ever year. it's a chance to network, meet folks from the college and spend some time hearing about what's going on at dartmouth. a lot of the events conflict with good old-fashioned hanging out, but i'm really really going to try to make it to the key ones this year (last year i did not). excited to play some pong and hang out in between being all professional like. and i'd really like to go ice skating on occom pond - we'll see if that happens.

otherwise just continue to be amazed at the opportunities that come my way - both big and small. i'm having a blast saying yes to things and checking yes for fun. 'feels like some kind of ride but it's just turning out to be life going absolutely perfectly' - storypeople :)

dartmouth self calls

lots of stuff to say about graduation today, but the best part was conan o'brien's speech as the commencement speaker - chock full with dartmouth self calls and some useful advice too. video and favorite parts below. so much dartmouth love.

• Before I begin, I must point out that behind me sits a highly admired President of the United States and decorated war hero (George H Bush) while I, a cable television talk show host, has been chosen to stand here and impart wisdom. I pray I never witness a more damning example of what is wrong with America today

• To communicate with you students today, I have gone to great lengths to become well-versed in your unique linquistic patterns. In fact, just this morning I left Baker Berry with my tripee Barry to eat a Billy Bob at the Bema when my flitz to Francesca was Blitz jacked by some d-bag on his FSP.

• Your insecurity is so great, Dartmouth, that you don’t even think you deserve a real podium. What the hell is this thing? It looks like you stole it from the set of Survivor: Nova Scotia. Seriously, it looks like something a bear would use at an AA meeting. - (he was referring to the tree trunk podium that is a staple at d)
  

• If I had gone to Dartmouth, I’d have a liver the size and consistency of a bean bag chair.

• [Under the Conan Doctrine] I will re-instate Tubestock. And I will punish those who tried to replace it with Fieldstock. Rafting and beer are a much better combination than a field and a beer. I happen to know that in two years, they were going to downgrade Fieldstock to Deskstock --- 7 hours of fun sitting quietly at your desk. Don’t let those bastards do it!

• It’s simple: there are few things more liberating in this life than having your worst fear realized.

• At the end of my final program with NBC, just before signing off, I said “Work hard, be kind, and amazing things will happen. “ Today, receiving this honor and speaking to the Dartmouth Class of 2011 from behind a tree-trunk, I have never believed that more.

full transcript and video here.

Panorama of the Green on Green Key

can anyone direct me to the basement?

so distracted at work today b/c i keep reliving the memories (many hazy) of green key 2011. only way to get over it is to blog it so without further ado i present the tweets of green key:

• lobster dinner for $13 - #winning! - drove up with stein on friday after work. we stopped at stu leonards near westport, ct for dinner. turned out they had lobster for $13 so we indulged before ripping up to hanover.
• 'when i get to vermont i am so speeding again' - we literally ripped up to hanover. we were going 81 mph or so when we got pulled over on 91, just shy of the vermont border. somehow stein got off with a warning. we'll chalk it up to the magic of green key.
  
• 'harbor is a morning game' - true story. continued the tradition by playing at 11 on saturday though it was remarkably difficult to round up 8 ragey people who wanted in. booted up the blue boones (terrible) we were drinking half way through and my mouth tasted like coconut for the rest of the game
  
• 'if i wanted to be responsible i would have invited my parents and my pants to green key' - neither were in attendance so you can guess how much responsibility there was
  
• 'can anyone tell me where the basement is' - jill and i shouted this a lot and i kind of think it would be an awesome tshirt b/c basements are such a thing at dartmouth. also think 'got basement?' would be good too
• 'this is all i have to wear because my pants are muddy and jason ripped the sleeves off my shirt' - sums up the weekend pretty well
• 'it's my 25 millionth time at the rodeo' - different take on an old quote. but it really was.
  

got to campus and sd on friday and found alex, who was in pretty rough shape from beacoup drinking, but i managed to peer pressure him into playing lots of games of pong until my sister showed up and we blew up the inflatable shark that she found in celeste's box in the sigma delt storage room. eventually wandered back over to xh but it was pretty late and there was no beer so we went back to jill's room in mid fayer.

it was a gorgeous gorgeous night and i kept wanting to take my clothes off and run around but no one wanted to do it (or jump in the river) with me (apparently it's the coldest it's been in 67 years and no one cared about our lochness expertise). kevin came up to jill's room around 4 am and we sat on the fire escape and ate girl scout cookies before deciding it was too nice to be inside and that we wanted to be out on the green. we noticed the lights were still on in the d so we went up to the d office and hung out as the sky got lighter. the balcony of robo wasn't a terrible place to watch the sun rise on green key.

was kind of okay with the idea that the world might be ending at dartmouth on saturday. it just seemed fitting. as did dancing to 'til the world ends' while playing pong on saturday afternoon.

spent saturday night playing pong outside at the backyard of 45/47 leb aka the track house. the smell of the lilacs from the lilac hedge really did a lot to offset the smell of stale beer. alex was in pretty rough shape after drinking all day and fell asleep in his car on top of his resume. that was a new one.

i acquired several pirate tattoos, including a treasure chest on my upper right hip. places i will never be getting a tattoo: my upper right hip.

i also spent more time with my brother's friends than with my brother, primarily due to the fact that his friend sliced his hand open pretty bad while trying to scale the fence to the track to run drunk 400s. they had to take him to the hospital where he got 10 stitches before they returned to campus, went straight to stinsons and then to the heorot toga party.

finally dartmouth has a lot of lingo - both words specific to campus and trends in language. the big one over the weekend was 'literally'. it was used both liberally and erroneously many times to describe everything from how hungry people were to how to how hard they raged. so of course now it's a thing for me too. i'm literally saying it all the time. ;-P

hodgepodge

ping ponging
rowena had a groupon for 'spin' - a ping pong fun land (not sure what the right word is there). think big and open with lots of tables and orange florescent pong balls everywhere. there was also a bar - only in nyc do ping pong bars and bowling alleys have bottle service.

had not played ping pong since my grandparents sold their house on the cape (they had a table on the back porch)/i got into dartmouth and ping pong tables stopped being options for good clean fun and started being conduits for pong 10 years ago. the hardest habit to break was that of frantically chasing down the pong ball after it went off table. i also got yelled at for banging my paddle on the table. oops. but the music was fantastic! lots of led zepplin, bon jovi and ac/dc. fortunately i don't think my pong serve was affected and i will still be able to run table this weekend.

skin cancer awareness month
borrowing this blog to make a quick PSA: may is national skin cancer awareness month. i know this because a girl i knew in high school died from malignant melanoma and the foundation they established in her name sent out a PSA that i am passing along to you. skin cancer is very treatable when it's caught early so please take a second to get your skin checked and remember to wear sunscreen and be smart about the sun this summer.

sprints
had a blast at sprints with stein on sunday. the alumnae row went surprisingly well - the boat was pretty set, though the bow caught a crab as soon as we crossed the finish line - and we actually were moving the boat with every stroke. it was so enjoyable to be back in an 8 that i'm considering training for the head of the charles. i like having something to work towards when it comes to training and wouldn't mind being in rowing shape again. tbd. was also glad to be there because the dartmouth crews had a fantastic day with the first varsity boat medaling for the first time in over 10 years. just great energy and spirit and bleeding dartmouth green all around. stein and i get to road trip again this weekend when we head up to hanover - wheee!

green key
keep singing 'green key green key gotta get down it's green key' to the tune of rebecca black's 'friday' in my head. why someone hasn't made this parody already is beyond me.

nature can make me cry faster than anything

I would insist that the man who spends four years in our North Country and does not learn to hear the melody of rustling leaves or does not learn to love the wash of racing brooks over their rocky beds in spring, who has never experienced the repose to be found on lakes and rivers, who has not stood enthralled on the top of Moosilauke on a moonlit night or has not become a worshipper of color as he has seen the sunset from one of Hanover's hills, who has not thrilled at the whiteness of the snow-clad countryside in winter or at the flaming forest colors of the fall - I would insist that this man has not reached out for some of the most worthwhile educational values assessible to him at Dartmouth.

- Ernest Martin Hopkins,
Dartmouth President, 1916-1945

winter carnival 2011: we laughed, we cried, we threw up

a word to the wise: this post is going to be an entirely gushy 'i love sigma delt so much' post, so if you're not in the mood, i would suggest skipping it.

winter carnival was a total blast. the air was clean, there was snow everywhere and the oobleck light was on in baker tower. (some people call this the money light, but those people have never read 'bartholomew and the oobleck'). there was also just a general feeling of excitement - main street was bustling and winter activities were happening it was winter carnival. it's always been my favorite big weekend maybe because it is so unassuming. hard to say.

spent most of the weekend at sigma delt, but i did get up at 7:30 to go register for club officers weekend and listen to a presentation on athletics. did you know that dartmouth has 34 varsity teams, while the average division 1 school has 19? i didn't. i also took a student to eat (aka TASTE) at molly's. it's a program that connects alums with current students who have similar academic, activities or career interests. was enjoying my role as 'older and wiser and sketchier' alum and had a great time chatting with a bg '11 about life, dartmouth and the real world.

the rest of the time i was in the basement. sd had a nascar party on sat afternoon - they ordered $570 worth of kfc for the occasion. kfc is good under normal circumstances. after playing pong for six hours it is AMAZING. there was also a jaguar parked in the parking lot that didn't work. sigma delt hasn't really changed.

sd is switching over to the full size frat tables in order to compete in masters, so my game was a little off, but it was a blast to play and hang out with the girls. i think the best thing about it was that i think my '05 - '07 sigma delt friends would be friends with the current sd undergrads - something that makes me really happy. at one point we raided the flare closet in the library ala our mlk trip several years ago and played pong decked out in our flare finery. i was wearing striped green and white tights that i dubbed my 'witches of eastwick tights'. ended up sleeping in them b/c i didn't want to take them off.

sd has a new $3k speaker system, so we rocked out to 'like a prayer' and 'it's all coming back to me now' was a religious experience, but in true sd fashion, the music had been erased by accident the day before, so we heard a lot of the same glee and katy perry songs. had a fantastic fantastic time hanging out, but it always must be said that wasn't the same without the usual suspects. the setting is, the smell is, the tables are, but the people that should be running down the stairs to be a fourth are missing. totally crashing the '06-'08 10 year reunion! i would also like to note that some kids were playing pong to 'climb every mountain' of 'sound of music' fame around 2 am on sunday morning. at first i thought this was a mistake but no - they really wanted to be listening to that.

buying sd cases of beer to be delivered tomorrow by stinson's for meetings b/c i kept trying to buy them beer to no avail over the weekend. least i can do to say thank you for welcoming me back, being super awesome and letting me rage like i was an undergrad instead of an about to be 28 year old with a job and apt in nyc. that's pretty much priceless.

sosososososo much sd love.

oh the places it snows

hello friends! my mind is very much focused on dartmouth these days (who are we kidding - when is it not?) partly because winter carnival weekend is upon us, and partly b/c i'm running around doing dartmouth stuff for the d club.

the dartmouth/yale hockey game last weekend was a blast. really fun to put on the dartmouth gear and go and cheer. we had great seats in the dartmouth visitors section, with the exception of this stupid yale fan who was clearly misguided as he felt he needed to yell obnoxious things at the dartmouth team while surrounded by dartmouth alums. sadly d did not prevail, but it was a lot of fun, though i was swearing an awful lot to be in a family-type environment.

tonight's the dartmouth winter carnival party in nyc - expecting a good turnout for that and i've made what i consider to be a kick-ass playlist. was asking my brother if he used the pandora app on his i touch b/c it's good for parties. his response: too bad every playlist i've ever made is better than any pandora shuffle. hands down. (i'm inclined to agree).

heading to hanover on friday night for winter carnival and club and affiliated group officers wknd (CAGOW). haven't been to wc in a couple of years and it's my favorite big weekend so really looking forward to it. sadly celeste won't be able to accompany me, but we're planning another trip for the spring. link to my blog post a couple years ago summarizing the winter carnival themes of the last 30 years here.

am attempting to stop being so lazy and be more disciplined - aka get out of bed before 8:30 am every day and get to work earlier - so i have to stop dawdling and get dressed but a quick twitter run down:

• just purchased my verizon iphone. hope it gets to my office b/c it wouldn't let me ship to a company so i selected 'residence' and made my company name the first name. time will tell.

• txtfln: (716): Some guy stole lobsters by hiding them in his pants. We should strive to be like him.

• feb 5th was my four year anniversary at nbc. hard to believe it's been so long - i've had a lot of different roles - but wow.

• bought my ticket to southern cali for diana's bachelorette in may. the weekend is being held at one of her friend's beach house in newport beach. super psyched to hang out!

• my brother on a presentation he gave at work: 'presentation was on the ge harmony topload washer. it went well but i talk too quickly for kentucky.'

• my old coworker on winter/groundhog day: 'the groundhog is going to run for cover. the groundhog is going to shi*t his pants.'

• 'i'm not a writer but i do write.' - read this on someone else's blog and i really like the concept. i've explored my thoughts on writing on the blog ad nauseum, but this seems to sum it up very well.

• PATIENCE, n. A minor form of despair, disguised as a virtue. - ambrose bierce 'the devil's dictionary'

lastly, will leave you with the lyrics of a dartmouth song that i've had stuck in my head for the last couple days called 'dartmouth undying':

Dartmouth there is no music for our singing
No words to bear the burden of our praise
Yet how can we be silent and remember the splendor and the fullness of her days

Who can forget her soft September sunsets
Who can forget those hours that passed like dreams
The long cool shadows floating on the campus
The drifting beauty where the twilight streams

Who can forget her sharp and misty mornings
The clanging bells, the crunch of feet on snow
Her sparkling noons and crowding into Commons
The long white afternoons, the twilight glow

See, by the light of many thousand sunsets
Dartmouth undying like a vision starts
Dartmouth the gleaming, dreaming walls of Dartmouth
Miraculously builded in our hearts

dartmouth's in town again

today is the day of the dartmouth/columbia football game up at the columbia stadium. i'm heading up there shortly to pre-game at a bar with a bunch of dartmouth football parents in the d club of nyc social chair capacity, and then going over to the game. i've managed to peer pressure a number of folks into trekking up to the columbia stadium (aka 218th street) to join so i'm pulling out my dartmouth sweatshirt and looking forward to it.

have not been much of a football fan in the past, but kind of got more into it last winter when i started playing pick-up with stoebe. of course i suck at it, but i figured if i watch more games and pay attention i'll start to get the hang of it. (it's kind of difficult with lots of basketball playing years under my belt - the two games are kind of opposite - but it's been fun). also dartmouth's kind of good this year, and a football game is a pretty good way to spend a late october fall day.

'dartmouth's in town again' is a dartmouth fight song of old (like wicked old) but i always liked the men's crew team cheer: 'dartmouth! dartmouth! we don't have a cheer kick some ass so we can drink some beer!'

amen. go green!

i'll drink to that

tomorrow is the dartmouth club of nyc fall kickoff party, and as the new social chair of the d club of nyc (MUCH less glamorous than it sounds), i have been charged with decorations and music. i'm psyched on the decorations - jack b nimble mini pumpkins, fall hanging decorations and glitter leaves - but the soundtrack has been much more difficult.

normally the music for a party is my sweet spot. hearn even acknowledged how fantastic the playlist i put together for the 90s beach party was back in july. but having a lot of trouble putting together a soundtrack for a cocktail party that spans a few generations in the library of the yale club. surprisingly, itunes didn't have a great cocktail 'essentials' playlist or anything, which is their loss b/c i probably would have bought the entire thing. right now the list is a fair amount of low key alternative, some blue grass, some ragtime, and some oldies (think 'in the mood') with the dartmouth songs thrown in. not sure how it's going to go over, but i guess we can just drink ourselves a soundtrack. immediate stress aside, i am enjoying being more involved with the club, and got very drunk after last week's board meeting off of martinis. discovered at kjb's wedding that the dirty martini's weren't 'dirty' enough for me - apparently i like it filthy (#twss) so filthy martinis have become my poison of choice with predictable results.

had a delightful weekend out in cali visiting with diana, laurak and karla. i've been running around like a maniac lately with work, the d club and apt hunting, so the time change hit me really hard, but i did manage to stay up late enough on friday night for laurak's arrival from la so we could do a really quiet rendition of 'escape' for old times sake.

we played a lot of pong (which diana and i won handily to evan's chagrin). we also walked along the beach and saw a bunch of dolphins. it's so weird to me that SF has all these tropical elements like palm trees and pelicans and dolphins when it's foggy and the ocean is so cold! but dolphins are cool wherever you see them.

i also did not get to ride the cable cars like i had hoped; instead, we went out to a vineyard outside the city for the opening of a wine created by a friend of a friend (more here). kind of like going to a gallery opening in chelsea only we were out in this really rural area surrounded by vines that looked like corn shocks and drinking our faces off of delicious wine and eating goat cheese. it was a fun experience to do that.

we also heard a lot about the plans for diana and evan's wedding scheduled for july in monterey, ca. sounds like a number of the usual suspects will be attending and diana's djing, which means the enrique will be out of control. already looking forward to meeting back at the local saloon. unfort i missed most of the merriment of 'talk like a pirate day' on sunday due to the flight back to nyc. or in pirate speak - being held hostage by a bunch of landlubbers.

back in nyc the apt hunt continues. saw an apt tonight that has a shared bathroom and a lofted bed - debating whether i can live with that. i also saw an apt that is right near the apt charlo and i first lived in when we moved to the city. like i swear the air shaft is the one that littlechen booted out of during a party we threw in apt 27. debating if being right back where i started five years after the fact is worth having this apt search over and done with. tbd the room in this apt was available because the girl is moving to boston to live with her dartmouth '05 boyfriend. the world is too small sometimes. well that and dartmouth people are everywhere.

i'm in the city this wknd except for what is likely an ill-advised trip to new haven on fri night to play harbour at lamb's apt. two hours is a lot shorter than 5 hours when it comes to traveling to play pong but it means another night without sleep or downtime. then again, who needs those anyway??

will leave you with this quote i like from my friend at 'wanderlost':

“let us toast to animal pleasures, to escapism, to rain on the roof and instant coffee, to unemployment insurance and library cards, to absinthe and good-hearted landlords, to music and warm bodies and contraceptives… and to the “good life”, whatever it is and wherever it happens to be.”

- hunter s. thompson

dare a deed for the old mother

quick post before i head off the dartmouth club to moderate this panel for incoming freshman for the 4th year in a row. as you may or may not know, i've read/read a lot of sports psych books, and they're always talking about needing to put yourself into the fire and jump out before you get burned in order to get better at being in the fire. how does this apply you may be wondering? well, moderating a panel of 75 dartmouth people is pretty good practice for those times when i have to speak in front of a crowd when things actually count (hello GM presentations), but that doesn't mean i'm not nervous! in the words of mark twain, 'there are two types of speakers: those that aren't nervous and those that are liars.'

however, the way i figure it, moderating this panel is my own 'deed for the old mother' (alma mater lyric) and it generally is a pretty fun thing to be a part of, but oooo - i think i'll be glad when the panel part is over and we get to have a nice dinner at the yale club.

tidbits:

- had a deep friend twinkie last night in honor of ece's impending bday (sat) at a restaurant called 'lansky's' on the upper west side. it was served with vanilla ice cream and carmel sauce and YES it was as good as it sounds.

- discovered this amazing set of pirate-themed christmas music this morning. it includes such gems as 'deck the ships with lots of booty' and 'your town's roasting on an open fire'. it also adds a whole new meaning to the concept of not being able to wait til christmas.

- went to the yankees game on monday night on a whim. morgalis, a kid i used to play bball with when he worked at megh and taylor's company, had a friend who had 3 extra tickets and need some people who 'were not pansys' to go with her. i rallied, along with a kickball friend and his coworker. hey - i like free tickets and meeting people and we had great seats on a beautiful night, even if a-rod didn't hit number 600 with us in attendance. no word yet on whether we passed muster with our new friend, but it was an enjoyable night for me!

there's more but i've got to dash off to this panel business. catch you on the flip side kids.

sorry for partying

so i realize i have been remiss in posting and it has come to my attention that people want a post. this is because my computer is still being ridiculous and randomly shutting itself off, which doesn't make me want to turn it on, and i started my new job this week so i actually have work to do. after 3 years of working with the same people i'm getting used to a situation where no one knows me and i have no good will built up, and it's a new role, and the situation totally sucks. you really really are dependent on the kindness of people when you start over.

the reunion was amazing. so fantastic. the weather was beautiful so there was that haze over the green mountains and baker looked perfect in the early summer twilight. i'll do a run down of events

- drove up with robin - she's been in class for interior design and she and the boy are buying an apt in bklyn so she'll get to put her skills to good use.

- me, allette, karla, robin, laurak and huyett were in a cluster on the 4th floor of wheeler. i brought my mini speakers and we listened to 'in my head' (JASON DERULO!) and 'bad romance' all wknd, complete with lots of shouting of 'i don't wanna be friends!'

- mainly hung out with the rowers and the sd usual suspects, including some quality time on the sd beach. thanks to a combo of being drunk, hungover or wearing sunglasses all wknd, i didn't have to talk to many people i didn't want to see

- getting into sd was going to be an issue b/c we didn't technically have access to the house. allette rang the doorbell and we befriended the '11 housemanager, who made the risky but right decision to hide her key so we could get in. sd was a bit of a scene all weekend with folks from lots of different groups hanging out. really glad sd is still a place where anyone can go and feel welcome

- apparently my lot in life is to change the music (although i guess i'm the one that feels most strongly about it) and i was happy to discover that the random 'sd pref mix' that i put on still has 'we are family' and then 'like a prayer' as the second song, to rock out to on pref night. that's an '05 tradition that's still around.

- richardson 309 is no more, as apparently they renovated the dorm and renumbered rooms. it truly is the stuff of legends though, and i sort of feel that like 'brigadoon', it will reappear every 100 years or something

- friday night stinson's was out of pong balls (amateur hour) so we were all sticking our stash down our boobs. need a pong ball so i ran over to psi u to beg one. in my haste to get back to sd i ran out the back door of the basement as a short cut. turns out there are cement stairs that i ran into full speed and fell into the bushes. lay there for awhile, stunned, before hobbling back to sd, where i insisted the girls pour keystone on my wounds to cauterize them 'civil war style'. i'm an idiot.

- went out on the river with the '05 crew girls on sat in an eight. it was so amazing to be back in a boat on the connecticut, but i have to say it's really hard to row hungover when your hands are shaking. we rowed up to the starting line, did some pieces and rowed back, including an all eight pause at hands away with the boat set up for about 5 seconds. skips has captured this feat on video. boo yah.

- had a nice little gathering at the d that megh set up. great to see those kids. i also acquired my own copy of 'guy and fellow', the comic strip that ran for awhile. this is particularly relevant as i wasn't the biggest fan of the comic as an undergrad, though the name of this blog comes from a comic, which the d directorate board knew. when they gave me a book (the party after you left - a collection of new yorker cartoons) for being staff writer of the year (one of the awards i'm most proud of) they inscribed it was an apology that they weren't able to give me the 'guy and fellow' anthology.

- sat night we had a lobster dinner in the BEMA. i had to prepare everyone's lobster for them, as apparently lobster eating is not a life skill that everyone knows. and then we headed back to sd to hang out more. i played some pong with a bg '12 who really needs to step up his game if he wants to be respected at bg. but it was fun to hang out. ended up playing pong until 7 am, just hanging out and playing when people showed up. it was so weird for it to be light out but we decided we didn't have to stop playing just b/c the sun was coming up. shuter and i closed down the basement, and then she walked me back to wheeler b/c she had promised laurak she would. it's nice to know oaths still mean something around here.

- the 'hard guy' tshirts made a reappearance with 'hard guy reunion: i didn't even go to this school'. well played.

- drove back to nyc with karla, who is going to grad school at berkley this fall for urban planning, and huyett who doesn't yet know what she's doing this fall. we were all on the struggle jet to struggle town, but we made it.

- someone's facebook album had a comment that 'they wanted to friend every '05 they went to school with'. it was pretty accurate. we're all obsessed with dartmouth and each other. karla and i decided there needs to be more of a commitment to getting together without major life changes like weddings. it's only going to be harder and harder for us to keep getting together and in the words of a raffi song 'the more we get together the happier we'll be.' :)

this past weekend was also ridiculous. friday night we did a ferry friday on a perfect night for it. had about 20 people come out for it which was fantastic. rode back and forth a couple times until we had drunk all the beer on the boat, so we got off and ventured into to statan island looking for a dive bar. we found one - karl's klipper. we all thought we were going to die, but we had some 'statan island ice teas', played some pool and then ventured back to manhattan to 'jeremy's ale house' in the financial district. went to 'commonground' and then down to the lower east side to a bar the boys like called 'vig 27'. drinking whiskey on the rocks was prob not the best idea, but i think it impressed the boys.

sat i rolled out of bed to go up to dana's bar 'dylan murphys' to be in a college-humor type video that a friend was shooting. my role was to look disgusted when the boys tried to pick us up with offense/dumb pick up lines (you girls on myspace?). then headed down to watch the soccer game with the crew. just kept on going out from there - things are a little hazy - i know i took a nap in the bar for a bit before ending up back on the ues at dylan murphys. things come full circle eh?

going to be a long week this week but my eye's on the prize of going home to the cape on friday for a week! wheeeeeeeeee! vin and rowena are coming along for the ride and my fingers are crossed for great weather and some fantastic fireworks. i need to go home so badly. can't wait to be where 'the wind and the water are free'.

mixed emotions

'mixed emotions' happens to be a rolling stones song. been in a rolling stones kind of mood lately, but i tend to like some of the deeper cuts, rather than the obvious ones like 'she's a rainbow', 'emotional rescue', 'shattered', 'anybody seen my baby', etc. got to know some of the off-the-beaten path songs listening to boxa's copy of '40 licks' while studying. needed some music that i didn't already know all the words to in order to focus while studying, and the stones did the trick.

i'm def feeling some mixed emotions this week as my last day at work was yesterday and todat starts my five year reunion. lots of transitions and reflections on where i've come and where i'm going. sort of feeling like i'm graduating all over again - starting anew. as far as the five years since graduating, well, most of that is chronicled here. a lot of fun, memories, great trips and wonderful people that i've met and i'm happy to say, many that i already knew and are still in my life. we graduated not knowing where our lives and/or careers would lead and i think it's safe to say we've sorted some of that out, though it will forever be changing every day.

i've been a guest on campus as an alum so many times since we graduated that it's a little weird to think about going back up to spend a weekend in hanover that's all about me. and it's weird to think about how there was a time when it was my campus - had a place to live, classes to go to, things to do and all the people i wanted to see were in one place. i am fortunate enough to have made many more dartmouth memories after graduation, but this weekend is about celebrating my undergrad memories.

a lot of you will already know these stories - but here are five of my favorite undergrad memories to usher in reunion:

fifty mile hike - the appalachian trail (hence forth to be referred to as the AT) runs through hanover, and the dartmouth outing club maintains 50 miles of the trail between hanover and mt. moosilauke in warren, nh. every fall the doc does an event called the fifty mile hike, where you hike continuously from hanover to moosilauke. freshman fall me and marta won the lottery for a spot to do the hike, but rosi, our crew coach, wouldn't let us do it during crew season. rosi said if we waited she would do support for us in the spring.

spring rolled around and rosi tried reallllly hard to talk us out of the hike, but we were adamant. so memorial day weekend found me, taylor, marta, susie, gretchen, diebold and zana marching out of hanover towards moosilauke. it was an incredible experience. it took us 27 hours and 44 minutes, hiking with only short breaks for food and to change clothes. we hiked over five mountains and through some of the most beautiful woods in new england. all of us had times when we felt like we weren't going to make it, but we did (though trikiniki said we looked like a refugee camp when we made it to the lodge) and it was an amazing story, bonding experience and accomplishment.

ledyard challenge - dartmouth is on the border of vermont and new hampshire and, the story goes, it's legal to be naked in public in vermont, but not in new hampshire. the ledyard challenge involves you going down to the river by the ledyard canoe club, swimming naked over to vermont across the connecticut river, and running back across the bridge to nh without getting caught.

i did the challenge a couple times, but the most memorable one was sophomore summer, when a couple of us decided to go down and do the challenge after an event at sd. walking down to the river we noticed campus security patrolling, so we kept an eye out as we stripped down and swam across the river and then as we were preparing to run back across the bridge. we saw a car turn in to the parking lot on the other side, and then leave, so we ran over the bridge and back into the parking lot. as we were running through the parking lot headlights appeared from behind, so we dove into the bushes to hide. turned out to be some kids messing around, so we climbed out of the bushes and finished the challenge uneventfully. except for the next day when we discovered we all had poison ivy from head to toe. that made for an interesting finals period for all of us (ever tried to take a test while your poison ivy is weeping through your shirt?) and a great story.

sleeping on the roof of the library - dartmouth has an extensive library like most colleges, and there's an old area of the building called 'the stacks'. just rows and rows of books for about 15 floors. lots of people have hooked up in the stacks (it's part of the 'dartmouth seven'), and i've heard of one or two sleeping in the stacks overnight, but i've never heard of anyone sleeping on the roof of the library. me, taylor and marta discovered a window in the stacks that opened out on to the roof soph summer and decided we would do it. we climbed out on to the roof around midnight before the library closed and spent the night debating what would happen if we got caught (trespassing?). fortunately, we didn't, the night was uneventful and the story went down in the books. kind of 'mixed up files of mrs. basil e. frankweiler'-esque.

rope swing - freshman fall i heard about an amazing rope swing about 15 minutes up the river. we would row past it during practice and i was dying to try it out before it got too cold. i blitzed out to the freshman crew team - this was maybe 2-3 weeks into the school year - and a girl named taylor responded. i didn't know her very well but we headed out through pine park to find this swing.

the swing was intense. you climbed up on a platform and then swung out over the river and it was the kind of thing where if you stood on the platform and thought about it too long you would lose your nerve. the sign next to the ladder said 'lifeguard on duty: charles darwin' i went first and while it scared the shit out of me, all was fine, but i had a really hard time attaching the swinging rope to the rope that hauled the rope back up to the platform - it was just a little too short to be easy - so we decided we'd tie the ropes together before jumping to make it easier.

taylor went next and like the idiot freshmen we were, the rope got tangled and she crashed into the shallow water. i was freaking out - this girl i hardly knew just almost died 15 minutes away from help out in the middle of the woods. fortunately she wasn't seriously injured, though we both are fully aware of how much worse things could have been, but all's well that ends well, and she's still one of my favorite partners in crime. though she didn't get back up on that platform to do the swing for at least 3 years.

streaking the library - by now i'm pretty sure you're noticing a theme of people and activities, but junior spring a couple of sds streaked novak. we were sitting around on collis porch one afternoon talking about how funny it would be to start a rumor that people were streaking and then just not do it. so diana blitzed out to sd that we'd be streaking around 10:30, which of course got forwarded to the frats and the rest of campus.

later on we were talking about it and decided we had to do it. so me, whit, allette, karla, and sarah fink streaked novak about 5 minutes before all of campus thought we were going to do it. i'm told there was a mass exodus from berry down to novak to see it happen. memo to self: if you're going to streak, don't tell campus when you're doing it. we ran from SAE towards the shower towers (which no longer exist!) and thought we were home free, except as we ran out of the library towards the shower towers we ran past campus security. we hid in a bathroom in the shower towers for about 30 minutes while we could hear the 'doot-doot-doot' of s&s's walkie talkies outside. finally we decided we had to bust out and booked it from the bathroom in separate directions. whit and i ran to the native american house and pretended to be in a study group for awhile before making our way to phi delt and back to sd. no one got caught, and it was the talk of the campus for a bit. these days streaking the library is de riguer, but when we did it it wasn't done all the time. sigma delt - setting the bar high.

so good times all around. need to finish packing and then i'm heading up to hanover with robin. burning a basement mix as we speak and i have to defend my mayorship of stinsons on 4sq. we'll miss the kids who won't be back this weekend - it won't be the same without you. time to meet back at the local saloon - have a good one kids!

love,

lyon

in memoriam

today it came to my attention that facebook has gotten rid of groups. while this is only one instance of the all-to-frequent facebook changes annoying me, this one is kind of sad. while many of my group affiliations were not the most professional, i still felt like they said a lot about me. and many of them were downright accurate in the observational humor type way.

so on this day, i would like to take a moment to reflect on some of my former group affiliations. and as many of them were formed as an undergrad, take a little trip down memory lane.

i tried to ford the river but it snowed so i drank 15 keystones instead - in the category of well-played fb groups', harvard had come up with a throwback reference to the popular game of our youth 'orgeon trail' with a facebook group called 'i tried to ford the river but my fucking oxen died'. i got a really big kick out of this and was sitting around with maynard one day discussing and we came up with the dartmouth equivalent. the group description contained the phrase 'upset by this loss, we drank heavily', which i still love and use to this day.

guess what - i don't give a shit how much you drank last night - this one was linsalata's - i believe it was a reaction to the dartmouth self-call culture. yeah - we get it. you're so ragey and drink your face off. me too. we don't all need to hear about it, let's just run it back.

we need a 4th - an all too common occurrence at school. i was walking home to sd late night one night senior year and ran into a couple of '07s from psi u carrying a case of keystone over to sd to play pong. they needed a 4th, my most favorite thing in the world is late night pong, the group was created.

you know you go to dartmouth if . . . kind of self-explanatory, but it did chronicle all the things that make dartmouth unique. brainstormed with cody for a lot of the dartmouth indicators and then opened up the group and let the dartmouth network go to town.

sd beach - sigma delt has a great back porch that didn't used to have a roof over it. senior spring we spent a lot of time hanging out on the back porch, talking, tanning, drinking. it was just sheltered enough to make it 5-10 degrees warmer than the green and nobody cared if you were tanning in a bikini (except maybe the christian science monitor building across the street). after the '05s graduated we did a great usual suspects trip to puerto rico for some real sd beach time. many happy hours spent chilling on the sd beach.

lochness not-so-secret-anymore secret society - the '05 freshman crew team didn't always make the best choices and rosi, our crew coach, had to get us out of a lot of scrapes. but we did have a ton of fun. one of our less intelligent ideas was the 'lochness secret society'. we would meet at the oak tree at the top of the hill (i think there's a dorm there now) at midnight each sunday of freshman spring (read: april) and then go down to the boathouse docks and jump in the river. kind of like a polar bear jump, only nine 19-year-olds, in the dark, with no way to rescue each other if anyone needed rescuing. not our brightest idea, but it all turned out fine, and like most things - is a great story.

beruit sucks & pong should be a varsity sport - self explanatory

fins to the left, fins to the right and you're the only bait in town - a nod to the jimmy buffett fans on campus. there weren't a lot of them, but we did manage to get our sd soph summer shirts ('03X!) to be 'wasting away in sigma deltaville'. score one for parrotheads.

the babysister's club - one night senior year ceppos, cody and i were chattering away in my room in sd. boxa was attempting to sleep or study or something and shouted out that we sounded like we were having a meeting of the babysitter's club and needed to pipe down and the group was born.

i'm an honorary sigma delt - there were so many people that regularly hung out at sd that weren't technically sigma delts that we created this group and all the officer positions to recognize them. i think my favorite was the one laurak came up with for lauren brown: 'not a significant other but still allowed to know the doorcode'

when i was your age tubestock was a big weekend - created this group about the time the 'when i was your age pluto was a planet' groups were being created. tubestock, the soph summer big weekend, was prob one of the most dangerous things i've ever done, but a total blast. all the greek houses would build rafts and then take them down to the river and booze all day. everyone had inner tubes and keystone floating everywhere, but it was def dangerous. the chi gam raft was 4 pieces of wood attached in the middle, and if you stepped in the middle the thing snapped shut like a trap. the psi u raft flipped over with about 30 people on it. i def can't blame the town of hanover for canceling it, which they did after the '07s soph summer, but i know the younger classes missed out by not getting to experience it for themselves. nobody rages anymore.

camp firewood - this is the name of the camp in 'wet hot american summer' - which became a cult favorite of many dartmouth kids and a movie that laurak and i still love to quote today.

i'm an adoring fan of the doodad and mullet radio show - senior spring i attempted to increase my media experience at a liberal arts school by adding radio to my newspaper proficiency. i did a solo radio show on sundays (basically a recap of the weekend. the precursor to this blog methinks. kevin would blitz and tell me he was listening while cleaning his room. and one day i think i made all the rowers studying in the 1902 room crack up simultaneously), and dj'd the fm station 99 rock on thursday nights, and mulley and i ended up hosting a radio show on mondays. we would discuss issues of the day, try out many of the random cd's scattered all over the studio ('eli the barrow boy' anyone?) and goof around. we created this group to allow our fans to express their loyalty and keep them in the loop. it was a lot of fun.

and now - a moment of silence to remember the way we were: as undergrads and when facebook was 'only for smart schools'. ;-P

lest the old traditions fail

this time of year (may/june) always makes me think about transitions, graduations, etc. in a few weeks my brother is graduating from dartmouth, which of course has me thinking about my own senior spring and impending graduation five (gasp!) years ago.

one of my favorite coworkers is leaving the company - this is her last week - and has been cleaning out her desk. went over to see if there's anything she wanted to bequest to me and of course started thinking about bequests at dartmouth. bequests are a funny thing - not really sure if other schools do them, though they probably do and call them something different. they're basically a chance for seniors who are graduating to call out the undergrads they like/have shared epic experiences with by presenting them with an item of some sort that usually has some sort of significance to the reason the person is receiving the bequest. the items can range from the mundane (tshirts/flare) to the truly incredible, purloined bequests (incriminating evidence or stolen frat stuff), but they usually have a history, complete with the names of the people who have received the bequest in the past as it is now being passed down to the receiver. bequests are something that happen in frats/sororities, sports teams, campus groups, secret societies, etc.

i love the tradition and lineage that bequests represent, but i'm also kind of torn. a lot of bequests are pretty cool and you kind of want to keep them forever instead of passing them down, but i suppose, like college, all good things must come to an end and they're belong best in the collegiate environment. the best bequest (of course) was the one me, diana, allette, and laurak created senior spring, team tequila. we actually got our act together (an impressive feat in those days) one day before meetings to create iron-on-letter tshirts proclaiming our team names (all brands of bad bad BAD tequila. i was 'tortilla gold') and that we had been 'taking one for sigma delt since '03x' (long and involved back story). i didn't actually go to my senior year bequests - i was stuck at the d doing something and i don't think i was ready to face saying good-bye anyway - but i did come back to the house to do a shot of tequila with the '05/'06 team, which resulted in one of my most favorite pics ever - a black and white pic of me and ceppos mid-shot. i wish i still had that shirt pretty frequently. my other favorite and memorable bequest was the lion's head cane from the president of sae, which i earned by being a kleptomaniac junior spring. huyett had also received/told me about a pretty awesome bequest from the early 90s, a tshirt that said 'coed naked pong: get it up, get it in' that had been lost over the years, but i digress.

so as my coworker cleans out her desk i understand where she's coming from. do you hold on to the mementos of your time with the company or do you pass them down, continue the tradition, and know that the memory of the 'way we were' is enough. i guess it's part of knowing when to let go.

8 hours of driving for 6 hours of pong

we've lived on third avenue for over 2 years now. our bedroom windows face the street, but our terrace faces a roof and a wall directly across from us, and some other apt buildings kitty corner. i'm not so good at shutting the shades in the morning, but the apt building diagonal from us is having some construction done and there are construction workers out there every morning. i think i need to get better at shutting the shades lest they get the wrong idea when i'm getting dressed in the morning. that being said, it's so easy to see into other people's apts that i'm sure someone's seen it already before.

had a fantastic trip up to hanover this weekend. dragged vin out of bed at 6 on sat morning, something that was pretty rough as we'd been at a bar up the street where the hook bartenders were guest bartending at dana's bar on friday night. found celeste at grand central and took the train to stamford where we picked up the car.

made good time up to hanover on a gorgeous sunny day. usually i do that drive up in the dark on a friday night post work, so it was nice to have daylight so we could see the beautiful landscape we were driving through. met up with my parents and my brother and my sister and the puppy (sasha bear!) and went to boloco for lunch, then wandered around the football stadium, gym (which i've been trying to check out for two years now. just generally too drunk), bema/robert frost/lone pine and library. i was thinking about the time boxa and i took tay tay's pink flamingo rosario to various places around campus and took pictures of him to send to taylor while she was on her off term in barcelona. (the only remaining pic is one of us at a lot, but i know we did robert frost too).

found celeste and diede at dirt cowboy, made a trip to the co-op to snag some 'merchandise' and then hung out on the green where puppies and strange performance art of a person dressed up in a clam suit abounded. this clam (if you could call it that, it mainly looked like burlap to me) was just bopping around the green, collapsing in strange places for awhile, and then getting up again. my sister told us this was the current installation at the hop, so we went over to check it out. the installation was a bunch of burlap clams inside a glass case. so odd.

back out to the green to listen to the baker bells play the alma mater at 6, and then to molly's for $2 margs and sustenance. quick stop at stinson's for beer, boones and cups, and it was back to sd for harbour with some sig eps. the basement music, as usual, was subpar, but the harbour was fantastic. the night disintegrated from there; eventually i had to step off a pong game b/c i couldn't see the cups, but it was so nice to play real pong, in a basement, with plenty of space where the ball bounced and people weren't trying to fight you for playing a game they've never seen. we all passed out in the sd tv room/library, where we glad for some sketchy sleeping bags. that's the one issue with cleaning out the library - where will sketchy alums sleep? vin was worried about getting lost on campus, but we told her that 'sigma delt was a destination you could ask for' if she needed to. fortunately that was mitigated simply by never leaving sd. problem solved.

grabbed bagel basement for bfast, dropped the extra 30s of keystone we had bought off to my sister, and headed back early on sunday. quick trip, but so worth it. just need a fix every once in awhile. vin and i hit up target and taco bell in stamford before dropping off the car. could not for the life of us find the taco bell, so vin called and asked for directions, a process that took about 15 minutes. when we finally did arrive the cashier asked if 'we were those girls who wanted directions to the taco bell' and 'we really wanted to taco bell that badly?' it was like a taco bell commercial, which got better (or worse) when we ran down the stairs at the stamford train station and got on a train that turned out to not be the 4:03 to nyc, but the 4:00 to new cannan. so we rode the train to new cannan and then back to stamford, an experience that would have been much much worse had we not had the taco bell in hand.

so happy we went, and super happy that i'll be back again in six weeks. makes leaving easier. :) other things that make the dartmouth withdrawal easier is the fact that boxa is in town this weekend! looking forward to lots of catching up with her and causing mischief.

the good, the bad and the drunken

expect this blog to get a lot more nostalgic as the class of 2005's five year reunion approaches. it seems the pending reunion has dredged up a lot of memories, as maynard said, some good, some bad and some drunken. spose that's the point of a reunion though. remembered yesterday that we went to the harry potter book party at the d bookstore our soph summer. it was '03, so i guess that was the 'order of the phoenix' party? i don't remember who was with me - though i feel like allette was - and i know there were wands and children were frightened. good times.

i've often wondered what this blog would be like if i'd had it at school. prob would have had to delete it for corporate recruiting or something but i imagine it would have served the purpose of my sunday afternoon radio show on wdcr, with the weekend recap and shout outs/self calls to the folks who'd participated. 'come undone' by duran duran (which is, btw, one of the hottest songs i know) will forever remind me of zana b/c she heard it on the show and asked me what it was. song associations are weird. but radio was a less permanent form of expression than a blog, so i suppose it's good our collegiate exploits are only chronicled here as 'remember when's'.

my team at work is in a media bowling league; tonight is our first game. our marketing agency of record designed our shirts (shirts are really the only point of work 'sporting' events) which is both kind of cool and kind of dubious, as i don't always agree with their marketing strategy. at any rate, we're taking on 'popular science' at 9. let the games begin.

oh the places it snows

--- Forwarded message from Dr. Seuss ---

To: (Recipient List Suppressed)
From: Theodore.S.Geisel.25@Alum.Dartmouth.ORG (Dr. Seuss)
Subject: Would You, Could You in the Snow?
Date: Sat, 05 Dec 2009 23:06:59 -0500

Snow! There's snow! There's lots of snow!
Lots and lots of snow to throw!

You can throw it if you're cold,
You can throw it if you're old,
You can throw it if you're young,
You can throw it with your tongue!

You can throw it on The Green,
You can throw it at your dean!
If in the BEMA you get lost,
Throw your snow at Robert Frost!

At midnight there will be a fight!
A snowball fight this very night!
Come jump and shout and sing and dance!
Come put snow down someone's pants!

Come and throw some snow with me,
You will like it, you will see!

~Dr. Seuss

forwarded along from my sister - this made me really happy. :)