June 30

God help me, "Disturbia" is stuck in my head. Today I came home from UMass orientation and spent the rest of the day ironically disoriented. It was weird to make the switch from new friends to old friends so quickly. For Kathryn's birthday I dressed up like a mom who recently underwent a midlife crisis. It wasn't hard. I just wore my mom's purple silk suit from the eighties. It's actually not fair to call this a suit. It looks nothing like a suit; the best description that is also accurate is maybe "body cover."

The last three days were so much fun. I almost feel guilty admitting it. I feel guilty that I had fun and some other people somewhere else didn't. I want to give them my fun because I had more than enough. I'm so used to being pessimistic about UMass that I'm actually finding difficulty in admitting that I am really excited for the fall now. This picture is of the best tree on the campus. Its branches stretch out and then sag onto the ground, creating a "green closet," as Toni Morrison would say. The commonality that bonded myself and my orientation friends is our pride in Butterfield, in English as a major, and, just maybe, in our sub-conscious inclination to believe we are just a little bit too good for UMass. Why am I still awake. The song of the day is "The Penalty" by Beirut.