I got bounced

Can you believe it? My friend was turning 22, and her friends had her birthday party at the Red Herring, a bar on Spring Street. So I went. I was there for a while, doing just fine, talking to people as one usually does when one is in public. Then my friend ordered a "birthday cake shot." The bartender woman asked to see my ID, because clearly I have to be 21 in order for my friend to have a shot.

"I'm not 21," I said, "and I don't drink. Ever."

In my opinion, the first statement implies the second, but I wanted to make sure she got the point: I was there to talk to people, and there would not be any alcohol anywhere near my lips.

However, it is apparently against some sort of policy for people who are not 21 to stand in places that serve alcohol and not drink. The bartender woman said I could stay for a while, but then I'd have to leave. So I stayed, and then after a few minutes of my -- get this -- sitting at a table with other people -- this guy came and told me, "I think you're the one she pointed me to." As though it is some horrible thing to not drink alcohol in a bar. So I was bounced.

Personally, I think the police have better things to do than to check and see if there are people under the age of 21 in bars who are not drinking. They could, for instance, go after people who are under 21 and use fake IDs and drink even though it is against the law. I feel that would be a better use of Massachusetts taxpayers' money.

Williams women's crew is doing pretty well

I heard a good story the other day. Trinity hadn't lost a race in two years, so they didn't bother bringing their betting shirts to the race last weekend. Then Williams beat them -- by almost six seconds -- and so they didn't have any shirts to give up. Ha.

When I was a coxswain, Marsa made me read all of the rules for the regattas. There was a big packet of all the information that the coaches needed to have, and I read it all and committed it to (short term) memory. And one of the clear regulations was that all teams must bet shirts. I thought it was weird at the time, but clearly if one team does not bet shirts, that's just lame, in addition to being unfair. And if one team is so terribly overconfident that they don't even bother bringing their shirts, that's just funny.

That win bumped Williams up to #1, just ahead of Trinity, in the polls, up from third. Rebecca is tied for 11th. (Because from my perspective, Rebecca is the team. They are the same. William Smith Crew = Rebecca. See?)

Bush at Hands On

A few days ago, President Bush visited the place where I was over spring break. Here are a few pictures from the White House's photo essay on the subject:

Here is President Bush talking to volunteers sitting at the tables where I had breakfast and dinner. For example, I have washed those very tables.


Here is President Bush with one of the long-term volunteers, coming out of the doorway outside of which I disassembled a vacuum cleaner the first day I was there. (It didn't suck up anything when you turned it on, so I took it apart, looked at the inside, and put it back together. Then it worked.) To the left is the big container full of water bottles.


Here is President Bush and a puppy.


Here is President Bush with some woman inside her house. This is what houses look like when Hands On has finished gutting them and scraping off the mold.



Then there was the best one, from this article.

This guy called Niko is from Vermont. Well originally he's from California, where his dad is super-rich and owns a gigantic farm operation, but he wasn't into that at all, so they sent him to the Putney School, which is a private high school in Vermont where you do farm work as a work-study job. He's the one with whom I planted sunflowers and helped with chainsaws on this day. So it's pretty crazy that he met the president and gave him an onion. He was always reminding people to stay out of his garden, and then he gave Bush an onion from it. Cool.

I didn't win

Alas. She existed, for real.