dudley house dinners have a way of making you feel more sorry for yourself than you thought. is it any wonder i never have any appetite the first few weeks i'm in school? i went in and toyed with over-baked pasta and withered salad (oh for the currier salad bar!) before giving it all up and slouching homeward. even the ice-cream bar, the one consolation of a dining hall menu, was a let-down today. there was just the one flavour instead of the usual two, and it wasn't anything as startling as lacuma or black sesame, or even anything remotely interesting, like coffee or chocolate chip, just plain vanilla. the only thing that made it tolerable was that i dug up a copy of saki's complete stories from a box under the bed and took it to dinner for a bit of pleasure reading, and there are a dozen or so stories in the collection i haven't read before. i’ve forgotten how much i like saki.