do i want to go to a uva alumni reception with president casteen? i've never gone to a uva club of boston event before - and i'd like to. usually they hold social mixers at back bay bars, not my sort of thing i fear, but this could actually be interesting. for one thing it means sitting down and listening to people talk - much more civilised than stumbling about in noisy bars - and i like hearing something of what goes on back in charlottesville. it's on a weeknight (tuesday, in fact, how awfully inconvenient) also i really don't like coming home alone from boston at night. i know that sounds ridiculous, like i think a woman can't come home by herself after dark, which isn't the case - i just never like doing it in boston. i suppose it's because it's always cold, and i hate being out in the dark and cold - either would have been tolerable. (i realise having a companion doesn't do anything to the cold, but at least i spend less time getting lost in it.) it's also peculiar that i feel slightly lonesome - maybe even a little bit forsaken - walking in boston at night, in a way i never would in singapore, and never did in charlottesville or dc or new york, so it brings out all my petulance and neediness - wanting to be taken home.

but i will go. i'm feeling very warmly towards casteen after all the trouble we have with larry summers - how peaceful to have a respectable english professor of a president! (nay, i make him sound so colourless and mild - but in fact he was by all accounts one of the brightest english grad students of his time at virginia, who had been accepted at both princeton and harvard as an undergrad, who came to virginia and met faulkner (just in time - faulkner would pass on the following year) and trained with people like robert kellogg as a medievalist, who read 10 or 12 languages and who continued to teach in his early years as university president.) yes, i will go.