I’ll be going to my first home game of the Mondoville football season in a few hours, but in the meantime, here are some of the usual odds and ends for a Saturday.
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Observed a Mondoville tradition for the first time yesterday — Sorority Bid Day. The school’s three sororities were assembled on the Quad, and as each new girl was announced, she would emerge from the admin building, clad in a shirt from the sorority whose bid she had accepted. She’d come down a mild slope toward the sororities, and members of the chosen group would run forward and greet the new member with something between a group hug and a gang tackle. Then the chosen sorority would greet the new member with one of their cheers and additional hugs, and after a time, it was on to the next. It’s a big deal for the young ladies involved, and for the Greeks as well — after all, a group that doesn’t find new members is a group that won’t last very long.
I hadn’t been to one of these events before, but since the Spawn is in a sorority here, Mrs. M and I thought we’d check things out. We watched from a respectful distance, not wanting to hover or embarrass her. As it turns out, there was a decent crowd to watch, including alumnae of the sororities and other parents, both of the current and incoming members. A fair amount of students also gathered as things went on. The Spawn’s sorority did well, gaining about a dozen new members — while I don’t know if that was a plurality on the day, it may have been.
When things seemed to have wrapped up, Mrs. M and I pulled a fade, but that proves to have been a mistake. Because the Spawn transferred to Mondoville from Flagship in Spring Semester, she hadn’t gone through the autumn recruitment process. She actually received and accepted her bid after chapel one day — and that worked well for her, because her tendency toward introversion might have hidden her or stressed her out during Fall recruitment. But that meant that she didn’t get to have her Bid Day moment. That is, until one of the members suggested that the girls who had joined in the spring (the Spawn and a couple of others) do their own “runs down the hill.” The others thought that was a great idea, so the Spawn got to do her bit and was tackled by one of her sisters. She was beaming when we went for sno-cones later, “But [sister] hits like a football player!” Still, she appears to have enjoyed the process.
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It’s been a hectic week around here, even beyond the Spawn’s Greek adventures. A drain line at the Mid-Century Mondohaus has gone on the fritz, incapacitating our laundry and kitchen facilities. Fortunately our washrooms have a different line. Plumbers have appeared, and through their efforts, the incapacitation went from “total” to “somewhat”, but the fear is that the line has collapsed somewhere in the yard or beneath the concrete slab and will need replacement, which means digging, concrete drilling, and expense. It also means that I’ve spent a significant portion of the week waiting for plumbers, a process that appears likely to continue.
What this meant was that between last Friday’s storm/flood watch, the weekend with the Mads, and the events of this week, I had an unplanned and unsought one-week layoff from my walking habit. Fortunately, I was able to get back to things yesterday, getting in four miles at a 14:59 pace (or more accurately, 1 mile at 14:56, and three others at 15 each.) My original plan had been to bag it after the first 5K, but I found additional inspiration and made it the rest of the way. I hope to resume things on Monday.
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On the writerly front, I received a nice check for my story in In Sunlight Or in Shadow yesterday (and if you haven’t ordered your copy yet, you really should. It’s beautiful, and includes some tremendous stories in a variety of genres.) I also had a story rejected via e-mail. As the saying goes, “Some days you get the bear, and some days the bear gets you.” My father typically added to that, “Blessed be the name of the bear,” which always made my mom eye the heavens nervously for fear of sacrilege.
I also booked my October trip to NoirCon in Philadelphia while I was waiting for plumbers to arrive, so I’m looking forward to that — and (I hope) to having some good news to announce somewhere around then. Again, I’ll be appearing on a panel and doing a reading, and I have a story in the program/anthology. If you’re there, say hello!
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It’s been pretty quiet on the musical front, but things are about to pick up again, as the Berries will be playing a show in Greenville in a couple of weekends, and we have several shows scheduled for October. Details and gig reports will follow accordingly.
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Well, it’s about time to fix lunch, so I’ll leave with a bit of music. I’ve mentioned my fondness for Translator on numerous occasions, and this is a song from the last album of their original run in the 80s. I’ve never gotten to see the band live, but this song always struck me as being built for an extended workout, and I’ve always adored the line “Edge of the future in the edge of our hand.” Here’s “I Need You to Love.”
See you soon!
Professor Mondo 