Even if I don’t go back, I’ll always be tempted

It comes every year, whether in the mail, on social media or both, and it’s tempting every year.

It’s from my alma mater, Utica College, inviting me to the annual Homecoming weekend.

This year’s is a big one, too, and not just because it was cancelled last year for the obvious reason. It’s also celebrating the college’s 75th anniversary.

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The week gone by — Dec. 20

When I first went to college, I met a girl.

No, this isn’t one of those stories, although we got along well for a time, and she was pretty cute if I remember correctly.

We eventually wound up in different circles, and I think it just sort of happened, although it didn’t help that I …

Lessons in Loss: Y

“Sometimes loss is part of growing into the person we have become, sometimes it leaves us feeling like something’s fundamentally missing, sometimes we can’t remember what it was like before we lost whatever it was.”

That’s part of how one of my best blogging buddies, Pea Green over at Smelly Socks and Garden Peas, introduced her series called “Lessons in Loss.” (The photo above is her logo for the series.)

She asked several of her favorite bloggers to take part, and I’m happy to say that not only am I one of them, I’m kicking off the series!

It’s also my first guest post, and it’s about how losing a letter helped symbolize the process of growing up. Please go check it out, and if you like it, be sure to let her know. (Read her other stuff, too. It’s really good!)

All about the details

The president of my alma mater recently sent an update on the school’s reopening, and it’s so far … so good.

According to the report, after a week’s worth of classes, there had only been four positive COVID-19 tests, and two of those had been “safely resolved.”

Contrast that with another local college, where they’ve already suspended in-person classes for two weeks, and the governor has sent a “SWAT team” to help deal with the situation.

Not so wild, not so crazy, not so bad

We were bored in the way that college kids with way too much energy way too late at night and not much going on can be, so we decided to do something about it.

Although there were more than us that could even comfortably fit into the station wagon Kit was driving, we piled in and drove to the local casino.

Not so much to gamble, mind you, but to … walk around.

Looking out for your friends

When I was in college, I had a group of people I ate dinner with every night.

Since a few of us, including me, had to be at the radio station at 5, we usually ate at 4:30.

We were a fairly high-spirited group, and there was always lots of banter and give-and-take going around.

Which is why her behavior one night had me worried.

A piece of the past is no more

Burrstone House used to be a selling point.

It once was a hotel at the corner of Burrstone Road and Champlain Avenue in Utica, but for years was a dorm at Utica College across the street.

For students who didn’t want standard dorm living in either North or South halls (South is pictured above), they could step up to Burrstone or the apartment-style living at Alumni Hall.

Because living in a former hotel room probably seemed pretty cool at the time.

Really … this isn’t a golf story

By my usual atrocious standards, I actually played pretty well … but this isn’t a golf story.

Even though the course is less than 10 minutes from my house, I had never played there … but this isn’t a golf story.

Because we are who we are, one of us hit a shot off a tree that careened directly back into a sand trap … but this isn’t a golf story.

We laughed at the return of my 3-iron, which he had last seen when I bent it over my knee while we were playing in a tournament in Maine … but this isn’t a golf story.

The decision I never thought I’d make

If there was one thing I was certain about as a teenager, it was that I would go to Syracuse University.

After all, I was going to be a sports announcer, and Syracuse had the best school for that in the business. The list of alumni proves that.

But for a kid growing up near Albany, Syracuse was my school — the school of Don McPherson playing quarterback and “Pearl” Washington at point guard.

So of course I was going to go there …

… until the day I wasn’t.

All my favorite college people

It was a late-at-night college kid problem, but it was still a problem.

Bob was a New York Islanders fan, but hadn’t seen him team upset the Pittsburgh Penguins in the playoffs because he was at our college’s senior ball.

Even worse, it was in the pre-internet, -streaming, -texting, -Twitter days, so he had no way of knowing what had happened.

Which is how I wound up “crashing” the ball.