I have been reading your college experiences with interest. Quick comments. .

The majority of college students in this country do not go to small liberal arts institutions. They commute, have families, are a bit older than 21. The classic view the media portrays about college students hadn't been true (as a majority experience) in decades.

I was really alarmed that anyone was made to feel badly about needing financial aid or feeling like an outsider. God.

The worst? It has gotten worse since you went to college. The income strat for the elite institutions is off the charts.

And Rutledge's solo about the Triangle Trade was a tour-de-force

That's a terrific number.

My family had a cat that wasn't randomly interested in watching gravity work. He used his knowledge of gravity for pure evil. Namely, waking my ass up at 4am to feed him, and then waking my ass up at 4:30 to let him out. He'd try to be polite at first with annoying meowing, then upgraded to knocking pencils and books off the desk in my room. He'd get down to srs bzns with a glass tumbler that he'd push to the edge and then wait for me to flail out of bed before he broke it. And if I didn't stay awake long enough for him to finish eating, he'd find me and start the whole thing over again (no, I never learned my lesson about cleaning off my desk before I went to bed). When I left for basic training he trashed my parents nightstand. They slept right through it.

Now when I go home, the new cat exits the house out my second story window, sliding down the clapboard and waking me up with the thump he makes when he hits the ground. I've learned not to panic when I hear that scraping sound.

As for college, the money from the Army paid for 75% of it, but I chose UNH simply because I didn't want to be far from home after spending three years down south. Ended up moving into the upperclassmen apartments because I could and because I couldn't stand dorming with kids who didn't know how to use a washing machine. And I was actually in a sub-school where our classes were made up of fifteen students max, but more usually eight. So I existed in a weird subculture where there were too few of us to form cliques.

None of my cats have been gravity testing cats, except on accident. We did however have a two-AM-stroll-across-the-piano-keys cat, which is a wake up you don't soon forget.

I went to, essentially, Greendale-in-the desert and then Arizona State.I went to class with a lot of people's moms and have depressingly few "college" stories.

When I was in college, I was considered "rich" among my group of friends because my parents paid my tuition (the parts that weren't covered by a scholarship, anyway), and I could fly home for Thanksgiving and spring break, and I didn't have to have a job during the school year, and my mom was a stay-at-home mom. Also because I was Jewish, but I didn't figure out that that was part of the reasoning for a while.

I think they're opening a new one in Kansas City, or somewhere really unlikely-sounding like that.

The one in KC has been open for a year, and I got dragged there. And yes, I made pretty much verbatim the sames jokes. And giggled all the way through the menu.

I went to class with a lot of people's moms and have depressingly few "college" stories.

This is me for the most part too. My degree was pieced together over 4 institutions over 16 years. Almost all night classes with other students that worked full time during the day. We were too busy to have stories. Sigh.

My cats don't test gravity. But they will walk on my bed side table and headbutt the lamp shade to wake me up. Short of replacing the lamp, I'm not quite sure what to do. I've move it away from the wall, tightened the clamp thing... Bratty cats.

All that is going to be accomplished today is laundry and swim. At least I got a lot done yesterday. Sundays are black holes of no motivation, apparently.