…me regarding the ever virtuous rachel and emily duo, as quoted in rachel’s profile.

last night i met emma in the “heated tent” for the matt nathanson concert. i’d never heard of him, but apparently he’s been on tour with john mayer, maroon 5, train, oar and is opening for howie day. he was pretty good, i liked his twelve string and the general style, but his dialogue was kind of crude. like i don’t hear enough college boy humor, right? that, and it’s hard to get into a concert if you have no idea what’s going on. the highlight was his “living on a prayer” bon jovi tribute at the end. and the fact that when i took a personal intermission to order chicken fingers at the diner, they gave me a bonus finger.

i discovered that even though i get three bars of service, way more than i ever get in my room, my cell phone refuses to dial anyone when i call from the hill. it works great at the bottom of the hill, which i guess is good, seeing as a live here and it would be so frustrating if i couldn’t dial from my room at all. but it doesn’t make any sense. since when do service bars still mean no service??

i met emma again for dinner in commons tonight, which was probably the highlight of my weekend. she is so nice. and when we discovered that there were no more cookies, she went for hot chocolate with me. and when the hot chocolate turned out to be lukewarm water, she was the first to suggest we substitute ice cream. that’s so my kind of girl! and she was upset to discover that the dining hall just throws out the stacks of pies that don’t get eaten every day. but not in a raging activist kind of way. just a normal concerned way. and she has the picture of us the night we went quad camping up on her wall! i can relate to her.

then i went to the jazz concert in the barn. it started at 9, so naturally i left west at 9:03, and i was glad i did b/c a car pulled aside right in front of the door and a girl asked if i could tell her where the events barn was. well, that depends, are you going to give me a ride there? 😉 so i hopped in back and the guy she was driving (boyfriend? i don’t know) immediately introduced himself and explained that they were from colgate coming to see the show for a class. and i introduced myself back and we chatted for a minute while the girl found a parking spot. and i was excited b/c a) i didn’t have to hike the hill again and b) now i had potential seating companions. the guy was really friendly and nice and suggested that we sit together, but the girl was so cold and stand-offish! which lead me to believe that he was her boyfriend and she was afraid that my natural charm would steal him away. a message to all my fellow ladies in the world: i may be cute, charming and dress pretty well, but i have no game, i’m not a threat, fear not, your significant others can sleep safely. the concert was okay, not the most exciting, but i stayed long enough to absorb about a page-long essay worth and then came back to bundy to watch the end of the game.

when i got back to my room, “court1190: i love u!” was the most recent message. aww! campers!

tried to make that phone call, but i got the answering machine and chickened out.

quote of the day: “we’ll give it a shot” – bon jovi

love always, em locke

in total chronological disarray but updated with more than 50 new photos, check out the photo gallery at emlocke*star!

i got out of the shower this afternoon and had just closed the door and was about to either get dressed or get in bed and take a nap. but i guess we’ll never know which, b/c two facilities guys showed up to fix my heater aka flip the secret mysterious hidden switch that magically releases heat from the earth’s core into my frosty dorm room! now i’m toasty and i’m so excited!

bill cosby was on campus on wednesday night to do stand-up, which included making fun of the new college president. he said, “you guys can’t fire her, she’s way to excited to be here, she’s having too much fun!” which, from what i’ve seen, is really very accurate! president stewart is enthusiastic – no, really, she’s extremely enthusiastic, and is a great speaker, too. she introduced him to more than 4,000 people without using any notes at all. i was impressed. anyway, bill cosby wore a hamilton sweatshirt and birks and spent a fair amount of time chilling on the floor of the stage and let the football team captain up on stage to sing the hamilton fight song while various football players in the audience stood up. if those boys can’t win any games, maybe they should start a boys’ choir! but it was a good night and i was so star struck.

later, or more like on thursday morning at 1:30, bundy west had a fire drill. i totally felt it coming with my finepoint sixth sense, but it scared me anyway! after 10 minutes in the cold, we all went back inside and i crawled back into bed and snuggled up and tried to recreate my interrupted sweet dream, and then it went off again! this time i just collected all the clothes on my floor and layered them on as i stumbled down the hall. and then i swear i heard the alarm ringing in east and i just wanted to throw myself at the mercy of campus safety and beg them just carry me out in my bed.

i went grocery shopping at tops, which is the most ghetto grocery store ever, but my fridge is stocked with yogurt and granola and hummus and hot pockets and ice cream and annie’s mac & cheese and peanut butter cookies. i love peanut butter. and chocolate. yeah, those must be two of my favorite things in the world. yum.

so, another weekend ensues. there’re jazz concerts tonight and tomorrow in the barn and i have to write paper on one of them, and all the presidential inauguration events tomorrow and sunday, but those all start pre-noon so i think i’ll pass. maybe i’ll go to the colby football game though, since hamilton did beat bowdoin over break. it was the first win all season. it was the first in two years! and it probably doesn’t matter that bowdoin hasn’t beaten anyone this season….go continentals!

quote of the day: “in the hour of adversity be not without hope / for crystal rain falls from black clouds” – persian poem

love always, em locke

I knew they could do it! I think that was the first baseball game I’ve ever actually sat through until the [sweet, very sweet] end. When I was little, my dad took me to a mets game. I still feel guilty for whining so much that we had to leave . . . maybe before the game actually started! Anyway, game seven was hot. My favorite part is always the end when all these grown men just freak out and throw themselves at each other and the ground and cry and laugh and it’s so cute. Like I said last week, I love joe torre, especially when he gets that proud father look in his teary eyes. Gamewinner Aaron Boone is a cutie and I’m glad Roger Clemens gets the chance to pitch again in the series and I love that Giambi walks up to the plate and just hits a homerun on the first pitch. I heart that New York City spirit.

Fall break was good. I spent the night at camp on Friday and saw Drew and Alicia and it smelled so good there. And then I went home to see my Maggie . . . and my family, too.

On the way home, I drove right under a rainbow, which was awesome. Then a huge wind storm attacked my car and shook it around and the 45 mph winds practically tore both my windshield wipers off! Good thing my headlights were working again. It turns out that they didn’t randomly short out and they didn’t burn out simultaneously. No really, the mechanic said so! He diagnosed that one went out and I didn’t notice, and when the other burned out it happened to catch my attention. Ohhhh.

Quote of the day: “Dignity consists not in possessing honors, but in the consciousness that we deserve them.”-Aristotle

love always, em locke

in honor of the current rival matchup competition in the american league series, i felt it necessary to evaluate my team loyalties. i’ve always considered myself a yankees fan, inspired mainly, i suppose, by my 7th grade english teacher, nat recine, who lived for ny baseball and also had a golf club handle named excaliber which he occasionally wielded at unsuspecting students. even before that, i think i liked darryl strawberry b/c his name was easy to remember and reminded me of my favorite fruit. but the cocaine scandal in 1999 was a strike against him (pardon the pun) and i had to pick a new favorite player. i saw bernie williams help an opponent off the ground in a game a few years ago and ran with that.

the red sox are cool. and yeah, they’ve got some cute & charming guys, like pitcher tim wakefield who really did play well in game one of the alcs, and manny ramirez who is adorable in that fun, chill kind of way.

but i still like andy pettitte and, though he really isn’t my type, derek jeter, and i always feel like joe torre has a calming influence. he just seems like such a regular, unpretentious, grandfather figure guy. the yankees are a great team, they represent a great city, they have a great history. they’ve played the series five times in the last decade and taken four of them. yeah, i had to look that stat up.

so i did do a little research and considered my fan options, and while i think boston fans are wild and crazy and awesome and i really like the font on their uniforms, the yankees wear classic, all-american blue and white. there’s just something about root root rooting for the city’s home team. they can win it!

why wasn’t the world series held in 1994?

quote of the day: “the journey is the reward” – tao proverb

love always, em locke

and emily still hasn’t started her lit paper. but she did think about topics for her computer science term project. did she decide on one? no, not exactly…break is in 3 days, right? thought so.

i did laundry today, which shocked even me! i held out for six weeks. that’s 46 pairs of underwear, and i really could have gone through october break, but i was down to the gray ones that i don’t like. i filled three washers and two dryers, and still spent less than i would have at mount holyoke to do just one load! eventually, that might make up for the small fortune i’m spending on [i heart] ny gas prices! but that would be a lot of laundry.

i really like the fedex.com commercial where they pull the new-hire to do shipping, and he’s a snob and says, “i don’t do shipping,” and the woman assures him that fedex.com is easy and straightforward and he’ll catch on and he says, “no, you see, i have an mba,” and she gets sincerely concerned and says, “ohhh, you have a mba…then i’ll have to show you how.” wit. i also enjoy the dawn detergent commercial with the duck rescued from an oil spill. “if she could talk, she’d tell you how dawn saved her life” b/c the rescuers used it to clean her up safely. quack!

my last swim class is tomorrow, and i’m sad b/c i really liked my teacher and i don’t want to start fitness. it’s so much more exciting to get in the water twice a week. someone encourage me to go to the pool once in awhile and practice.

quote of the day: “and what were thou, and earth, and stars, and sea, if to the human mind’s imaginings, silence and solitude were vacancy?” – shelley

love always, em locke

i had such a good time with holly and allegra and em, we did all my favorite things, even sleeping until 1:00 on saturday, naturally.

driving into south hadley and through campus was the epitome of de ja vu. it was about 5, the time of day i always used to love at mhc b/c of the way the sun set on the lake and the lights glowed from all the dorm windows. it’s still so classically beautiful. holly came out and gave me a hug and brought me up to her room, which is lovely, but not as cozy as the cottage! i was so happy to see her. so we met emily (who made me a sparkly card!) and then we ate chicken fingers in blanchard and em gave me the grand tour, including the school store. they have sweatpants with pockets! so we hung out in emily’s beautiful room (the french windows are surrounded with ivy – it’s like walking into a british novel!) in south delle for awhile, and then went over to allegra’s room and played a little nintendo and then holly and i went to bed (but not before talking about boys just a little.)

on saturday we slept late, getting up only so we could all go craft shopping! emily bought new knitting needles and some new yarn for a scarf and let me cast-on for her, and allegra and holly and i wandered through ae for awhile and stopped in the thirsty mind and ate dinner at fedora’s (good chili). i called rachel while holly was at work and she showed me her huge room in 1837 and we walked up to porter together to revisit the catalyst to the wacky em & rachel duo. then i caught up with everyone else again and we went up to emily’s room and watched a movie. that was the best. em & i were knitting, i got to sit in the chair she “swiped” from the laundry room, and she made me tea and fed me chocolate!

this morning, holly and i got up early (early for us anyway), grabbed smoothies at the rockies and went to northampton to go shopping. we stopped in the cedar chest and at faces and then walked down to this vintage thrifty store we’d always wondered about and got ice cream at herrell’s. holly said, “i want to take a picture of us eating our cones” which made me smile b/c i was thinking the exact same thing. we went into lucky’s too, which was exciting b/c i’d always wanted to go in, but never had the courage without someone to hold my hand and remind me to play it cool!

but i did have to leave eventually. aww. but before i took off holly and i went down the gardens and took a couple of photos. i can’t wait to have them all developed.

so, the mount holyoke weekend is over. but i’m back at hamilton, it’s my new home and i’m still happy! mount holyoke ladies, save me some M&C’s. you’ll always be in my heart. and i’ll be back to see you soon!

quote of the weekend: “and it hurts to want everything and nothing at the same time. i want what’s yours and i want what’s mine. i want you, but I’m not giving in this time” – michelle branch

love always, em locke

just got back from setting up a tent with emily and emma from ropes. we’re camping out for heag zero energy week. finally, i get my camping wish! the ems are really nice, they’re both frosh from kirkland and we’ve been doing ropes together for a few weeks now. on wednesday i ate dinner at the diner with emma and a bunch of other ropes kids and i had such a good time. that is what i always imagined college would be like. i was so surprised to say something and have someone else laugh outloud and say something back and hear people laugh in a “you’re clever and funny” way instead of a “yeah, riiiight, whatever” way. definitely haven’t had that since camp. or my house. but that doesn’t count. the “whatever” laugh was getting me down.

so, we are devoted to the camping cause, but i have to point out the fact that our tent stands alone on the quad right now! maybe that’s b/c it’s 36 degrees out and raining and windy? nah, couldn’t be. some guy with a camera came out and just seemed shocked to see us. and we can’t wait to tell andrew (the wild british ropes/adventure program director) that, while we might now feel confident enough to try cutaway rescues on the high elements, we aren’t afraid to conquer the elements! it is pretty darn cold out there though.

and post-camping, i’m leaving for south hadley! i can’t wait to see blanchard and holly’s room in safford and, oh yeah, holly! there is much excitement.

discovered this site today. not only is still emily the most popular name for baby girl’s and the 99th most common name for women in the united states (but a very rare male name in fact), but white is the 14th most common last name! i’m holding on over ever so dearly to locke. locke. locke. locke.

love always, em locke

to laura, who is celebrating her 19th birthday today! laura and i were inseparable when we were kids. you know when you’re little and you’re over at your best friend’s house and your mom comes to pick you up so you hide and you really believe that you might get to play a little longer if the adults can’t find you? like they’ll give up? i hid in laura’s guest room pretty frequently.

laura had a whole dresser drawer full of barbie dolls and clothes and accessories (but we rarely bothered with those plastic heels) and she had these little plastic glowbug toys that we would hold under her lamp and then take them into the big closet (where laura stored her purple and pink marabou dress up mules) and close the door to see them glow in the dark.

her brother rode his bike into me one time, but her dad is a devoted mets fan, which i can’t help but respect, so the whole tire-imprints-on-my-shin incident can be overlooked.

we both had american girl dolls and she never questioned the fact that i changed my samantha’s name to jessica.

i remember eating a lot of popcorn and drinking a lot of apple juice at laura’s house. every time i eat popcorn i compare it to what we ate together in elementary school.

and, her birthdate is 10.02 and my birthdate is 02.10!

love always, em locke

things i want to do in south hadley this weekend:
go fabric shopping with holly & allegra
play nintendo
have coffee in northampton
shop at faces and at cedar chest
feed the prospect ducks
tour blanchard and eat chicken fingers
demonstrate how much my knitting has improved
take lots of pictures

quote of the day: “you are the music while the music lasts.” – t.s. elliot

love always, em locke