THANK YOU, BOSTON: I had a wonderful time on my four-day jaunt to my college hometown. Here, some highlights:
-I spent Friday and Saturday near Harvard with my friends Mike and Dena, enjoying an excellent Shabbat dinner, an a cappella show (featuring a performance of "The Scotsman"), and a walk around Beacon Hill, the Back Bay, and Newbury St. I love being around Harvard; when I'm there I just feel smarter. (I feel the same way about Jane Galt's blog- even though she's a Penn girl!)
-Got to see my fellow Minnesota blogger and high school classmate Jeremy Wahlman as well; now a reporter in the area, we met up right after he was done rubbing elbows with the likes of Conan O'Brien and Theo Epstein at a banquet in Brookline. It should be noted that the number of video game consoles shared by Jeremy and his roommates is in the double digits, and is almost certainly a single-apartment record.
-Also enjoyed lunch with my Brandeis classmate and former Justice colleague Brian Lowe. Now an employee of the New England Patriots, Brian anchors a webcast on Patriots.com that you should definitely check out. After our lunch he headed out to Foxboro, where the Patriots beat the Cowboys 12-0 on Sunday night. After this, and after the Belichick-coached Super Bowl win, and after 7 years, isn't it now time for the New England fans to finally get over Bill Parcells?
-On Monday I visited my alma mater for the first time in over two years, and it was great to be back- I had lunch with Josh, a leader of Brandeis' anti-Idiotarian student faction, and also got to spend some time with legendary American Studies professor Jerry Cohen, the top man on the faculty faction. I also stopped by the Justice office and got to meet a couple of the editors; the office is incredible, and a great improvement over the old two-room, windowless basement office which, to my surprise, has since been converted into the Muslim Student Association's prayer room.
-The new student center may be abominably ugly on the outside (they call it the Green Monster; but through my red/green color blind eyes it's more the Light Blue Monstrosity) but on the inside it's quite impressive and has even got a nice coffee shop. There's also a new residence hall that's called "The Village," as opposed to nearly every other building on campus that's named after rich old Jews.
-All in all, a wonderful time up in Beantown; I hope to visit again soon.