Seventh semester at SUNY Binghamton, I got an angry notice from the administration building demanding that I choose a major.

Up until then, I had just been taking all sorts of random liberal arts classes without any plan. And now, the meanies in the administration building were demanding some sort of commitment from me. I had courses in History, Anthro, Philosophy, Computer Science, but as I went over my transcript on lilne in the administration building, I realized that I had the most credits in Rhetoric and Literature and in Political Science. Now I had to choose between those two majors. I had an equal number of credits in literature/rhetoric as I did in political science. My grade point average was about the same. I was next in line and had to make a decision fast.

I chose political science. Why? Because the guys were cuter. How many life altering decisions have I made based on my weakness for the opposite sex? Don’t ask.

One of the pluses of our new home purchase, at least from my parent’s perspective, is that they get to dump in our attic all the boxes that have clogged up their attic for years. In one of those boxes are all my short stories that I wrote in those creative writing classes in college. They all start pretty much the same. Something like… Jane drove up Pleasant Lane past the identical white Cape Cods with their neatly trimmed lawns all green and square and sighed to herself that wouldn’t it be nice if one of the homes had painted their shutters red… Get it? Suburbs = Conformity. Boredom. Banality. GET IT?

So now, we’ve moved into a banal little suburb and immediately took down the multiple flags in front of the home, which surely offended our neighborhors who all have gagillion flags and lawn ornaments in front of their homes.

But there is more to the suburbs that flags and lawn ornaments. There is certainly more here than I could have picked up as a college sophomore. I’ve only been here for three days, so there’s not much to report yet. Except that I’m loving the dishwasher and washing machine thing.