So today’s primary agenda item was the summer Open House at Skidmore College. I started the day with a 4 mile run through the quiet streets of Saratoga – met a few dog walkers and cyclists but the rest of the city seemed to still be sleeping at 6:30. I noticed that there was a large number of porches with milk boxes on them – where the dairy comes and delivers the milk in glass bottles! I remember having one when I was a kid in Connecticut. When I got back to the B&B, I actually got to pour the milk for Frank’s coffee from just such a diary bottle. Very different from what we get in Northern Virginia!
Breakfast was a lovely start to the day – out on the large porch served by the proprietor and her daughter who baked a gluten free blueberry muffin for me when she baked the cranberry scones for everyone else! I then got a mushroom, spinach and feta omelet with GF toast! Frank loved his fried eggs and Gillian got locally made Greek yogurt with cereal and fresh fruit. We were well fortified for the day.
Then on to Skidmore. Started with the special tour of the science facilities (one building for geology, earth science, physics, chemistry, and biology but what would you expect for a school with around 2500 students!). Then we had “picnic with the faculty” which was a BBQ for about 400 prospective students and parents with about 50 “student ambassadors” and 5 faculty. (Executive chef for the event was happy to verify that I could have the BBQ chicken and potato salad and even made me a little green salad to go with it.) Then it was two hours of less-than-scintillating-but-very-informative discussions with admissions and financial aid folks and current students. We were in a big tent behind the student center and pretended not to notice that it decided to rain in the middle of the presentations.
Luckily, this is not the first college visit we’ve been on or we might have been distracted by how enthusiastic the students were in trying to convince us that Skidmore was *the* college for them. To her credit, Gillian was looking at things with a very critical eye – comparing everything to UMiami (where she just spend three weeks at summer school) or one of the other colleges we’ve visited this year. She admitted that the campus, while nice, was not the prettiest we’ve seen but did really like the ability to do really odd interdisciplinary studies – our morning tour guide was a history major with a physics and German minor. We stuck it out through the general campus tour in the afternoon to make sure we got in the group with the theater major who had done some study abroad in London. (He confirmed that a double major in physics and theater would be more than acceptable here which made Gillian very happy.)
After 5 hours of touring Thoroughbred land (yup, even the mascot is related to horses!) we went back into town to stop into some of the interesting shops that we had seen while wandering in the rain yesterday. Found some great hiking shorts which met my longer-than-my-crotch requirement and were on sale. I fondled everything in the yarn store and managed to emerge with no new additions to the stash (although it would have been sooooo easy!) We also stocked up on picnic supplies (including a new picnic backpack!) to eat while watching Shakespeare in the Park. We were disappointed to find out that I had done the calendar math wrong and the production doesn’t start until tomorrow (D’oh!) but now we are ready!
So we had a “real” dinner instead at the one restaurant on Broadway that I had purposefully been avoiding: Wheatfields. What would a restaurant with such a name have to offer to a celiac? An amazing GF menu apparently! I had GF pizza with hummus, goat cheese and roast vegetables with a lovely bottle of New York Pinot Noir (drink local!). Gillian loved her buffalo chicken pizza (and now we both have leftovers for tomorrow!) and only Frank was disapointed: the homemade pasta and Alfredo sauce was apparently very nice but the chicken thing with the roasted red pepper with goat cheese stuffing was underwhelming. Luckily, we have the cupcakes and chocolate bomb purchased earlier for the aborted picnic which we know won’t make it until tomorrow…. 😉
Most interesting food consumed today: chocolate covered potato chips. Apparently, potato chips were invented here in 1853 (check Wikipedia!) and there are tons of shops which sell the chocolate covered version!
And the pedometer readout for the day: 17255 or 7.43 miles. Not quite as far as yesterday but add that to my four miles from this morning and I might just make up for all the carbs I’ve consumed today!
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