On Thursday night, as a mass parental influx loomed on the horizon and bulldogparties.com sat emptier than a Toad’s Wednesday Night Dance Party, it seemed that the coming of Parent’s Weekend would weaken the party front. My parents didn’t come this year. If they had, Thursday night would have been the perfect time to get blind drunk in anticipation of being called “Baby Girl” (their cute, yet psychologically stunting pet name for me) for 48 hours straight. And yet, what was going on Thursday? Not much. Social alcoholics of Yale, why have you forsaken me?

Yet Friday night managed to bring some semblance of the normal ethanol seeking, drunken mingling, and, yes, booty scoping, that mark a typical weekend of partying@Yale. My Guatemalan hall-neighbor in Swing Space talked up the International Students Organization party. There would be dancing and a full bar in the tantalizingly named 12-pack of Saybrook. (Note to renovators of TD: if you make a room called “The Forty” I promise you my firstborn.) “International Students Organization” sounds more like an NGO than a hot party spot to this Poli Sci major, but beggars can’t be choosers (especially when they’re begging for booze). My roommate and I picked up one of our boys who, parents on the way, was desperately seeking to get wasted as soon as possible, and the three of us headed for the place where anyone looking for beer and random company would go- the basement of Trumbull.

Drinking in Trumbar definitely brings back some scary high school flashbacks. There you are in a carpeted basement with unflattering lighting, a couple of foozball tables, some ratty couches, and cheap keg beer. The scene is extremely laid back, only about 15 or 20 people chilling and watching football. After a few beers, I’m convinced that it’s 1998 and almost expect my mom to call and grill me on who I’m with and when I’ll be back. I used to be an expert at disguising my obviously slurred response, but I have to admit that since coming to Yale, I’m a little out of practice (as the NHPD will vouch for. Oops.) All I have to say is that when that skill is made into a college seminar, my day has come.

Trumbar was good times, but some friends arrived and suggested we go to Saybrook, which was apparently packed. ISO, who knew? Amazingly, the crowd in the courtyard was at almost God Quad volume, and inside, it was so packed that at one point my feet definitely left the ground for a good minute or two — let’s hear it for involuntary crowd-surfing!

Guatemala’s “full bar” was nowhere to be found in the mass of bodies, but the DJ was good and the music was loud. Apparently, some guys mistakenly thought they were on the shady dance floor at Toad’s (sketchily surrounding girls is not the best way to meet them, guys — you know who you are — and leave Mariko alone! She doesn’t like you!) It’s not even like you can’t be sketchy and get away with it — you totally can (i.e. Beta late-“nite”). The boundary of bad behavior is wide, but you still managed to cross it. Very impressive.

Saturday night, singing and comedy groups descended pretty mercilessly on the Yale campus. The SOB’s and BD’s considerately threw some post-concert parties, but there’s a limit to the amount of fun you can have at a party swarming with singer-obsessed freshman girls, all after some dude who only hours earlier soloed to an a cappella rendition of Tori Amos. Sigh. Only at Yale.

Patricia Stringel is a junior in Timothy Dwight, the champagne of residential colleges. She will take the pen-is mightier for 500, Alex.