Coming soon...

...an update. This week has been a bitch, mainly becuase I have to baby other kids (in more way than one).

It's 2 a.m. now, and I'm going to eat breakfast and then go to bed.

Too Late For a Thank You

While in NYC, I ran into one of my co-chairs from last year's reunion week. I was a clerk for the class of 1978 then, and worked with two outstanding people: Ken Moguil and Mary Bowler Jones. While inbetween sessions, I caught Mary in the hallway and waved hello. I really wanted to thank her for reccommending me to be a head clerk.

I was smiling, and genuinely happy to see her. She smiled back, and walked over to me. Then I got the news -- Ken was dead.

Cathy, my boss at alumni house, said how Ken had raved about me. I really think it was his reccommendation that got me the job, even though Cathy claims it was a joint effort. I liked Ken, too. He was a family man, great alumnus, and always in control of the situation.

Except his own.

Sometime after Reunion Ken fell into a deep funk. He kept to himself, shutting out his wife of several years, and even Mary -- a friend of 30 years. One day after New Years they found his car, empty and parked on the edge of a resovoir. There was no note, no reason, no sense to it.

A bottle of prescription pills has since floated to the surface, but not Ken. Part of me is hoping he's still alive, and didn't actually go through with it. I hope he's collecting himself in some small town out west. I want him to be okay, deal with his issues, and return to the people who need him -- his family.

But I can also see the hand writing on the wall, and from here, it spells a pretty clear sentence. Ken is dead. It truly is too late for a thank you.

I was deflated -- drained -- after my conversation with Mary. I still am.

Is it over yet?

Rush week really lives up to its name. I've rushed to get to the house, rushed to clean things, rushed to meet people, rushed to get to events, rushed to eat, rushed to dress, and done just about everything other than rush to bed.

It's also really repetitive.

If it wasn't for my computer clock, I wouldn't have the foggiest what day it was right now. Meetings, events, and smokers blur together. Luckily I have been able to keep the names and faces of the rushees straight, and we've been getting quite a few.

So I think I can say I'm sick of it. I mean, I love meeting the rushees and I love the brothers, but I'm sick of rush. I'm sick of having to censor my thoughts, and watch what I say about house activites and hints about which guys we might bid. I really just want it to be over so we can have a normal brotherhood again.

"Secrets, secrets are no fun. Secrets, secrets hurt someone," or at least that's what Sam Hauge used to tell me in high school. She's right. Secrets are no fun, but unfortunately they're what rush is about. It kind of reminds me of poker. You need to play your cards carefully, and you can't ever let someone see your hand.

(On a separate note, I really miss girls like Sam. Cornell doesn't have too many cute, perky girls. Or maybe I'm just not meeting the right people.)

Luckily Alumni House has provided me a nice distraction. This morning, at 6:45 a.m., I'll be leaving for NYC on a bus full of Cornell students and staff. My job is to help train the reunion classes on the use of the computer registration system, but I'll also be the "bitch" for the weekend. When a box needs to be opened, carried, blown up, etc... I'll be the go to guy. I'm also working with three girls, so I'll be looked to as the work horse. I suppose the y chromosome has it's advantages, but the sterotype of a burly male isn't always one of them.

I'm not really nuts about manual labor, but I am pretty excited to get away and stay in the Grand Hyatt. As nuts as it sounds, I think I'm going to stay in on Friday night, work out, and go to bed. It'll be one of the most fullfilling Friday nights I've had in a while.

--

Today was course exchange, but I didn't. I think I'm set with my classes, but the first week will help decide that. I also haven't bought my books yet, something I'll have to do when I get back.

I was also supposed to meet my travel buddy for next week's DC journalism conference. I slept through our meeting, however, so I'm hoping she'll catch me for lunch sometime next week. I wrote to her advisor to find out if she was normal, and he said some nice things about her. His key word was that she was very "intense," something I'm excited to learn more about, especially since I've been described with the same word in the past.

J. Frasco was also supposed to introduce me to Betsy Cooper. He mentioned that we might do it tonight, but then ditched me for cuddle time with the woman. Can't blame him, but I will hold him to meeting Betsy. She's a Truman Scholar (you smart people will know what it is, I do), and has worked in Senator Clinton's DC office. It's kind of like my Jainee Baker quest in high school. I just want to meet this person to see what they're like. I hear she's also "intense," so she's probably someone very interesting to speak with.
--

I'll be heading to Church this Sunday, too. I'm hoping that girl I don't know is there. I don't stare, but I feel like Charlie Brown when she's in the room. She's like my verson of the little redheaded girl, only she's a curly-haired blonde.

--

I'm trying to figure out how to phone overseas. I've got a few friends I want to stay in touch with this semester. I'm also planning on sending a few letters to a girl who's studying England. We were good friends freshman year and lost touch. I think a hand-written letter could go a long way to rekindling our friendship, and that'd be good since I'll be with the Bailey Boys next year in our sweet house. It'll be a time of high-class parties, dinner dates, and rousing fireside chats.

But I suppose I'm getting a head of myself. This semester hasn't even started.

"Routine Matinence"

If you've sent me an e-mail in the past 24 hours, I haven't gotten it. The Cornell mail server I'm on has been malfunctioning, and I haven't been able to access my mailbox since Sunday night.

I'm even more pissed becuase I called the Network Operations Center (NOC) and they told me (at 5 a.m. on Monday) that the servers were down for "routine matience." I work at CIT, I should have known better. That's always been code for "fucked up." Worse, they still haven't fixed the issue, meaning I'll be without e-mail for a while longer.

At least Rush is going well.

I went to a meeting tonight to learn about contacts. Our elected rush chair told us all that he was going to Italy this Spring, but assured us that he'd be here for rush week. Then he suddenly remembered that he had to be there before Rush, so we got screwed.

The meeting went well, and Jon and Jason were there, too. We then met with Tabari to discuss rush week and how we would run things. T is getting sick, so he asked if we could help fill in at some things. There's also a lot of behind the scenes activity that needs to happen for rush to run smoothly. Like tomorrow, the rest of the house will be paintballing in Rochester, while Jason and I head back early to clean up for our smoker.

Tonight we also had six guys over. They had a blast and we took them to Hot Truck and played pool and foosball with them. Four more guys called us about paintball tomorrow (Zeke put together a sweet flyer that the J's and I handed out after the meeting). Starting rush with a huge activity like that, too, will be a big help in getting rushees to come back.

Now if only it would work on my lost e-mail...

---

Side note* Rumor is that Cornell hired Marc Trestman, my OC boy from the Bay Area. Cali what!

Don't cry for losers

I've lost a lot of various games since coming back to school. Scrabble, fooseball, Steak...the list is pretty long. All that really matters is that I now own bragging rights over guys in the house regarding Trival Pursuit.

Sure there were four of us playing against three teams of one, but we still beat them.

Why all the games? Why all the free time? It's because I've finished my final goal of the break -- finding the finalists in Cornell's coaching search. I was right about Trestman, and with a little help from some friends on East Hill, I was able to find out the other two names.

So I guess not only do I own bragging rights over guys in my house, I also own bragging rights over the football reporters at the Ithaca Journal, Buffalo News, Boston Globe, Sacramento Bee, and the Patriot Ledger. I had the story a whole day before they did. In the timeline of a newspaper, that's an eternity.

Of course, that still hasn't gotten me an internship, but to borrow from Freddy Mercury, "don't cry for losers cause we are the champions."

Now if I could only figure out which category I fit into.

Please come to Boston for the weekend...

Yeah, there's a song that has a line like that. Some whiny white guy writes to his ex-girlfriend, or grandmother, or gay lover or something like that, and he asks her to come to Boston for the weekend. I now have a better idea of who these people are.

The chick defintely isn't me. The Dude definitley isn't Harvard Athletics.

Okay, so my whiny story goes like this...

One of my big goals this year is to sit in every press box I can. I'm only going to be an assistant sports editor once, meaning I'll only get one crack at all the other school's press boxes. After that, I'll leave my legacy for the assistant sports editors to come, and the foo..er, next edit board.

So of course when Alex told me he wasn't going to Harvard, I was like "Money!" That meant that Owen and I would get to sit in the press box, all I had to do was get to Harvard.

I had that covered. Owen offered to pick me up, and together we'd drive down. Adam Sinovsky then joined the group as our photographer, playing the cowardly lion to Owen's Tin Man and my Scare Crow.

All we were missing was our Dorothy. We probably should have written her and begged "Please come to Boston for the weekend," beucase then I would have had someone to sit with.

"What?" you may be asking. "You didn't sit with Owen?"

No, I'll tell you now. Owen had the distinct pleasure of sitting the press box. His company for the evening? The Boston Globe reporter, the USCHO.com reporter, the radio guys, and Satan.

That's right, in the Ivy League's ever-expanding quest to squeeze money out of a poor excuse for a D-I doormat league, Harvard sold the broadcast rights of the game to CSTV. That's great. It's great for the fans, but it sucked for the team and it sucked for me.

It sucks for the team, beucase now Cornellians have less of a need to flood Bright Hockey center and turn the place into a Red home game. Instead of "Lynah East," the rink turned into "Lynah Least," with a dismal showing from the usually rowdy Boston fan base.

And don't think the players didn't notice. Sure they loved the crazies who always travel to see the team, but even Captain Vesce noticed the smaller than usual Cornell crowd.

"It felt like a neutral site game," he said afterwards.

And why did all CSTV, aka Satan's spawn, ruin the game for me? Simple, they took up half the press box. Then one of the cranky beat writers from one of the Boston papers that isn't the Globe bitched to have space for his space heater in the press box. I.E., no space for Matt.

Result? The dream is over. The dream has died. I did not get to, nor will I ever, sit in the Harvard press box. Instead, I was given a ticket and herded like cattle to sit with the common folk. Worse, the common folk I sat with wore crimson and carried an attitude.

(At least I answered one of life's great riddles. You can clap with one hand. I saw the Harvard fans do it, I mean how else could they clap when one thumb was wedged up their respective asses?)

Oh, sure! Disco Stu, the Mars going Harvard Astronaut and I had plenty of fun for a while. The Harvard Gorilla had even me going Ape Shit. I even got my picture taken with Harvard's Kid Rock. But then the truth came out. Cornell had built Stu's Martian Rover, Kid Rock realized that my Ag school affiliation didn't mean I could score him weed, and the Rally Rawlings started humping the ape's leg. That's when things started getting ugly (and cold -- record lows while we were in the East).

I could go on, but I won't. I promised the children I wouldn't make a scene on the internet. And Lord knows, you can't dissapoint the children.

That, and it's time for bed, where I can dream of happier days at Lynah rink, beucase you know that somewhere, someone's writing their sweetheart and asking...

...please come to Boston for the weekend.

I hope she comes to her senses and heads to Ithaca instead.

Singing the Blues to La La Land...

The presents are unwrapped, the relatives are visited, and my high school friends have paid me their once-a-year visit.

Now I'm bored.

For a while, there wasn't any snow, so I was able to fill my spare time running. That was good for about two hours out of the day. Now, however, the snow has reclaimed the frozen hell that is Western New York.

While sitting at home this weekend, my curiosity got the best of me. I sat infront of the TV, watching bowl games and playoff football, all the while devouring sports content online. By Sunday night I was officially caught up on Plaschke and Simers columns, and dare I say it -- I was sick of sports.

Monday, curious, I sent an e-mail to Steven Bell at the Buffalo News. I wanted to see if I could send them some more of my clips to accompany my summer internship application. I expected a swift answer, and certainly got one.

Bell told me that they had already done interviews and he was offering jobs. He closed his e-mail with that famous, "better luck next year" line. I've gotten twice from him, like he's doing me some deal if he hires me senior year.

Thinking of ways I wish I could tell Steven Bell to go screw himself, I sat and realized my journalism prospects looked bleak. If I couldn't beat out 100 other kids for an internship at WNY's news source, I'm not sure how I can do it anywhere else. I'm pretty sure there weren't 100 kids at the LA Times convention, let a lone 20 that were applying to the Buffalo News. I'm pretty sure no one else from Cornell did.

So who beat me? What was so great about them? Was it their gender? Was it their skin color? Was it who their father knew? Was it what school they went to? Honestly, who's going to turn out a better product than Cornell?

I then lamented the fact that I'd "have to" go to law school, and probably give up on sports writing. It was too bad, I had just figured out football and the difference between the counter and the slam...

Then I got over it. I found a new distraction.

While online, I somehow found an Ivy sports forum. It's a goldmine, and one of the biggest topics was about Cornell's next coach. Speculation and names flew, but one stood out. It wasn't of a coach, but rather of one of the posters. He called himself Jack, and claimed he was class of 1972. He also seemed to talk a good game.

I followed up, asked Jack to e-mail me, and waited. I then started calling some of the names on the posting, for additional information.

Along the way, I called the Raiders PR office, e-mailed Sac Bee staff writers, head coaching candidates, and our own lovely sports info staff. None of them were as helpful as I'd have liked, but I did get a call back from the Raiders.

"Hello?" I said.

"Mr. [Redacted], Mr. Davis has you down for an interview at noon tomorrow."

"Great, what about Mr. Trestman?"

"Well, as head coach you're free to hire anyone you'd like, even those dismissed by the Raiders..."

"Head coach," I cut the PR person off, "I just want an interview with Trestman regarding the Head Coaching Position at Cornell..."

"Oh," they responded. "Mr. Trestman isn't picking that candidate, you better call Cornell's AD. He's the guy who makes that call..."

And then they hung up. But it was okay, I spoke with Trestman's wife a little while later. We talked about the kids, Gov. Schwarzzenager, and whether or not Jerry Rice is losing his hair.

The result: it is now confirmed by the Cornell Daily Sun that Oakland Raiders Offensive Coordinator Marc Trestman interviewed for Cornell's head coaching position. I'm going to be getting in touch with him tomorrow, and hopefully will be able to get a few more names from him. The other assistant editor is going to try to squeeze some info out of J. Andy Noel, the athletic director.

In the meantime, Jack turned out to be a bust source. There is no Jack Reynolds, class of 1972 from Cornell. He also didn't have anything useful to tell me. Oh, and I've somehow become some sort of reputable news source at Cornell. I put up a joking away message about how the Raiders called me all confused and some kid took it as fact. He then blabbed the whole thing on a message board, citing me as a reputable source.

It's kind of flattering, but a bit annoying. I like to showcase my fictional and humorous accounts on my im window. It's a bit disturbing to think someone would take them as true, and worse than that post them on the internet. Then again, it's something that needs to be tested...

Hopefully this all turns out well for me. Then maybe next year I can turn down Steven Bell and the Buffalo News, instead of things happening the other way around.