Matt Carberry (kingpin248) wrote,
Matt Carberry
kingpin248

A Big Red thread runs through this day

On a day when I'm wearing my 2003 Frozen Four t-shirt, Cornell cropped up a number of times.
  1. I received an e-mail this afternoon from ECSI, who administrates some of Cornell's student loans. After a hiatus of nearly three years, I've resumed sending money to Cornell to settle the debts I incurred during the time of my attendance there. The payments were deferred while I was enrolled at Hofstra and for six months thereafter, and July was the last of those six months. It's not a large hit to the bank account, and I haven't looked to see how long the payments will continue at their current rate. That being the case, I might look to accelerate those payments once some revenue starts appearing on the ledger.
  2. Seven weeks out from Bonecoming 2012, I thought it might be time to secure lodging for that weekend. I was expecting this to be a struggle. Initially, I didn't even bother calling the Hillside Inn, thinking that their small size would mean no rooms available. I checked the listing of lodging on Cornell's Homecoming page, and proceeded to check availability on nearly all of them. Many of them were booked solid, and those with rooms available quoted prices that were well above what I was willing to pay. Beyond that, those accommodations shared the characteristic of being a few miles from the center of campus. Since there would be no harm in checking with the Hillside, I called them up - and lo and behold, they had a room! The rate was high by Hillside standards, but it was still fifty dollars per night lower than any of the other places, and I'll again be staying within walking distance of Schoellkopf Field and the three Houses... Chapter, Bone, and that other one with the Germanicized name whose occupants are characters of questionable moral fiber.
  3. Just after I got off the phone with the Hillside Inn, I looked at my Twitter feed and saw this. Rob Pannell, the outstanding Big Red lacrosse attackman, will be back at Cornell next spring after his special request for a fifth year of eligibility was approved by the Ivy League. This is great news for Cornell's chances to go deep in the NCAA tournament and grab the national championship that narrowly eluded them in 2009.
  4. Bill Simmons is in London covering the Olympics, so he's got some of his Grantland crew guest hosting his podcast. Nine minutes into today's episode, David Jacoby and Kevin Wildes engage in a discussion about replacing glass backboards with some other translucent material. Two minutes later, the following dialogue ensues:
    Jacoby: I'm in on the architecting stadiums for the viewer at home instead of the viewer there, I'm 100 percent in on that. I'm 100 percent out on the year-long study at Tufts of backboard materials. Is that fair... a fair assessment of this idea?
    Wildes: What if it was Cornell?
    Jacoby: Closer... closer.
    Wildes: Don't they like, do glass?
    Jacoby: I don't know anything about Cornell.
    I had to pause the podcast and consider, as I continued to fold my laundry, whether to keep listening. (I make it a point to listen to every episode of each of the seven podcasts I subscribe to, even if it's in the background as I'm doing something else.) I was dumbfounded that Wildes and conflated "Cornell" and "Corning." I did finish, which subjected me to an awkward moment near the end when Jacoby couldn't find the words "flight attendant," referring instead to "the stewardesses... what's the politically correct term for these people, the airline help folks who bring you drinks?"
One more that isn't Cornell related but has a very loose parallel. Two days ago, Hofstra named Shannon Smith as its new women's lacrosse head coach. Upon first seeing it, I did a double take, immediately thinking, didn't she JUST graduate... maybe last year?" Reading the announcement confirmed my suspicion - her bio lists "Northwestern '12" as her alma mater. Smith goes from winning her third national championship on the field to a head coaching gig in the space of two months. I wondered if such a thing was unprecedented - until I remembered that Dick Bertrand replaced Ned Harkness as the coach of Big Red hockey right after helping them to a national title and a perfect season.
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