Welcome Aboard the Payne Train

So as part of the first week at Cornell, when orientation is still technically going on, there are some pretty cool events, free ones at that. On Saturday there was a free Motion City Soundtrack concert, organized by the Cornell Concert Commission. Preceding that, on Friday Night, the Welcome Weekend committee put on Casino Night at Willard Straight. How Casino Night works is you receive $380 worth of chips (for free of course, otherwise it would be illegal) and bet them on several different casino games, including roulette, craps, bingo (technically not a casino game), blackjack, and poker (different versions, texas hold em most prominent). At the end, that is whenever you decide to stop or at 1:30AM, whichever comes first, you cash in your chips for tickets. 1 ticket for every $100 worth of chips. I just so happened to turn in my $380 into $7000. Call me a gambling expert because that’s what I am. Honestly though, I won $6000 at bingo, which of course is complete luck. The other $1000 came at roulette, almost complete luck. So for those of you who hate math I received 70 tickets. Next, the tickets are placed to boxes that correspond to prizes that are available, mostly dvd’s, a couple of chairs, a robosaurus, gamecube, cup set, etc. Most of my tickets went into this game chair that sells at Target for $80. It has built-in speakers that can connect to the TV, it rocks back and forth, has a volume and bass control, and includes headphones and has an input for them. It’s also synthetic leather…pretty awesome. The other remaining tickets I put into the V for Vendetta dvd. To cut the suspense of winning, (if there was any) I wouldn’t write this if I didn’t win. The game chair is currently sitting in my dorm room waiting for the Giants to start playing on Sundays. For now it is used when playing Xbox 360. Usually Call of Duty 2.

Let me first say this: For a lack of a better word add/drop at Cornell s interesting. So add/drop refers to adding or dropping classes after you have pre-enrolled in them. For me I pre-enrolled in classes at the end of spring semester of my freshman year. However, one of the classes that I enrolled in had its time changed, which conflicted with another class. As a result I only had 11 credits and 12 is needed to be a full time student. Therefore, I needed to add a course. This is where add/drop comes in. It starts the day before classes and ends roughly a month after classes start. It is done completely over the internet, like the nasdaq stock exchange. Just as hectic too. Add/drop begins at 6:30 in the morning, so it’s quite an eye-opening experience (pun intended). Luckily for me the second class I wanted (Social Welfare as a Social Policy) was available, so my early morning tackle with the add/drop website only lasted for about 20 minutes, most of which was waiting for a database to sort out the thousands of students atempting to find or dispose of a course. Just know it’s an unpleasant necessity and an experience every Cornellian goes through.

Well here I am at Cornell! I moved in on Sunday. Classes start on Thursday, and I am currently having a great time meeting new friends and getting together with old ones. I am living on West Campus now (residential living area for non-freshmen undergraduates) in a hall called Carl Becker House. It was built two years ago so my room is practically brand new!! The hall has its own dining hall, library, lounge, mailboxes, and even a music room to hone your instrumental skills. I lost mine after senior year in high school. Speaking of dining hall, I love Cornell food, in fact Princeton Review in their new college guide ranked cornell fourth, but as my tour guide friend Mo (she’s a girl) says on her tours, “It’s number 1 in my heart!” I just finished my shift as an information specialist, if you ever see a tour guide at Cornell, that’s who we are. Tonight I’ll probably bask in the glory of the 2006 Boston Massacre (aka the 5-game sweep the Yankees pulled off against the Red Sox). To finish off, probably the best days of college are the 5 or 6 before classes start when everyone is moving in (and for freshman getting acclamated to campus and experiencing Cornell with all the other newbies). Whichever college you attend make sure that especially during orientation week you take the initiative to meet people because that will make your college experience extremely enjoyable.

Wednesday night I was watching the Daily Show w/ Jon Stewart and soon after the Colbert Report. It was my one week anniversary of going into New York City to see the Daily Show Live, which was quite a comedic experience. With all the thrills of witnessing Jon Stewart’s performance live, walking and waiting in the 100 degree heat still makes me sweat thinking about it. To help us get through the oppressive weather that day, the crew of the Daily Show gave us bottled water and ice pops – an unlimited supply. Very refreshing. Kind of like those Sierra Mist commercials. However, why I’m really writing this post (the last before I go back to Cornell) is because tonight on the O’Reilly Factor (I don’t watch the show, I just saw the clip) Geraldo, who seemingly is like a daily appearance on any Fox News Show, deliberately and obviously insult, trash talk, etc. the Daily Show and the Colbert Report saying among other things, “Entertain people by laughing at clips of women slipping on ice,” and “they and their audience do nothing for society.” First, borrowing some terms from Stephen Colbert, O’Reilly you have always been on notice with me, but Geraldo you are dead to me. Realizing that these words among others have come out of a man’s mouth who used to have a talk show that was nothing more than Jerry Springer without the fighting and who has vowed to personally hunt down Osama bin Laden couldn’t make me laugh louder at such a joke as you…and your mustache.

My second summer job (the other is working at a movie theater) is as a sports camp counselor/coach at Delbarton. I love it because I work in the sports experience camp, which attempts to familiarize all the kids with many different sports as opposed to baseball, football, basketball, etc. which work on their respective sport only. Every day is filled with playing football, lacrosse, baseball, and other sports for the five hours I’m working, and best of all, lunch is free. Anyway, for the third week of July I was assigned a team to coach for the entire week. I quickly and aptly named them Cornell Big Red. There might have been dissent from my team but I didn’t hear it. The week started out strong, the team quickly rose to first place with a 5-1 record after 2 days, our strength being wiffle ball. Wednesday and Thursday brought on a drought due to a four game losing streak, two of which were in lacrosse. I’m a baseball guy, I have no clue how to play that sport and honestly don’t feel like learning it. A .500 record saw us slip to third out of 4 teams and 5 points behind the first place squad. (The scoring system is the same that is used in hockey – 2 points for a win, 1 for a tie, 0 for a loss.) Heading into the final day, a trade engineered by yours truly brought us a football stud. Our team ascended into second by winning at our strength twice, wiffle ball. We were then slated to play the third place team in the semifinals and I was given the honor of choosing which sport to play. Due to the trade earlier in the day I chose football, a choice that was put under much scrutiny since I passed up our bread and butter, wiffle ball. The skepticism was put to rest after my team decisively won it’s game 6-2 (Touchdowns count as 1, fyi I was QB for all 6 of them). An upset brought the 4th seed team to verse us in the championship game. Once again I was given a choice of which sport to play since we were the higher seeded team. Without hesitating, I chose football. The game was closer but came to the same result, a 9-8 victory. And like that Cornell was champ of the sports experience at Delbarton Sports Camp. A green duffle bag with the Delbarton logo was given to the victors.

Now maybe hockey could bring a real championship to Ithaca.

For my first post EVER I guess it would be fitting to talk about the Yankees since I’m a sports fanatic and the Boys of Summer are at center stage. Before you read on, if you don’t know much about baseball or don’t like baseball, you probably won’t be interested in this post. I won’t be insulted if you stop here. Anyways, I was working at the movie theater in my hometown of Chester, NJ this afternoon as the trading deadline fast approached. I conveniently brought my laptop with me since many people don’t usually come to the movies on a beach weather monday. I read on espn.com, before being mesmorized by Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins, that the Yankees traded Shawn Chacon for Craig Wilson and while that didn’t bother me, it rekindled the flames that originated from the trade that brought slugger and star outfielder Bobby Abreu to the Yankees. The Yankees, despite popular belief, don’t need an extra bat. They’re scoring plenty of runs with their small ball that brings back the sweet memories of the chamionship teams of 1996 and ‘98. Why do you need another outfielder when Melky Cabrera is becoming a future Bernie Williams and Gary Sheffield and Hideki Matsui are soon to return from their injuries? Why trade away 4 prospects (one of whom was your first round draft pick in 2005) for a 30 something year old? What does it say to your team who is overcoming so much adversity and is only a game back of the team who must not be named from Boston (btw they’re overrated)? Gary Sheffield’s, for lack of a better term “pissed off”, and I would be too if I were a perennial all-star and a former runner-up MVP who was going to lose his starting position to a .270 hitter. Getting Cory Lidle, fine, no complaints here. Bobby Abreu, everyone says you’re great in the clubhouse, but so is every other Yankee. I wish you stayed in Philadelphia.