On Thursday night, a friend of mine turned 21. Natch, we took her out to the bars in Collegetown to celebrate.

We were at a particular establishment that I try to stay away from because of the overpowering stench of vomit and Axe body spray, the too-loud music and the fact that the dance floor is usually more like a pool of nasty spilled beverages. In the span of 45 minutes, not only did I see my ex-boyfriend, half of the Sun staff, and a bunch of sorority sisters, but I also managed to totally awk it up with some grad student.

The basic jist of the story goes like this: some guy I’d never seen before was wearing a suit and I asked him why. It was a legitimate question. Why would he wear a suit to the bars– to this bar? His house was probably no less than a 5-minute walk from there. Could he not have gone home and changed?

He started talking really fast and I didn’t hear what he was saying, nor do I ever think he provided any answers to solve the suit mystery. I did catch that he was a business school grad student, went to undergrad somewhere in the Midwest, and he was 28.

28? Wow. But eh, he seemed interested and my friends had left me, so I kept talking to him and prayed he wouldn’t ask me anything that would give away my age. Obviously, he did ask– and I tried to lie and say I was a 27-year-old law student. It really didn’t fly and he looked totally pissed, said a bunch of stuff about how it’s uncool to lie about these things and blah blah.

The next morning, I walked into Casino Operations class at 10:10 am clutching my life-saving bottle of Gatorade…and guess who waltzes in and sits down right in front of me with his grad student friends? Oh yes. The suit man himself.

Almost 20,000 undergrads and grads on this campus and sometimes it feels way, way too small.

One of my favorite moments on my campus tours comes up during the Q&A session when I am blessed with the opportunity to answer that question one mom never, ever fails to ask: “how often are classes canceled due to snow?”

Perhaps I should be awarded Worst-Tour-Guide-Ever status for this, but I always say “oh, snow days? Yeah, no. Never.” And then I completely enjoy life for a moment as I look around at all my tour guests’ faces. Usually, the expressions in the room range from looks of utter shock and horror (think about your face when you found out Reese Witherspoon and Ryan Phillipe broke up) to the Daddy-smirk (the one that says, “that’s right son, my tuition dollars are paying for classes EVERY DAY, arctic blasts be damned!”) to the unmistakeable face of the west coast girl who, upon hearing this tidbit, has just crossed Cornell off her list. Kind of amazing what this statement does to people.

After basking in the moment for a few seconds, I usually keep going with, “welllll, once in 1993, 1994, and I think 1999. But four feet of snow fell and Ithaca was a mess…” and then I go into my whole bit about our awesome snow plows and the cute little guy who salts the sidewalks at 6 am. At this point, I can practically hear the collective “thank GOD” as the whole room becomes a little bit more at ease. However, someone clearly must have been reading my blog yesterday (haha… ok, I jest, I jest) because after 50 bazillion inches of snow fell overnight and continued relentlessly throughout the morning, Cornell finally gave up and shut down around 12:30 today. Pretty sweet, right? You’d think so, except now my tours won’t be nearly as fun when that question comes up and I have to say, “yeah, last week. Moving on.”

So in addition to classes, all my extracurricular commitments were canceled today as well. After a treacherous Ugg-ruining 10-turned-45-minute journey, I got home safely around 1:00 pm and literally did not know what to do with myself. I was absolutely useless to the point of watching Center Stage (yes, the dance movie with Peter Gallagher in it– who knew?) with my roommates and thoroughly enjoying it. It was a little crazy to experience free time for the first time in a while; I didn’t even realize how overscheduled I’d been until this afternoon showed me what life is like with some space in my [awesome pink] day planner. I don’t like it. I do things like watch Center Stage and I’m scared that next time it will be Gigli, Glitter, or Crossroads. Must keep planner full at all times.

OH! And it was Valentine’s Day! Tell me again why I traveled all the way across the country to this big giant school full of all kinds of new people from all over the world just to end up with a fabulous Texan boy who reminds me, in all kinds of ways, of my friends back home? I mean, nothing beats a Southern boy, but why would I come to New York to find one? Oh, right. Because he’s a Southern hotelie, a super-powered hybrid of the two kinds of men I favor most. We all know how I feel about dating hotelies. A Texan one? Jackpot. This one took me swing dancing on our first official date– so cute! Let’s not talk about the fact that my dancing was horrendous to the point of likely being borderline offensive (think Elaine on Seinfeld), but he was actually quite the amazing dancer and was incredibly patient with me.

So anyway, whether or not you have a hotelie or Southern boy of your own, I hope everyone had a happy Valentine’s Day and I certainly hope all you Cornellians enjoyed the White Out. It probably won’t happen again… ever.