Movie Hawk

Though its recent success in college basketball might lead one to believe that Syracuse, N.Y. – where I watch the Saint Joseph’s Hawks begin their season with a twenty-point win over Fairleigh Dickinson Monday night – is a nice college town. And while the campus proper there is nice, and the support for the basketball team extends through the community, the town itself leaves a lot to be desired. There seem to be plenty of restaurants to go around (go to Cosmo’s pizza shop for breakfast and get a toasted honey bun), but the architecture outside of campus is bland and the weather, from what I understand, is rarely anything to write home about. Not to mention the fact that the Carrier Dome – for all intents and purposes one of basketball’s new Meccas after the Orangemen won the title – is a bland, aging, basketball-focused version of Veteran’s Stadium. Give me Philadelphia and the Palestra any day.

A little while ago, I realized that I never take vacation. Now, this isn’t that major a revelation, especially considering the fact that I have only be working “officially” full-time at my job for a year (internships and assistantships bump that up to nearly three), but people would continually tell me to take vacation and I just wouldn’t. I like my job enough that I don’t see any reason not to show up every day. I’m kind of like Cal Ripken that way (and that’s the only way, believe me). But with the end of the fiscal year approaching and the end of “Beauty and the Beast” in sight, I decided that I needed to take some “me” time. Therein was the genesis of my trip last week to Chicago. Now, I could bore you with a slideshow of my vacation pictures (which I already have, sort of) or devote a post to each day (which I considered doing from the road but was too tired at the end of each day to pull the trigger), but I’ve found that the best way to have some fun while informing you about my vacation is to tell you what I learned while in Chicago.

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