Inventing Me

Here I am at home and I am blogging about my first week at Hofstra University. Overall, I enjoy my classes and professors. The work load has not been too rigorous yet, but I know that is going to change rather quickly. After seeing all of the syllabi, I will have less graded projects, essays, and tests/quizzes than I originally expected (I have about 3 grades per class and 5 classes). I am glad to say that I have yet to get lost on campus! As a commuting student, it was difficult to find decent parking for my 9:35 am class on the first day of class (September 6, 2011) and that the main commuter lot was unfortunately full. Thankfully, I was able to follow another commuter to a closer parking lot on the South Campus than taking the guard's suggestion and parking in one of  the North Campus parking lots. I look forward to what Hofstra has in store for me in the coming years.

Writing online makes me feel uncomfortable. The fact that anybody can see and read what I have to say scares me. As I am currently writing online, I am listing to my favorite band, Weezer. I do not have one favorite Weezer song, but twenty! I have seen Weezer live 4 times in the last three years, each show different and better than the previous one! I highly recommend listing to Weezer if you haven’t listened to them or if you are not a fan yet, because you will be a fan after listening to them, but I digress. However, I do enjoy posting on various message boards and I do like to read other people’s blogs.

My favorite message board is Islander Mania, which is a New York Islanders message board. It is fun to post there and there is never a dull moment. The only thing that irritates me on Islander Mania is the fact that people are so depressed. You need to be a strong individual to be an Islander fan because the team could be good, with the addition of a top-4 defenseman and a figured out goalie situation (personally, I hope Evgeni Nabokov earns back the respect of his teammates and runs away with the starting goalie spot), but what the owner, Charles Wang, puts the fans through is unbearable. The fact the Islanders are celebrating they are the first professional sport team to have an exclusive sponsorship with a tattooing and piercing company, Tattoo Lou’s, is mind boggling. Who spends about $120 on a pair of tickets, plus $10 to park, plus $40 for food and a beer or two, to go get tattooed at a hockey game when they can just drive an extra 15 minutes and go to Tattoo Lou’s in Levittown? Also, the Islanders are hovering around the salary cap floor, meaning that Garth Snow, the General Manager, could have spent money this offseason upgrading the team’s defense and actually could place better than 26^th overall in the league. Believe me, there are many more things I can discuss about why it is hard being an Isles fan. One last thought on the Isles: I truly believe they do not have the respect they deserve from the former NHL Senior Vice President and Director of Hockey Operations, Colin Campbell, the on-ice officials, and the Pittsburgh Penguins organization (which I personally couldn’t care less about their opinions of the Isles due to their hypocrisy in their organization stemming down from Mario Lemieux to their tasteless play-by-play guy, Paul Steigerwald).  If you don’t believe me, watch this highlight video from the February 11, 2011 Isles-Penguins game:

This is the Pittsburgh feed and notice how everything the Islanders do is wrong. Pittsburgh is the dirtiest team in the league and the Isles chose to stand up for themselves, and it is perceived as a bad thing. I fully support all of the Islanders actions in this video, with the exception of Gillies, because I have watched enough Isles games to notice that the Isles stars are targeted night in and night out (especially against the game a couple of nights earlier against Pittsburgh), yet the officials refuse to penalize the other teams.  

On that note, I am extremely looking forward to the upcoming hockey season! I am going to the Isles-Bruins rookie scrimmage on Tuesday, September 13, 2011 and hope to see you there cheering on the Isles rookies and prospects! 

Here is some Weezer!