Road Trip '08 - Day 3

Syracuse, NY

Today was Take-A-Look-Around-Syracuse-And-Pray-Leslie-Doesn’t-Hate-It Day.

Fortunately, she didn’t hate it. In fact, she really liked it and felt very much at home. We toured campus and it was very pretty. There were students lounging around on the Quad and it looked like a postcard. It made me miss OBU.

It was also ridiculously warm. According the Internet (and everyone knows what you read online is true), the average temp in July is 70.4 degrees. Of course, today it was 87 degrees. The Syracuse Physical Plant hasn’t thrown the switch from Winter to Summer, so we sweltered whether we were inside or out and about.

We met with the director of Leslie’s program (I can’t remember what it’s called, but it’s a lot of letters), Dr. Scott McWonderbeard. He was actually very cool and if I were enrolling as a grad student at Syracuse, I’d be excited that he would be one of my profs. He is an Okie and did his undergrad and masters at OU. He is also an ubergeek. Want proof? He has developed a board game he’s marketing in Germany about the action surrounding the bursting economic bubble of the 1750s Amsterdam tulip market. I’m not even joking. He was still cool though. I promise.

Two students from Leslie’s betrothed program gave us a brief tour of campus and answered Leslie’s questions while I sat back and marveled at the sheer volume of information they were spouting.

Syracuse bought us lunch at this fun Irish pub and I had a very good Philly chicken sandwich.

After our official stuff was in the can and Leslie officially matriculated, we bought some Syracuse swag in the bookstore and returned to hotel to clean up and rest.

We both had some postcards to mail so Leslie googled the nearest post office. My GPS directed us there and it turns out it is the single most secure post office on the planet. It’s all good, though, because we made it out with our postcard stamps and our civil liberties intact.

Next, we went to Carousel Center, which thinks it is a really cool mall. I’d give it a 7 at best. We shopped around Borders, counseled my sister to enter an OBU Guitar Hero tourney and caught the 4 p.m. showing of Smart People. It was pretty good, but it was hard to pin down a certain theme. I must, however, give full marks Thomas Hayden Church and Ellen Page.

After the movie, we came back to the hotel and ordered pizza as we watched TV.

BK out.