What I Wouldn't Give for a Pop, Abbotts' and a White Hot Right Now to Go Along with My Digital Cable and Amazing Stanley Cup Final

Okay, here's three words you never thought I'd say:

I miss Rochester.

Now pick all your jaws off the floor, and get ready for the next statement:

I miss Binghamton.

Now, that one may take a while for you all to recover from. I couldn't wait to get out of each place, and now I miss them like I have never missed anything ever before. I guess it was inevitable, but I told myself I wasn't going to feel these things, that I was too excited about moving to Boston to be depressed. But then I got here and realized that everyone I care about is back in New York State. And I realized that gosh darn it, as much as you prepare and save, it sure is expensive to live in Boston. And then I realized that I have to start all over again by scratch, that I have to do the dirty work, that I have to impress people, that I have to go out and find the opportunities all over again. Can't I just stay one place and build on what I've done? Two years one place, two years another, now onto another. And then I realized that I need a break, because I'm burnt out not unlike those prodigy child figure skaters/gymnasts/tennis players who just quit at age 17 saying, "I just want to be a kid!" Well, I just want to be a 22 year old! I just want to sit around and not worry about anything for a week and get to spend time with all of my friends.

Blech. Things will get better. I'm here now, it's fun, and I need to resist the homesick and Binghamton-sickness. I will get to go home in a few weeks, then off to see my downstate NY friends a week after that, then home again for the holiday, and then home again hopefully during the Democratic National Convention (because no one's going to be around for that one). I hope I can get that one off, although that looks pretty darn unlikely.

It's just hard. I have great friends, and I love talking to you all. I just miss seeing you all, and I hate knowing that you're all there (there being New York) and I'm here. And if things get really bad, I can always transfer...because that's what I do best, haha! But that's unlikely, because Boston has been my dream since I was 10.

Darn post-graduation-stress-syndrome.

Onto other news:

-I got the job I mentioned last week in a modified form. Hey, it still works. It's money, it's higher ed, it works.

-I have found mint chocolate chip ice cream at the corner store. Three different varieties in fact. So thankfully, mint chocolate chip does exist in Boston. Unfortunately, Wegman's mint chocolate chip brownies (which now are available at all Wegmans', or so the ad last Sunday said) are not. Or actually, I should rephrase that. Unfortunately, Wegmans in general does not. Shaw's is acceptable, and I like it better than most supermarkets, but really, Boston, you don't know what you're missing. Wegmans is the best thing since...I don't know. I can't put it into words. It's just amazing. (On that note, did I ever tell the story about how I used to wait at the bus stop with a girl who was a Wegman? Like Danny Wegman's niece or second cousin or something--it was 8th grade, so I forget. Like, they weren't close, but they were related.)

-On another food note, I have been informed by the Boston University food court that the type of pizza my family makes has a specific name. It is "Sicilian pizza." I was unaware of this, but the more I think of it, the more this does make sense. My parents' two favourite pizzas in the Rochester area are Ninos (a little past the intersection of Culver and Merchants on the Rochester-Irondequoit border--where I grew up) and Mark's Pizzeria (which used to be in Irondequoit, near Waring Road, aka where my parents' grew up, but it isn't there anymore--it's a local chain, so it's all over, they go to the one in West Webster now). Now, I know that Nino's advertises as "authentic Sicilian pizza," but it's been six years since I last had it, so I can't remember what it was exactly like. But seeing that its my parents' favourite, then it would make sense that their own pizza would be similar. My parents do make pizza that is square instead of circle (which is more out of the fact that for years they made it in toaster ovens, not the oven, then anything else), and it is very doughy and thick. Everything about the pizza is thick--the crust, the layer of cheese, and the pepperoni (because my dad buys a stick and cuts slices himself--we went through a phase where we didn't have pepperoni, but as of recently, it's back again. I have no idea why it disappeared for a year and a half.)

So anyway, I go to lunch in the University Food Court Monday, and go to the pizza part. And I look at the selection and there it is, a pizza that looks like my parents made it. I was overjoyed. I looked at the label. "Sicilian Pizza." Huh. I bought a piece, and it tasted like my parents'. Finally! I have found a place to get pizza like my parents. Oddest of places, but I have found it.

Of course, I could just make some myself. But for those days I'm too lazy to, I know where to find it.

(And no, the Hasenauer family is not greatly Italian. I mean, look at our name. We are a little bit on my dad's side, but that's it. But walk into my house and spend time with my dad's family and my immediate family, and you'd think we were the Sopranos--just without the shooting and the dumping of bodies and the cursing. Okay, maybe the cursing--except for me. But not the killing.)

-Public transportation is so not made for us vertically challenged people. I can not reach the top bar of the subway car, which is a problem when you're on a crowded train and that's the only place to hang on. I stood on my tiptoes and held on with my fingertips. That was all that would reach.

In addition, the city wide pastime of Bostonians, besides loving and hating the Red Sox, is to complain about the T. People, please spend five minutes without a car in Rochester, Ithaca or Binghamton and then tell me how much you think Boston has the worst public transportation then. In fact, just spend time in New York City. You all have no reason to complain.

-I am the supreme hockey goddess of the world. Thank you. Please light puck shaped candles at my feet and ask me who is going to win the series that I SO CALLED. Even before last night's game, I was saying Calgary, because the birthplace of hockey deserves the Cup back, and because they're good. I mean, I'm fond of Tortorella, seeing that he's a former Amerks coach and all, but the Lightning let the Flyers come back in that conference finals series--the Flames didn't need 7 games, but the Lightning let it go to that with the Flyers. Plus, as evidenced by last night's Game 1, the Flames are just amazingly fun to watch. They're sneaky and just fly across the ice. This is good hockey. Well, I mean, it's always nice when it's close in a game, but it's also fun to see a fun, good team dominate a game. So I'll take the Flames in 5 games.

(And Jarome Iginla, the Flames captain, is hot. But that's besides the point. But really, he's Juan-Luc Grand-Pierre material right there. Where is Grand-Pierre? He was the HOTTEST hockey player of all time. Oh wait, I just found him. He's with the Capitals, and his picture on ESPN.com does not do him any justice. When he was with the Amerks, he was amazingly good looking.)

And onto other hockey news, hockey season officially ended tonight at the Blue Cross Arena, with the Amerks' 4-1 loss to the Milwaukee Admirals tonight, letting the Admirals take the series 4 games to 1. It was a good run--I remember my father complaining at the beginning of the season that the Amerks were "stinkin' up the place." They weren't the best team this season, but they're always fun, they always try, and playoff Amerks hockey is just a Rochester tradition. Next year, people, next year.

-On another homesick note, I keep saying pop. I went to Shaw's and looked for white hots. They don't have white hots here. At least in Binghamton I could go to Wegmans and get some real white hots (not the Syracuse kind--Syracuse white hots are different all together--they're skinnier and spicier.) And while I make a conscious effort to say soda, I still slip and say pop occasionally, even after four years of living with non-Rochestarians. No one has called me on it here yet, but I dread the day I go to a restaurant and slip. See, in Rochester, you can go to a restaurant and ask for an orange pop or a regular pop and people know exactly what you want. (I know--my parents do this when ordering at fast food restaurants.) I fear they won't know what pop is here in Boston, and then I'll feel like an idiot.

-I just realized something. There are hot hockey players, hot football players, hot baseball players, hot tennis players--but the sport of basketball lacks in hottness. Remember my famous profile quote of a few months back, where Marsha and I were in the dining hall and the men's basketball team walked in. "Why aren't any of the basketball guys cute?" she asked. "Because we've only been D1 three years." I answered. But I was wrong now that I think about it. Basketball doesn't lend itself to hot guys. Well, professional basketball anyway. There are some nice ones in college, and trust me, just average guys playing always produces some good ones. But in the big league, very few, if not none. The NBA makes me sleep. If I had a TV in my room and needed to fall asleep quick, I'd turn it to the NBA playoffs.

-Speaking of TV, I like digital cable. A lot. Me + digital cable + pizza = a happy Saturday night. All my apartment-mates were away for portions of the weekend, leading me to have the place to myself for most of Saturday night. I spent the whole night with a pesto, tomato, broccoli and cheese pizza, flipping back and forth between baseball, hockey, gymnastics, more hockey and random shows. There was so much to choose from. It was great. Now I just have to get some kind of deal this fall where I can have NFL Network, and then I will never ever leave my apartment. (I have no life, but at least I'm happy that I have no life.)

-And I leave you with my quote of the week, as found in Tuesday's Boston Metro while I was reading it on the subway:

"Some people are overachievers and don't have time for sex. You can't put sex on your resume."
-The creator of Harvard's all-sex "literary magazine"

Wait, it doesn't count as "networking?" Ooh, that was a patented Katherine-Bad-Joke-Of-The-Week!

(On a bitter and more personal note, I'm sorry, but when my family buys me into an Ivy League school like these kids' parents' probably did, maybe I'll be able to drop my "if it can't be put on a resume, it's not worth doing" mantra.)