I thought for this year I'd be a little more innovative and colloquial. I have gotten stuck with the update, almost as if writing it at least once a week means I do not need to write in-between. I've also been busy, but I do enjoy writing...maybe I need more to write about, not just real estate....? But every where you turn real estate is central - I hear it when I get my hair done at Carlo's, or in the Big M, Green Planet, Tops or Kinney's, in all the shops and stores....it's not just because I'm there. Listen in movies and to conversations - sooner or later real estate emerges. Our lives focus on it - and why not? Shelter is one of the most important needs - without a place to live and call home, nothing else follows.
So - here's a different type of home for you to contemplate. Yesterday we went to the Syracuse University basketball game in the Carrier Dome. For those of you who do not follow sports, this is the year you should follow SU basketball. We will get there, to the Final Four, as long as there's no major injury or team breakdown. And one of the reasons will be because of SU's "home."
It holds more people than any other venue in which college basketball is regularly played. The record is in the low 30,000...a record that will be broken this year, I predict. They will find a way to sell more tickets to more people - even if they can't actually see the game!
Yesterday Notre Dame put up a great effort. The students were gone, there were no cheerleaders or band or dance teams. It was left to the 23,000 fans to yell and scream and encourage the team to win. Someone behind us (and we sit in the very upper section under the scoreboard) has been leading the cheers. For whatever reason he gets it going - "Let's go O-range!" and soon all over people pick up the chant. The guys next to me do the defense call "DE-FENSE!" and that resonates. We had a huge "wave" in the second half...but SU was pulling away by that time. It's a noisy home - and what it must be like for the opposing team to come in there and try to win!
But it is home, it is shelter. We have made friends around us and were thrilled to find a young couple back again this year. We don't go to all the games and somehow we had missed them. We knew she had lost her teaching job last year and we though they simply weren't back. But they are - and fun to share the game. Home.
So get out there if you can - it is truly an experience. And "Go Orange!"
