The End to the Internship Search

This is what someone with a job looks like.

It took longer than I would have liked, but finally my internship search has come to an end.

They told us on the first day of our ACT Team meeting (our career sessions led by 2nd years who interned in our specific industries the previous summer) way back in September that if we wanted an internship in Investment Management that a good chunk of us would have to sweat the process out.  A lot of 2nd years hadn't gotten their summer jobs until May or June.  Many more bowed out earlier than that to find positions in industries that had more openings.  They told us very frankly that if we didn't have the stomach to wait things out that we could save ourselves plenty of time and stress if we looked elsewhere earlier.  Even now I'm not sure what combination of dedication, stubbornness and overconfidence it was that made me to decide to stick with it from Day 1, but the warnings of my ACT coaches proved true in our class as well.  Our ACT Team of 30+ people was down to single digits by the winter quarter, and even some of those students came out of interest but were looking at other types of jobs too.  Even half of the students who had found a place on the Student Investment Fund, the most prestigious investment management activity at Anderson, had eventually decided to take internships in other financial verticals. 

So by the time mid-May had rolled around I felt that I was no closer to an internship than when I started looking in the fall.  It's not that I hadn't found opportunities or put in effort.  My resume looks pretty good on paper which helped turn my 30+ applications into 10-15 1st round interviews, a decent conversion rate compared to what I heard from peers.  There were a couple trips to Orange County, multiple 7 am interviews,  countless stock pitch revisions, a timed real estate modeling case study, and lots of close calls (I was down to the final two with both Oaktree Capital and Green Street Advisors and was pretty convinced I had those jobs), but alas nothing had turned into an offer.  As other students continued to solidify their summer plans, I was really starting to feel stressed out more than I had in recent memory and was wondering where exactly I had gone wrong.  Should I have diversified my job search a bit more earlier on?  Should I have put in more legitimate networking efforts in the fall and winter rather than assuming job openings would just materialize?  Or maybe most simply I had just misjudged my skill-set and wasn't actually cut out for this industry.

But whatever the case may be, or whatever mistakes I may have made along the way, the bottom line is that I did finally lock down an internship.  Even during the process, I drew similarities to my job search senior year at Maryland.  I was convinced I wasn't going to find a job then and thought I'd have to move back to Long Island jobless and stay at my parents' home while looking for jobs post-grad.  I ended up getting a late offer at Cambridge, which turned out to be a truly great experience for me and the rest is history.  The point being, that at that time I was very stressed and really doubted myself but looking back I can barely remember it, and it all worked out.  People who I talked to regularly over the past couple months know how down I was about the whole search, but in the grand scheme of things it'll end up being a blip on the map, and hopefully will work out just as well.

My office building this summer

Anyways, enough looking back.  The quick summary on what I will be doing in the future is that I'll be working in a research analyst role for a sub-fund of Dalton Investments, a hedge fund just a couple miles from my apartment in Los Angeles.  The fund itself is a really small long-short domestic equity fund which will have two employees this summer (me and the portfolio manager), although the company/office have several others working on other funds.  I don't know all the details quite yet, but I'll probably be starting up shortly after finals in early or mid June and working around 40 hours a week (getting home by 3:30!) throughout the summer.  Working with just one other guy and sharing an office with him will be a big change of pace from my previous experience at Cambridge, but the portfolio manager seems super knowledgeable about investing and I think it'll be a really good learning experience.  We'll see how things go, but I'm definitely glad to have finally cleared this significant hurdle of my first year of business school.

Spring Break in Ghana - Part 2

Outside the orphanage

The "work" portion of our trip was a key aspect of what made this a rewarding and great spring break overall, but much of our time was actually spent exploring the culture and sites of Ghana and also just relaxing and enjoying ourselves.  Going into all the details of the 10 day trip will take too long, but hopefully this post will give a fuller description of the cultural and recreational activities of our trip to Ghana.

The team left for Ghana at 1 pm on St. Patrick's Day, about 24 hours after our last final of the winter quarter, and arrived in Africa around noon (Ghana time) the following day. Isaac had a lot of Delta points and was able to upgrade us to seats with excellent legroom which would have made for a very pleasant flight, if it wasn't for the arctic-like temperature of the plane.  We landed in the only airport in Ghana, in the capital city of Accra.  We had a pleasant lunch at Frankie's, "the best restaurant in town," which was tasty and had air condition, but was basically a diner.  Afterwards we did a major grocery shopping trip to get food for the week since we didn't want to trust street vendors for most food, and there weren't any grocery stores closer to where we would be staying.  Accra itself seemed more developed than I was expecting, but as we drove towards the orphanage where we would be staying, the environment increasingly felt like a 3rd world country.  There seemed to be more buildings that were partially completed (but no longer being constructed) than finished, and no real businesses to speak of.  The roads were swarming with goats and street vendors selling every item under the sun (ranging from fruit, to sunglasses, to coloring books to action figures).  Traffic was a nightmare (as apparently it always is near Accra), and it took us 3-4 hours to get to the orphanage. 

I was very impressed with the size and quality of the orphanage.  It was a two story building on a 17 acre property and had a multitude of rooms.  There were enough bedrooms that each of us got our own room (except for the two girls, Kate and Daphne, who decided to stay in the same room).  There was a large dining/living room area with several ceiling fans, where we spent most of our time, eating meals, playing games, and getting our work done.  There were no children staying at the orphanage, but 3 young men, who were watching after the building, and served as our hosts and guides for the week.  Still, conditions were far from what we were used to.  Even with the fans, we were hot and sweaty throughout the stay.  There were insects (we had to sleep with mosquito nets over our beds) and the building (less than 10 years old) had lots of structural damage.  Privacy in the group bathrooms was limited in that some of the toilet and shower stalls had only thin curtains that didn't cover the entire stall, but many of them had no privacy at all.  There was no hot water for the showers (although this normally felt pretty refreshing). The electricity was spotty, and went out for around 12 hours one night (which would make the area pitch black if it wasn't for the moon) leading to an especially sweaty sleeping situation.

Overall, we actually ate very well on the trip. Our breakfasts and dinners were all put together ourselves in the orphanage. Isaac whipped together a delicious fish dinner one night which was designated as the best meal of the trip. We had one authentic Ghani dish, Fufu, which took several hours and a lot of pounding to prepare. We ate at Frankie's on our return to trip to Accra, and made two other lunch stops at restaurants during the trip. The fresh fruit was outstanding (we ate a ton of pineapple), and I stand by my claim that the mangos I ate there were the best I've ever had. 

Latenight game of cards

As far as nighttime activities go, we wasted little time in setting the precedent for the trip.  Even on the first night, we realized that since we couldn't leave the premises, we'd have to find ways to entertain ourselves.  Luckily we had several decks of cards and multiple bottles of alcohol.  It became our nightly tradition after dinner to make some cocktails and play some games.  We usually started with a large communal game that all 7 of us could play (occasionally Ben, one of the Ghanaians staying at the orphanage, would join too).  This usually involved games of Mafia, Family Business, or Kings/Queens/Pauper.  Occasionally people would start getting sleepy and when there were 4 of us we would start playing different games (Turnip, a Arab game similar to Spades, was our late-night game of choice), and after that ended a couple of us would just hang out for a bit.  Partially because I struggled to sleep in the heat, but mostly because I found these nights highly entertaining, I was always one of the last to go to bed, usually after 2 am, and as late as 4 on one occasion.  More because of the amount of time spent hanging out than because of aggressive drinking, we managed to average a bottle of whiskey a night, but luckily liquor stores were prevalent in the closest town, Kasoa.  And although these nights had very little to do with Ghana itself, they ended up being some of the more fun, laugh-filled parts of our trip, and wouldn't have happened if it weren't for the conditions we were staying in.  Sometimes you just need to get away from technology and city distractions to get grad students to enjoy the simple pleasures of a night of games with some friends (and a couple glasses of whiskey, of course).   

Some of the children at a local village

On our first full day we stopped at several small villages to visit a couple children that Suzie had worked with on previous visits to Ghana. These communities were a stark contrast to Accra, or even Kasoa. The villages were just as undeveloped as you might imagine when trying to picture a 3rd world country. The shelters are basically just one room huts and there seemed to be way more people in the towns than there seem to be room to house them all. Many villages didn't have electricity or any other amenities. But despite the conditions, the people seem happy, and were especially friendly to us. We played with some of the children in the first village for awhile, and they seemed very receptive to us taking their pictures and hanging around.

This wasn't until later in the trip, but in one community encounter that I found especially interesting, we went to the area chief's village. The chief himself had actually recently passed away, so Suzie wanted to pay respect to the family. We were greeted very warmly when entering the village, and then were ushered into the chief's house where we met his wife, brother, and other family members. The chief's family were all clothed in extravagant robes and walked with large staffs. It's really tough to explain, but it was a fascinating experience that was partially ceremonial in nature, and seemed almost otherworldly.

Our second day featured a trip to a local beach.  It took us close to 2 hours to get there (our hired driver kept getting lost), but eventually we arrived.  We had to walk through a village of gawking locals to get there, but the beach itself was fairly nice.  There were some solid waves, and a lot of area to walk around.  We played Frisbee with some local kids, and just relaxed and soaked up the lovely weather throughout the afternoon.  The walk back to our van was a little more interesting.  The tide had come in, so we needed to pay the locals to take us back on their canoe to get us back to town.  We also may or may not have walked past lots of human waste products throughout the village, which made us question how clean the water had been that we'd just spent the day swimming in.

Boti Falls

Our business plan work started on the third day, but other recreational/sightseeing activities during the week included a canopy walk over a rain forest, feeding crocodiles at a restaurant, touring an old slave fort, browsing a food market and a craft market, a trip to Boti Falls (this was an 11 hour excursion in all, and we only spent 15 minutes at the waterfalls before a monsoon-like storm came through and forced us back to the van), and a final relaxing afternoon swimming and hanging out at the nicest hotel in Accra. 

There are plenty of more details and stories that can be said about the trip, but I think I've captured my main thoughts and impressions.  I'll let the photos speak for themselves to fill in the blanks of the rest of the stories and activities.  The link below is the condensed album for the trip (I took 300 pictures, and Isaac, with his new SLR camera, took 1,500).  Enjoy:  https://picasaweb.google.com/eric.schaaf/Ghana2011#

Spring Break in Ghana - Part 1

Overlooking the land owned by the orphanage we stayed at

Going into my spring break trip to Ghana I really had no idea what to expect.  Admittedly it's an odd vacation destination for what will probably be the second-to-last true spring break trip of my life.  There was plenty of uncertainty with the plans and logistical details, possibilities of health and safety risks, and a high chance of discomfort from sweating through humid 95 degree days. But I felt like this was a unique, can't-miss opportunity to spend some time in Africa (a continent I had never previously entered) for a fair price (the organization would be funding most expenses besides airfare) while trying to do something productive.  So although it may not be as relaxing as a beach trip to Costa Rica, or as cultural as the Anderson-wide trip to China, I knew 9 days in Ghana would be instantly memorable.  And with a solid group of classmates already signed up, I knew we'd make the most of it and have a good time.  This all proved to be true and then some.

(Sidenote: The only other alternative trip I had seriously been considering was the annual Anderson trip to Japan, which I'm obviously glad I didn't choose since it ended up being canceled following the tragic natural disasters a week before spring break).

Exploring the land

So the premise behind the trip was that my classmate Isaac's mom (Suzie) had founded orphanages in many 3rd world countries.  They had all been successful except for the one in Ghana, which was facing staffing issues, funding shortfalls, and many additional operational problems.  The main issue that Suzie wanted us to tackle was to decide if there was a way that the orphanage could generate income on its own, to supplement the sporadic funding from the organization's donors.  The orphanage was on 17 acres of land, and since Ghana is largely an agricultural country, the obvious choice seemed to be to convert some of this land into a farm.

To gather our research while in Ghana, we spoke with a number of local consumers, interviewed the manager of a large pineapple planter and exporter, visited food markets, and explored the property.  Over the course of several days we collected a plethora of data and information on every aspect of the processes and risks involved in farming, and became mini-experts in the surprisingly complex world of pineapple farming in undeveloped countries.  We then used all this data to put together some really groovy looking financial models, cash flow projections, and sensitivity analysis in Excel to determine if this was a feasible plan and if it could actually be profitable.  Finally we presented our full short and long term business plan for this endeavor to Suzie.  Having met a lot of the natives and gotten to know some locals pretty well, we even made staffing recommendations.  Suzie loved what we put together, and asked if we would be willing to put together a full Power Point presentation and accompanying report, fly out to Denver and meet with her biggest donors to make a pitch to them asking for the start-up capital to get this project off the ground.

Team Ghana hard at work

All in all, it felt really good seeing how much quality work we got done in such a short time, how much Suzie appreciated our efforts, and how, if everything works according to plan, this could make a difference for the future of the orphanage.  I've said it plenty of times before, but I'm continuously impressed with the quality level of students at Anderson, and this was certainly a prime example of that. It was a team effort, but in such a unique situation with cultural and language barriers, the way certain members of the team seemed to naturally know who to talk to, what to ask, the proper way to analyze and synthesize the information, and then put it all together into a coherent and convicing presentation was very impressive.

In a weird way (probably because we're business students), we enjoyed putting all that stuff together and was getting caught up in the experience.  But don't worry, this spring break trip wasn't all work.  I'll leave the details of our other activities during our 10 day trip for the next post.

Winter Quarter Recap

Anderson crowd getting ready to watch some turtles race

Another quarter just about in the books.  We had our final class yesterday, and three finals coming up next week before spring break starts.  My workload wasn't as bad as it could have been since I didn't take any electives and only had three main classes (Corporate Finance, Operations, and Marketing 2).  We also had the continuation of the Communications class and Career Center class, but those each only met a few times during the quarter.  My professors were a night and day improvement over last quarter, so that was encouraging.

One of the reasons I didn't take an elective this quarter was because I wanted to focus on recruiting.  It was definitely a busy few months in that regard, but unfortunately no luck yet.  I believe my final stats are around 10-15 applications, 7 first round interviews, 1 second round interview, and no offers thus far.  I haven't heard back yet from the 2nd round interview, my interview yesterday, or a few of the applications I sent in, so there are still some possibilities before I come back for the spring.  A lot of the students recruiting for investment management haven't found an internship yet, and historically more people lock down an IM internship in the spring quarter than the winter, so its not panic mode yet.

And here's an action shot of the race.  Fear The Turtle!

One theme of the quarter seemed to be some more group Section A events.  Our section kinda got the rep during the fall quarter of being the more anti-social, dorky section, which is a pretty fair assessment.  Our class consistently has the highest grades in each class and it's become a common trend for our professors to comment "this is honestly the best overall work I've seen in my time teaching here" after any random assignment or project our class completes.  This all is a bit unfortunate because the curve is individual for each section rather than the entire school, so most of us would have a higher GPA if we were in a different section.  The good grades might be partially correlated to the anti-social rep too as it seems our class attends relatively less Anderson-wide social events, and nights out at the bars. So some people in the class have been making more of an effort to get the rest of our classmates out more often.  We still seem to avoid the larger Anderson events, but there have been a lot more Section A social outings this quarter including a number of group meals featuring food from someone's cultural background (we've done dim dun, southern Indian, and Korean BBQ), a karaoke night, Super Bowl party, a wine bar birthday outing, and a turtle race (Yes, we went to a bar to watch turtles race.  It was even worse than it sounds).  Some other smaller group events included a comedy show in Hollywood, poker nights, the UCLA games, an Anderson dance show and after-party, and plenty of Anderson Afternoons.

Riding a coaster at Six Flags with one of my learning teammates

My learning team for the quarter turned out to be a pretty good, fun group.  It couldn't match the team I had in the fall, but we all got along well, did a good job with our assignments and it was definitely an entertaining bunch. The highlight was our quarter-long marketing project, where we had to pick a company and devise a marketing plan.  We chose Six Flags, and to gather some "market research" we went to the park one Saturday afternoon.  Although we interviewed random people on lines, it was mostly a fun day of roller coastering, and definitely one of the highlights of the quarter.

Finally, the housing situation has been much improved since winter break.  My former gun-toting, video game obsessed roommate moved out in December after getting married, and the housing department didn't find a replacement, so I've been paying the same rent but have had the whole two bedroom townhouse to myself.  Definitely been able to get a lot more work done in the apartment the past couple months, and as an added bonus there was a lot of frozen chicken left in the freezer, so I've had plenty of free dinners.

So that's the winter quarter summary.  There's still five busy days ahead of me until I'm completely done.  I still need to finish a bunch of stock write-ups for SIF and study for three finals, but after that it's post-finals section party and then immediately off to Ghana for spring break.  I'll be getting back from my trip the day before the spring quarter starts, so it'll be right back into the grind again.

UCLA Bruins Basketball

Pre-game of UCLA-Arizona game, when the Bruins moved into 1st place.

I realize I've only made one post this entire quarter so far, so there probably is a bunch of business school-related stuff I can write about, but I rather focus this entry outside of Anderson, and talk about my first experiences with UCLA basketball.  

Back before classes began in September I bought the Den Pass for $100 which allows students to go to every UCLA football and basketball game for the rest of the season.  I'm a huge sports fan and it pays for itself over box office prices after only a couple uses, so it seemed like a no-brainer.  Unfortunately the combination of the inconvenience of getting to Pasadena to watch a mediocre to terrible football team and the packed weekly schedule I had during basketball season limited my attendance at sporting events the past few months.  In fact, as of last week I had only used the pass once (to attend part of a football game where UCLA lost 35-0 during orientation).  However, as UCLA has been one of the premeir basketball programs historically, and with Pauley Pavilion closed for renovations all of next year, I decided to take in the last two home basketball games of the season this weekend. 

So my impressions of Pauley Pavilion is that although it may be a historic venue (legendary coach John Wooden's teams went 149-2 in this building, and won 8 national championships in the first 10 years Pauley was open) that it is well overdue for a renovation.  My exposure to college basketball stadiums might be a little skewed since the only games I've been to have been at Cole Field House, Comcast Center and UVA's John Paul Jones Arena.  Comcast and JPJ are NBA-style arenas, and Cole was a pretty large venue itself.  So by comparison, Pauley felt really small and outdated.  There is no concourse, to use the restroom I had to go outside and use portapotties, and the concessions and electronic displays are all pretty limited.  But at the same time, it's hard to escape the historical aspect of the arena.  The team has been so successful over time that they only hang banners for national championships (11 in total), the court is named after Wooden, and in the games I went to there were a lot of ceremonies honoring teams of the past and the arena's history.  There has been some external construction going on for the past year or two, but next year the entire arena will be closed down as they do massive remodeling before opening the new arena for the 2012 season.  Not sure if I'll still be in LA to see that, but it was pretty cool being a part of the last game to be played at the current Pauley Pavilion. 

UCLA-Arizona State. 15 mins before tip, stadium a little empty.

As far as the gameday experience goes, I definitely got both sides of the spectrum in the two games I went to.  Thursday night's game was against last place Arizona State, and the crowd was pretty thin to say the least.  I showed up 20 minutes before tip-off and easily found some seats in the upper deck student section somewhat near mid-court.  All of the student sections filled up, but the rest of the arena was pretty lacking.  I've been told this is typical for LA weekday events (a combination of bad traffic and there being plenty of other things to do, both sport-related and not), but I was still surprised considering that UCLA is pretty good this year and it was 2nd to last home game of the season.  I was particularly surprised that when the scoreboard showed the final score of 1st place Arizona's loss that evening that there was no reaction from the crowd, which moved UCLA within 1 game of first place.

Saturday afternoon's game against first place Arizona was the complete opposite in terms of attendance and crowd energy.  Again, I showed up about 20 minutes before tip-off, but this time had to wait in a huge line outside, and then struggled mightily to find 3 seats together.  Eventually I was able to get some seats way in the upper deck corner.  My friends were running late, so the ushers started threatening to take my saved seats away, which I guess is understandable because students who showed up later than me had to hang out in the aisles and stairwells because there weren't enough seats to go around.  The stadium was definitely packed to the max, and the energy level was as high as any top ACC game I had been to.  Even way in the upper deck we stood up the entire game (a lot harder to do now that I'm an old man).  UCLA ended up beating Arizona pretty soundly to move into first place.  The last basket in Pauley Pavilion history ended up being scored by junior walk-on Tyler Trapani, which were the first points of his career.  What made this a special and somewhat poetic moment for UCLA though was that Trapani is the great-grandson of legendary coach John Wooden, who passed away at age 99 this past year.  It seemed like a very fitting way to close down the stadium, and although my experiences in the building were extremely limited, I'm glad I got to be there for the historic final day.

Joe and Josephine Bruin (featured at a football game)

How I got $2 million from UCLA this week

Hopefully UCLA's endowment over the next year

We were told that school gets easier after the the fall quarter, and although the course load might be slightly less intense (since I decided not to take any electives), recruiting has really come to the forefront in the early part of the quarter.  The majority of my time this month was spent on interview prep (7 interviews so far), company research, stock pitch practice, and finalizing everything for the Career Night I organized.  At the same time I tried not to completely neglect a new set of classes, professors and my new learning team while also staying involved with other campus activities.  The internship search will continue to rage on for quite some time, I still have some catch-up to do in classes, but the major accomplishment of the month was landing a spot with the Student Investment Fund (SIF). 

The Student Investment Fund is a portion of the UCLA Foundation (the endowment for the entire university) that is entirely run by Anderson students each year (the students make all investment decisions for the fund) and is used to provide scholarships to 2nd year students.  It was started many years ago by an alumni donation and currently stands at around $2 million.  Joining SIF has been a goal of mine since I first applied to UCLA because it's definitely the most prestigious school-run program related to investment management.  The main benefits are: a) it gives us direct experience in investment analysis and portfolio management with a large sum of real money; b) SIF members meet with 30+ investment companies a year which gives us great networking opportunities and exposure to the industry that other students don't have; and c) anyone in the industry familiar with UCLA knows what SIF is, so it should be a huge differentiator when applying for full-time jobs next year.

The application process itself was pretty intense.  The initial meeting back in November had about 80+ students in attendance, but I think the time commitment scared off a lot of people who weren't completely gung-ho about asset management and were more looking for a resume boost.  Those that applied were assigned two stocks and had to write a two page report for each with our investment thesis, valuations, risk summary, supporting data and recommendations.  For the second round, we had to submit our resume and answer some essay questions.  Those that made it to the third round had to prepare a stock pitch (it couldn't be a stock we were already assigned) and present it to the 2nd years SIF members in an interview setting.  The toughest part was all follow-up questions they asked to challenge our true knowledge of the stock and our analysis.  The fourth and final round was an interview with members of faculty, the head of the Career Center, and a member of the Board of Directors of the UCLA Foundation.  During this interview, amongst other questions, we had to provide our economic outlook for the next year and provide a recommended asset allocation for the endowment. 

From now through the end of April we help out with the market research and need to collectively prepare stock recommendations.  Starting in May, the transition from the current 2nd years to us is completed and we become the full-time portfolio managers.  There are required meetings with faculty/board members starting in the spring quarter and going every week until I graduate next year, but most of the actual work will be done in student-run meetings outside of that time.  It's going to be a lot of work, but I'm definitely pumped about the opportunity.

Winter Break!

The weather was a little different in NY than what I had been used to in LA

I was going to write a nice detailed summary of my winter break, but I've kinda run out of time.  I'm flying back to LA tomorrow, and I know things are going to be really, really hectic over the next few weeks with the start of the winter quarter, final preparations for the Career Night I'm organizing, and with (hopefully) the peak of my internship recruiting cycle.

Christmas in the Schaaf household

The shorter summary is that I had a great time in my three weeks back on the east coast (after re-adjusting to the colder weather, of course).  My first week was in DC and was jam-packed with activities every afternoon and evening to make sure I could see everyone I wanted to in a short period of time.  Dan then drove me up to NY and stayed at our house for a few days before I headed to PA for two days to celebrate the holidays with the extended family.  We returned to Long Island just in time for Christmas and a major Long Island blizzard.  That last week in NY was more low key, but was still filled with lots of quality family time and activities with the remaining Long Island crew.

A rough chronological run-down of the winter break activities:

LA
- Post-finals rooftop party with my section
- Santa Monica beach
- Hike of Solstice Canyon in Malibu


DC

At the Beer Exchange

- Lunch w/ Sean and Pete in Ballston
- Return to the office to visit more of the old Cambridge crew
- Wednesday night Ballston Bar Crawl w/ Sean and Pete (Rockbottom, Front Page, Carpool, and First Down)
- Lunch w/ Kyle at Tirolo in Ballston
- DC Improv w/ Jon and Dan
- Brunch and Top Golf w/ Brad
- Drinks w/ Evan, Jeric at Dan's condo and at Carpool (featuring the dramatic return of Jeric to the land of the living and D4 crew)
- Brunch w/ Adrian in DC
- Rock climbing with Brad and his new lady friend, Sara
- 25th Annual International Christmas Beer Exchange!
- Giants game at Carpool (my 3rd trip to Carpool in 5 days, if you're scoring at home)

NY
- Jimmy's diner for lunch
- Happy hour w/ Mike Orzano in NYC
- Knicks-Thunder game w/ Dan
- Eastern PA for 2 days, highlighted by an intense, raucous Taboo game until 1 am
- Christmas!
- Blizzard and snow shoveling

Knicks game at Madison Square Garden

- Family game nights of Upwords and Apples 2 Apples
- Hot tub in the snow
- More HGTV and Food Network than I ever care to watch again
- Rockville Center bar crawl w/ BMP
- Some authentic NY pizza
- Road trip to New Jersey to see Tron in a D-Box theater
- New Years Eve at Hal's