2018 FIFA World Cup final/tournament mini-recap; more college hockey schedules; looking ahead personally

Well, after a month full of excitement and "upset" results over in Russia, including the host nation unexpectedly reaching the quarterfinals, the World Cup has now reached its end, after becoming an all-European tournament from the semifinals forward, and Croatia unexpectedly upsetting world powers such as Argentina and England along the way to the final, while France upheld the expectations facing its side just as much abroad, among international "pundits", as at home, among the French people, to end up defeating Croatia in that game!

(P.S.: speaking of which, now that we'll be off to France (mostly) through the first half or so of September - more on that down near the bottom of this post, I honestly ended up on the French "bandwagon" by the time of the final, even though the French no longer ended up having to defeat the English team, since there was an increasingly large "coming home" campaign among way too many English fans on social media, with this whole "superiority complex" about having invented and "perfected" the sport, especially, I feel, with regards to "American" leagues, like those down in Latin America, along with, obviously, MLS here!)

...now, some more 2018-19 college hockey season schedules:

Air Force

Boston University

Canisius

Clarkson

Harvard

Niagara

Northeastern

Robert Morris

St. Cloud State

Yale

Also,​ as I believe I mentioned a few times within these past few months, I've unfortunately still got to take care of operations management, although, at least from this week's class sessions, it seems like it'll be more about the "management" and less about the "math" this time around, which I'm sure you know by now that I'm very thankful for, given that I (almost) always did better with more "creative" things than more "number-crunching" tasks; now, I'm just hoping that (A) things remain like that, more or less, and (B) that no (major) conflicts arise within these next few weeks, since I'm sure I would stand no chance of surviving the course, grade-wise, if anything along those lines ever occurred, regardless of where my grades would have ended up by then!

After that, after, obviously, me hopefully having taken care of that, it's off to Europe, specifically Madrid (via Brussels, for whatever reason...), then Paris, on to Rome, followed by Barçelona, back to Madrid, so that should, most likely, be an exciting (almost) two weeks through the first half of September, again, hopefully preceded by me having "clinched" the end of my undergraduate studies after many changes within these past few years!

(...also, I found out after Harvard's schedule got released that the Chinese national team will also travel to New Haven, CT, to face Yale within the same week in which it'll be facing Harvard, so if I make no other trips to Yale this season, I might end up making that trip!)

As for my own plans, though, I'm eyeing one of the local International Champions Cup soccer pre-season exhibition games between various European clubs around here within these next few days/weeks, although it seems the Benfica-Juventus game (1 P.M. Sat. 7/28 @ Red Bull Arena in Harrison, N.J.) is increasingly out, price-wise, compared to most of the other ICC exhibition games nationwide this summer, given fans' interest in seeing "CR7" (Cristiano Ronaldo) with his new team, Juventus, instead of seeing his old team (Real Madrid) without him in the lineup, leaving either Liverpool v. Manchester City (8 P.M. Wed. 7/25 @ MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J.) or Real Madrid v. Roma (8 P.M. Tu. 8/7 @ the same venue), along with the Giants' 2018 pre-season opener against the Cleveland Browns (7 P.M. Th. 8/9 @ MetLife)!

Looking ahead to the first half of September Euro trip again, though, here, now, is our new plan:

EWR Brussels-National (BRU) 9/2

BRU Madrid-Barajas (MAD) 9/3

Madrid: 9/3 -> 9/6

MAD Charles-de-Gaulle (CDG) 9/6

Paris: 9/6-9/9

CDG Rome-Fiumicino (FCO) 9/9

Rome: 9/9-11

FCO Barcelona-El Prat (BCN) 9/11 (totally not spooky at all, I swear...)

Barcelona: 9/11-14

somewhere near Madrid-Barajas: 9/14-15

MAD EWR 9/15