Jared's One Blog: April 2005 Archives

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April 30, 2005

Don't Panic

Like the subject line says, I hope none of you out there were panicking just because I didn't have a post up in the last week. Not a whole lot was going on except for the last couple of days, but I'll try to recap.

Last Monday was a long day, like most Mondays are. Too much to do on too little sleep. John & I were supposed to have our Astrophysics lab report turned in, but SigmaPlot was giving us lots of grief (and Carl was having major issues with it too), so instead of using SigmaPlot to fit a curve to our data, Carl just drew one in Microsoft Word, and then he gave us a copy of it to use in ours. We were open and honest in the text of the lab report about what we did (something like, "the value we got doesn't agree with the accepted value because we drew the fit by hand in Word and pulled the value out of thin air"). Chuck actually was laughing out loud when he was reading them, and although he made us redo them for real, he got a kick out of sharing them with the General Physics class, hehe. I'm glad we can have a cool prof like Chuck that we can joke around with like that, and who understands that sometimes stuff just doesn't work for whatever reason. Monday evening was cool because of another riveting "24" episode (I love that show!!!), and then another good Men's Christian Fellowship. Matt Swenson also asked me to lead MCF this coming Monday, so I've been working a bit this week on preparing for that.

It's fun when your only class during the day is Jazz Dance at 12:30. That's what happened to me on Tuesday, hehe. It was raining and nasty out so Golf was cancelled, and there was no Senior Sem due to conferences. Nice and relaxing day. And then Proclaim in the evenings is always fun too.

Wednesday... what happened Wednesday? Oh yeah, an Astrophysics test that was so long we have to finish it this weekend. Ridiculous. But I also installed Mac OS 10.4 on my computer! It's pretty cool, with a few neat new things added from OS 10.3, like Dashboard, which is a collection of widgets you can put on your desktop, including stuff like weather forecasts (my favourite!!), a dictionary/thesaurus, the yellow pages, and a unit converter (which should come in handy on future homework :-). The downside from installing that is that when I backed up my entire system onto my external hard drive, I somehow neglected to back up my music library (20 gigs) or my applications. Major bummer. But fortunately most of the music I had was either on Borg or on CD's that I have in my room, so when I get some time I'll be able to almost fully replenish my music collection. Oh, and for St Ansgar's Chorus, we finally started rehearsing in the Chapel, getting ready for our concert that's coming up in a week, the night of May 8th at 7pm. Any of you on campus should definitely come to it! I'm excited that I'll finally get to be a part of a concert here on campus, instead of just being a spectator. :-)

Thursday I had my senior sem conference with Byron & Florence, going over what I'm gonna talk about in my big final paper coming up, and how I'm gonna arrange it and all that. I told them that I hadn't really thought much about what I was gonna talk about in it, but then I mentioned a couple ideas about what I for sure wanted to include and how, which wound up basically covering everything the paper was supposed to, at which point they said it sounded like I actually had a really good idea what I wanted to do. Hmm, I guess they have a point. :-) Did anyone out there catch President Bush's news conference on Thursday evening? I thought it was awesome, and that he was on top of his game explaining everything, and making the case for his agenda. I mean, when even Matt Engel comes around (for the most part) to Bush's side when he talks about the voluntary Social Security private accounts, he's gotta be doing pretty good. After that the rest of my roommates went to Mankato to see "Kung Fu Hustle," but I stayed behind so I could go to Prepare Ministries, which was really good. We were all discussing ways to improve outreach on the campus, through new things we could do, or building upon existing things. It was really exciting and encouraging to hear all of the ideas people are coming up with for things to do next year, and even the short time remaining this year. And afterwards Cara asked me if I would be able to give my Proclaim talk this coming Tuesday, instead of May 10th, so now since then I've been kicking it into high gear editing and tweaking my talk. And Gary also volunteered to take a look at it and offer suggestions and feedback, which was really nice of him.

On Friday our new physics t-shirts came in. The company screwed up and put the back design on the front, and the front on the back, but people voted to keep them and take the $2 discount they were offering us per shirt. It still looks fine. I also took care of getting my lease, deposit, and first month's rent mailed into Penn State (to confirm living in the on-campus grad student apartments, yay!), and I also ordered a cell phone! If you go to the top of this page, it's the phone listed at the top of the page, the Motorola V551 with Cingular. I'm excited to be getting a mobile phone finally! Zach also ordered the same phone, they should both be here sometime next week. In the afternoon I also stopped by the Student Senate's Cold Stone Ice Cream Social. Mmmm, 50 buckets of "free" ice cream for the student body... For supper I went over to Jolene and Jess's apartment with Carl & Zach for some pizza (regular and dessert, yum) and beer, before a quick stop at physics volleyball, which was followed by Johanna's oboe recital in Bjorling. It was a pretty cool recital, she was even accompanied by Joseph Robinson, the retiring principal oboist for the New York Philharmonic. He came to play in her recital because six years ago when she was diagnosed with Hodgkins Lymphoma, Johanna got to play next to Joseph in a New York Philharmonic concert through Make-A-Wish, which was pretty sweet. For an encore they played a really hilarious song that I really sounded like something Peter Shickele (PDQ Bach) could've written for two oboes, hehe. After the recital I went down to Mankato with Carl, Christian, Josh J., Cory, Erika, Joni & Mike P. to go see "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy." Man, what an awesome movie! I haven't read the books yet, but now I really want to! My favourite parts were definitely Marvin the morose and manic depressive robot, the improbability drive, and the thoughts of a free-falling sperm whale, lol.

This morning (Saturday) I worked for Admissions, for Preview Day, a big group visit day for high school juniors. I was on the Academic Life Panel, and in the second panel a really cool kid from Chaska came up to me and started asking me a bunch of questions about meteorology, because he's also interested in it. :-) And when I got back to my computer I also had a nice chat over IM with a prospie from Utah who stumbled onto my website, saw my screen name, and wanted to ask me some questions about Gustavus. So that was pretty cool, that my website was actually useful to someone! ;-) This afternoon I spent some time editing my Proclaim talk and getting a few more verses ready for my MCF talk. I'm also excited because last night I managed to find an mp3 of Dr. S.M. Lockridge's "My King" sermon on the internet!! (Just click on the link, and then click on the download button for "speech mp3.") That's gonna be the cornerstone of my talk, and I'd been planning on just reading the transcript of it, but now that I have an mp3 of it I can actually play it for people. It's so electrifying! For supper I went to Subway with Josh & Heidi, and happened to run into Tom & Su Beran there, I hadn't seen them in ages, it was good catching up with them again. And then tonight I went to the Ginny Owens concert up in Alumni Hall. Anders was the intro act, followed by Bjorn Ostrom from Bethel, before Ginny came on. Ginny Owens is a Dove Award-winning singer (the Dove Awards are essentially the Christian music version of the Grammy Awards), who happens to be blind. But she can still sing and play the keyboard pretty well, and is coming along at learning the guitar. Her music has a nice soft, easy listening feel to it, which is quite pleasant. It's so cool that we can get kinda big name artists to come to Gustavus like Ginny.

Well, tomorrow's gonna be a super-fun day. After church I get to work on Astrophysics all day. An assignment that I haven't started yet, a lab report that I haven't even started the analysis for yet, a test that I have to finish, and another couple of labs to take data/pictures for in the evening. Sigh. Maybe I won't have time to play in the frisbee game after all... So I have all that to do, in addition to continuing to hone my MCF and Proclaim talks. Uffda, it's gonna be a late night tomorrow. Meaning I should get to bed now. And tomorrow they're talkin about a possible rain-snow mix. Eww. Where has spring gone? It's been so chilly here the last two weeks... Well, hasta luego everyone!

Posted by Jared at 11:57 PM | Comments (0)

April 24, 2005

Winter Makes a Cameo

I figured I may as well throw another post up here just for the heck of it, since it's been a few days. It's been a bit chilly around here the last couple days, a powerful cold front swept through the area Thursday night, which kept highs in the 40s on Friday and Saturday, coupled with strong winds that pushed windchills down into the 20s. Brrr! Hopefully this was the last gasp of Old Man Winter until mid-late autumn at least. And it's not just giving us cold weather here in the North, the front swept all the way down into the Deep South. Zach said it was only around 50 for highs in Virginia (he was down there all week presenting a research paper at NCUR, and just got back this morning). It also brought a big snowstorm to Michigan and Ohio, causing the Twins-Tigers games in Detroit to be postponed both of the last two days. Sigh, and I was really hoping to watch the Twins game this afternoon while I was waiting for my laundry to get done...

The last half of last week was okay. Wednesday I did the entire astrophysics assignment just because I had time and I felt like getting it out of the way, so as a result I didn't really do anything else. Because we didn't have Senior Sem on Thursday afternoon, I took advantage of that time to email all my Aussie friends. I'd been falling down on the job, and hadn't made contact with them since January. And I've gotten some replies back already and chatted with a couple of them on MSN, it's been so good to hear from them again, I really miss them. Thursday night there was a physics talk by a former student of a few years back, who went on to the University of Michigan to study geophysics and climate change. It was really interesting hearing his talk, he was showing how boreholes made in the earth's crust can reveal something of the planet's climate history. That's such a new type of proxy record that not very many people in the climatology field even know about it or have incorporated it into their models, which would explain why I hadn't heard about it during my Climate Change & Variability class down at Monash. :-) And his fiancee, who also came up for the talk, we found out was directly involved with the group that I mentioned a couple posts ago, that just recently drilled the third-deepest hole ever in the earth's crust, nearly hitting the moho, the border region between the crust and the mantle. It's a small world after all... :-)

Friday evening Cory & I went over to Paul's house, where Kelly was babysitting Paul's kid's for the weekend, and we all went out to Dairy Queen, which was the restaurant of choice of the kids, hehe. Mmmm, that was my first Blizzard since before I went to Australia, it tasted so good! After that, despite the cold and the wind, Cory & I joined up with Carl, Joni, Nate & Seth to play some outdoor soccer. Most of us took a fair beating, by unintentionally blocking line drive kicks with our ankles, shins and knees. And then I had a rather embarrassing spill right in front of the goal while going one-on-one with Carl, enabling him to steal it and kick it in for the winning goal. If you want the full story, ask me and I might tell you, haha. Then a few of us went over to Cory's apartment for awhile and had a fun night till it was time for bed.

Saturday was a lazy day for me, and a much needed one. I basically sat around and watched most of the first round of the NFL Draft, getting pretty excited about how well the Vikings were drafting again this year. We just had some really bad drafts under Denny Green, but Mike Tice sure has turned that ship around, and had a few solid drafts in a row. And I had to console Mike a bit, who was really upset at how poorly the Packers appear to have drafted this year. Oh well, it's only a game. Anyway, after that I spent two or three hours starting to look through some Scripture verses to determine what I might build a talk around, since Anders told me that he found a spot to squeeze me in to speak at Proclaim, on Tuesday, May 10th. I'm really glad they managed to fit me in, I've been really hoping they'd find a place for me. What I think I'm gonna try to talk about is addressing the question of who God is, by looking at some of His attributes and character qualities that are mentioned in the Bible. I think I've got a really good start so far on preparing for the talk, I've got some good ideas that are starting to coalesce. Then after that it was time for fun and games the rest of the evening, first at Christian Game Night with Luke, Ben R. and a few other people, and then back here in the section, where John, Ben H. and I taught Josh, Matt & Liisa how to play hand and foot, it was pretty fun. That and John had his 22nd birthday yesterday, which made the night a bit more festive. Happy birthday John!

This morning when I got to church, right after I sat down Betsy came over and asked if I could be an quick emergency fill-in for a candle-bearer for the service, so I did that instead of just sitting out in the congregation. It feels good to be able to pitch in and help when people need it. And this afternoon I'm not up to a whole lot, just writing this and doing laundry, basically biding my time until John gets back from the Cities so that we can work on our Astrophysics lab that's due tomorrow. I suppose I could try to do a little bit of the analysis myself before he comes back...

Oh, and another thing that's been taking up a good deal of my time this week is Facebook, a new online directory (new to Gustavus anyway) for a ton of colleges around the country, that allows people to find old friends and get back in touch (and stay in touch with their current friends). I've found a couple people from high school on there (like Josh P. out at Air Force Academy), and then some people that I studied abroad with down in Australia, like Caroline, Sam, CJ, and Meghan, which has been really cool. Sorry Cory, I know I said I wouldn't blog about facebook, but hopefully you can forgive me this and will still read my blog. ;-)

It's only 5 more days until Macintosh OS 10.4 is released! Josh and I will be going up to the Apple Store at the Mall of America on Friday night to get a copy and install it on our machines. And according to the BBC, "an Apple a day keeps the doctor away." So see, I'm doing this for my health! :-D And April 25th is the 90th Anzac Day in Australia and New Zealand, a major national holiday in both countries, akin to Independence Day here in the U.S. Anzac (Australia and New Zealand Army Corps) Day marks when the Anzacs stormed the beach at Anzac Cove at Gallipoli, Turkey, in World War I at the orders of the British. But there was a mix-up by the British, either sending the Anzacs to the wrong beach or sending the artillery cover to the wrong beach, which resulted in a horrifying bloodbath and stalemate on both sides. Both Australia and New Zealand regard that fateful day as the first day of being semi-independent of the British Crown, and having their own national identities. We should never forget the sacrifices that so many people have made for us here in the free world.

Posted by Jared at 03:01 PM | Comments (0)

April 20, 2005

Tree Fire

It's been an interesting last few days around here. Back on Saturday I went up to the Guthrie Theatre in downtown Minneapolis with a bunch of other Curriculum II students (like Javen, Carl, Sara, Kirsten and many others) to see a production of Shakespeare's "As You Like It." It's actually an adaptation of the play set in the 1960s, so while it keeps all of the Shakespearian dialogue, it has an occasional modern exclamation or phrase, and outrageously tacky '60s costumes. I'm talkin' the whole shabang, leather-fringe "moccasin" jackets, shiny leisure suits, plenty of tie-dye, and even a multi-coloured smock for the stoned priest at the end. Maybe Shakespeare would roll over in his grave at the sight of this adaptation, but I loved it, it was tons of fun. The first couple of scenes were a bit confusing, but after that I finally started figuring who was who and what was going on. Shakespeare can be like that, it takes one's complete concentration while listening to it, but I think the '60s setting actually helped convey what was going on. "As You Like It" is actually one of the last productions to ever take place at the current Guthrie Theatre,

When we got back I went out to eat with Javen, Erin, Anders, Michelle and Mike down at Mexican Village in Mankato. Erin was down visiting GAC for the weekend, it was good to see her again. And I hadn't hung out very much previously with the others, it was cool getting to know them a bit better. And at least a couple of us had been planning on going to the Gustavus Jazz Lab Band concert that evening, but the wait at Mexican Village prevented us from doing that. After dinner, I went to this weekend's campus movie in Nobel, "Hotel Rwanda." Wow, what a powerful movie (and one of the best movies I've seen in the last couple years). It really brought home what civil war and genocide like that is like. And it really made me think how the West, or outside groups in general, need to do something to stop the genocide that's happening in Darfur, Sudan. You can bet that if this same exact thing was happening in Europe, that the UN, NATO, and heaps of countries would be falling all over themselves to do something to stop it, but since this is happening in Africa, nobody feels like they need or should do anything. It's really frustrating. But the UN essentially let the Rwandan genocide happen, and they're sitting on their hands again now, in a situation that's almost just like it, all the while wondering why nobody did anything in Rwanda. The UN has developed into a completely impotent and worthless organization. Anyway, after the movie was done around midnight, we (Carl, Seth, Cory, Erika, and myself) came back to my section to watch a movie of Carl's that he's been raving about, "I Heart Huckabees." Unfortunately I was too tired at that point, and it's just kinda hard to follow a movie when you're having to put all your concentration into simply keeping your eyes open (and not always succeeding). Part of it may also have had to do with that it's kinda hard for me to switch gears so rapidly, from such a powerful, emotionally-charged film such as "Hotel Rwanda," to a light-hearted philosophical comedy. So at this point I'm still neutral towards the movie, and I'll give it another chance sometime, but everyone else really liked it. Then again, the rest of my sectionmates liking a movie is not indicative of me also liking it, so we'll see.

I went to church here on campus Sunday morning (and heard another good sermon by Vicar Brian Beckstrom, I really like his sermons), and then in the early afternoon it was time for Jolene's and Jess's recital. Their roommate Liz was also supposed to be part of the recital, but she got mono earlier this spring, which set her a bit far behind. That meant that Jolene had to scramble over the last couple weeks to learn another 10-15 minutes of music, which she was kinda stressed about. But they both did awesome, Jolene on the viola and Jess on the flute, it was a fun recital. Also that afternoon was the study abroad info session for next year's study abroad students and their parents. The Int'l Ed Office had a bunch of us returnees come and give a one-sentence blurb, either advice on what to bring or do wherever they were going, what not to do, or just something that stuck with us from our study abroad experience, so that was cool to be able to do that, and hear what everyone else had to say. I'm so jealous of all those students, I remember being in their exact position one year ago, I wish I could be going abroad again. I remember how excited I was to be going, and getting all the preparations ready, it was just such a fun time. Sigh. But then it was time to really get cracking on my Astrophysics assignment, which I'd fully neglected until then. As a result I was up till 3am workin on it, argh. Astro lab also contributed a bit to that late bedtime, although the first part of lab was awesome. We got out the t-shirt cannon again and brought it down to the football field, although this time we actually were shooting potatoes out of it. The first one we launched cleared the goal posts at the other end of the football field by a couple hundred feet in height easily. We don't know exactly how far it went since we couldn't quite see where it landed, but it sure looked like it made it all the way to the baseball diamond 200+ yards away!! It was rather impressive. Then we thought it'd be cool to see what happened if we launched it against the brick exterior wall of Olin, so we fired a couple spuds from point-blank range. Man oh man, were they ever blown into tiny bits! Seriously, it looked like they vaporized when they hit the wall, they hit it with such tremendous force. It was humorous seeing thousands of tiny bits of potato littering the grass and cement around there, and seeing how far away the starchy shrapnel flew. Hehe. :-)

Monday was pretty interesting. A shade after 5:30 I was heading from Olin to the Caf to grab some supper with my roommates, when along the way I noticed the rather strong smell of smoke in the air. I figured someone was just having a barbecue somewhere and thought nothing of it, until I saw a group of five other students, who were walking back from the caf, suddenly veer off towards the east side of the Chapel. I looked over to see where they were heading, and noticed an S&S officer standing with a fire extinguisher by a large tree that had a fair bit of white smoke issuing forth from its base. That's certainly not a common occurrence on this campus, so I went over there to take a look at what was happening. And sure enough, the tree was on fire. Not fully engulfed in flames or anything, it was just a small fire on one side of the base of the tree (in the first foot or two above the ground), but it also seemed to be burning deep inside the tree, and starting to move up the trunk, as evidenced by the smoke starting to seep out of the bark about six feet above ground. Aside from that group of five or six that got there a few seconds before me, I was the first gawker on the scene at around 5:35, but by this point an increasing number of students were gathering around to see what the heck was going on. After a few more minutes the St Peter Fire Dept showed up with a couple of trucks, and the firemen doused the flames inside the tree and out with a large amount of water and foamy soap or fire retardant. By about 6:00 the fire was out, and the firemen began axing away at the burned part of the tree, to make sure that there wasn't any additional smoldering still happening inside the trunk, but in the course of doing that they realized just how rotten and hollow the tree was, so they decided it needed to be taken down within the next day, to ensure it wouldn't collapse and fall on someone or the Chapel. Everyone's sad that they were forced into having to cut the tree down, because it had a great deal of sentimental value for the college. First, it was the largest and oldest tree on campus (located by the northeast corner of Christ Chapel), and was one of the few trees to survive the F4 tornado that ripped through Gustavus and Saint Peter back on March 29, 1998. A couple profs told me that after the tornado, pieces of Nobel Hall (a few hundred feet away) and its ventilation ducts and insulation were caught high up in its branches. Nobody really knows quite how the fire started, the one sure thing that everyone can agree on is that it wasn't caused by lightning, there were no storms anywhere nearby, and only high cirrus clouds aloft. One possibility (and don't snicker) is that it spontaneously combusted, from all the heat inside the tree that was being generated by the rotting and decomposition of the trunk. But the theory that's most widely suspected is that it was arson, that someone intentionally set it on fire, possibly with a cigarette beneath the hole that already existed at the base on that side of the tree, and almost certainly some sort of accelerant was used. But it wasn't poured on the bark, because that wasn't really burning, it was more of an interior fire than anything else. So it's quite puzzling trying to suss out what actually happened. Another thing to think about when considering the arson possibility is that it was in broad daylight, shortly after 5pm on a relatively busy sidewalk (Hello Walk); in other words, somebody would had to have seen something. The whole thing's just weird. So my roommates were extremely puzzled by my absence at dinner, but when they were done at 6:15 and came outside, I saw them and told them what had happened, and I think they understood why I wasn't in the caf quite when I said I was gonna be. :-)

Monday evening after supper I went to Prof. Dick Fuller's annual Manhattan Project lecture. He's a former physics prof here at GAC, winner of the first "professor of the year" award at Gustavus back in the '70s, and founder and longtime-director of Curriculum II. His dad was a physicist who was working on the Manhattan Project in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, after getting a personal letter from J.R. Oppenheimer inviting him to join the project, so Dick Fuller has a very personal connection to the project. I've heard him give the variations on the Manhattan Project lecture at least four times now, and each time is even more interesting, he's that fascinating and engaging of a speaker. I mean, we all learn about the Manhattan Project and World War II in broad brushstrokes in our history classes or on docos on TV, but Dick goes so in depth and into such rich detail about what was happening behind the scenes that doesn't often get reported, that you can't help but be spellbound by what he's saying. He of course had to have some physics in there, but I was sitting next to Javen for the lecture, and afterwards Javen said that he was impressed how he kept the physics at a level that the non-physicist could understand, and that he was even able to understand and laugh at most of the jokes (many of them physics jokes). That's what made (and makes) Dick Fuller such an outstanding lecturer. But it makes me sad that I probably won't get to hear his lectures again, his Manhattan Project one really has been my favourite lecture that I've heard in each of the last four years at Gustavus. A bit after that it was time for Men's Christian Fellowship, followed by a limited amount of reading before I basically collapsed and fell asleep. Three nights in a row of 3am bedtimes (when my body was used to 1am bedtimes) finally caught up to me.

This morning (Tuesday) the big tree that suffered the fire yesterday evening was actually cut down, they sawed all the limbs off it before taking the trunk down in sections. It looks so bare now on that part of campus without that enormous maple tree. Golf was cancelled this morning due to rain, which allowed me a chance to get a bit more caught up in my reading for Senior Sem, which was nice. Then while we're at lunch in the caf we see on the TV a big headline that a new Pope had just been elected, Germany's Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who has taken the name Pope Benedict XVI, as I'm sure you've all heard about by now. It'll be interesting to see what kind of Pope he'll be. Anyways, not anything overly interesting happened the rest of the day I guess, other than Proclaim, which is always enjoyable.

And just in case any of you reading this might need surgery in the future, remind your surgeon beforehand not to let you catch fire while you're on the table. That's just bad form. And then check out the story of this Melbourne teenager who let his obsession with trams go just a little too far. I mean, Melbourne's trams are pretty sweet, but stealing them so you can take them on joyrides is a bit much. And what are your plans in 2034 and 2035? Just be aware that they might be interrupted by the very same asteroid that will be making a very near approach to Earth in 2029. Just thought you'd all like to be aware of that early on, so you can get it put on all your Palm Pilots well in advance. ;-)

Posted by Jared at 12:58 AM | Comments (1)

April 16, 2005

Battle of the Bands

The last half of this week has been fairly interesting. On Wednesday afternoon our astrophysics class went up on the roof of Olin for a solar spectrum lab. Because there wasn't a whole lot to do once we got it set up, we basically spent a lot of time playing hackeysack and then shooting the t-shirt cannon off the roof and onto the football field. :-) Wednesday evening was mostly consumed by me writing a paper for Senior Sem, about whether the US should take over Britain's former role as the deliverer of Western ideals, systems and norms to the rest of the world. Meh. Personally, I wouldn't mind Australia taking over that role. The world would definitely be a more relaxed and laid-back place if that happened. Although because of the tall poppy syndrome, I don't know that Australia could ever be confident about taking the leading role in much of anything, sigh.

Thursday evening I hosted a prospie from Chaska named Charlie. Admissions was really desperate for hosts on Thursday morning, so I agreed to host him. I don't know how it happens, but whenever I agree to host a prospie, they turn out to be really cool. I chatted with him for awhile about what Gustavus is like, sports, all sorts of stuff. Then once the rest of my roommates got back from whatever they were busy doing, we taught him how to play a bit of Smash Brothers (I think it was the first time I've played that since the last time we hosted a prospie, hehe). He also hadn't seen either "Kill Bill" movie before, so we had him watch the first one. It seemed like he enjoyed it enough that he'll go out and watch the second one. My roommates are befuddled as to how I can like "Kill Bill," yet hate "Sin City," but I do.

This afternoon a couple of the IFSA Australia reps were on campus talking to the Gustavus students that will be going abroad to Australia next school year, and they invited some of us returnees to stop by as well, so that we could help answer some of their questions about what to expect there, what to watch out for, etc. It's always fun talking about Australia, and seeing other students (who are in the same position I was in exactly a year ago) get so excited about their upcoming journey. After that it was time for Battle of the Bands, an event outside on Eckman Mall here on campus with a bunch of bands playing, Gustavus faculty and staff volunteering to man the dunk tank (including Warren Friesen, the orchestra conductor, pictured in his tux after getting dunked ... shortly after this I dunked him too just for fun, even though I'm not in orchestra, hehe!), and free grilled burgers and hot dogs. In short, the quintessential spring afternoon on a college campus. :-) SPS (Society of Physics Students) was also involved with Battle of the Bands, as a couple weeks ago the organizers asked us if we could make a t-shirt cannon to shoot shirts out into the crowd, so in between all the acts we got up on the stage and fired a few out there. The first few were mostly flops that barely made it to the first row, interrupted by a fluke that went way back beyond everyone into the visitors parking lot, hehe. But then we managed to figure out the range and started booming them way up in the air. It seemed like people thought it was really cool, I think mostly because they thought it was cool that we could make something like that ourselves. But there were some cool solo musicians and groups playing, including Anders Peterson & Organ Donors, which rocked hardcore. There was also a bit of physics football tonight, and then Kate Johansen stopped by, which was tons of fun. She said she needed to get out of her natural environment for a bit, being a journalist at the Minnesota State House, so she, Josh & I watched "Intolerable Cruelty." Truth be told, I don't remember a whole lot about the movie, we were talking most of the time and Josh was being very scary. Let's just leave it at that, shall we?

In some other news this week, geologists are making some serious progress with the moho mine. Recently they drilled the third-deepest hole ever, and missed hitting the Earth's mantle (which is the goal of the moho mine project) by only 1000 feet. Pretty cool if you ask me. I'd supply other links right now that I was meaning to, but I'm really tired and they're all slipping my mind right now. Sigh, such is life.

Posted by Jared at 02:03 AM | Comments (1)

April 13, 2005

P-Ball and Recitals

The past few days have been fun but busy. Last Thursday we were hitting golf balls outside again, which was nice. I still have a horrible, horrible slice (like, I mean it's really bad), but then occasionally I was able to hit it reasonably straight, so at least I know there's some hope for me yet. Thursday evening was also an interesting Prepare Ministries, as everyone who had been on the spring break missions trip to the Dominican Republic shared their experiences and the things they took away from the trip, good and bad. And afterwards John & I finally decided on what we were gonna do for our astrophysics project that's coming up -- we're gonna be looking for asteroids. That'll probably be fairly frustrating and tedious, but hopefully it'll be a cool project. And ya never know, maybe we can discover an as-yet undetected asteroid, that'd be sweet. :-)

Friday evening after class I showed up to play frisbee with the physics club, but unfortunately only six other people showed up, making it a less than satisfying frisbee game. It's been kinda disappointing how so many of the SPS events this semester have been so poorly attended, we don't know what the deal is. So after only 45 minutes of that, Carl, Cory & I all went to Paul Fraser's recital in Bjorling. It was amazing! Paul had composed all the music that was performed that night, and it was awesome! Everything from rhythm section quartets (where he played piano) to a tuba/euphonium octet (four of each, Paul on tuba), to a couple of pieces for a concert band (PWO, Paul's Wind Orchestra, which he conducted), and then finally a really fun piece featuring the piano that he'd written for the band Organ Donors that I thought was the best of the night (it was tough trying to decide which one was best, since they were all so excellent). All of Paul's music at the recital had a distinct modern jazz/jazz rock feel to it, it was really cool. And also at the recital I saw my friend Meghan LaVelle, whom I hadn't seen since last school year, so it was awesome catching up with her again and hearing about her experiences so far in nursing school. After the recital, Seth, Cory, Carl & I went over to Carl & Seth's apartment in College View to hang out and watch the last half of the Twins home opener (which they lost 5-1, blah).

Saturday was Preview Day, so I had to work from 9-2:45 for Admissions. One of the things we had to do was give a "Traditions Tour," which is a tour showing some more unconventional things and vantage points around campus (and emphasizing our personal experiences), since most of these people had already visited campus four or five times, and were just wanting to get a final look/feel for the college before making their decision on where to go. Then I also helped out with the Study Abroad session with five other returnee students, so that was fun. It's always great getting to share to people about your experiences abroad, it brings me back so many good memories of Australia and New Zealand. And then after a group full campus tour, it was time for me to get ready for P-Ball! I got all dressed up (and even tied my own tie, and on just the second try! ... that's huge for me, considering I haven't really done it before, and not at all in about a year, hehe), and I met up with Jolene, Carl & Seth in Olin, because we were going to kidnap Cory and take him along to President's Ball. We had convinced Paul (physics prof) to tell Cory that he had to come in for research at 4pm on Saturday, but instead of Paul meeting him here in Olin, we did with a bunch of dress clothes we'd stealthily taken from his closet (with the aid of Cory's roommate Greg) the night before. Once Cory saw how big of an operation it was to try to get him to go to P-Ball, he decided to come along, hehe. And just like everyone else (including myself), he had a fun night there. President's Ball, for the second year in a row, was at International Market Square in Minneapolis, a pretty cool setting for it. I rode up in Carl's van with some people, we all just went as friends which was cool. Zach, Jolene, Emma & Sara were the string quartet that was booked to play during the meal, so we got to sit with them at one of the best tables. :-) Then the Steve Wright Big Band started up with some jazz tunes, and everyone started dancing the night away, it was cool (my one complaint about the band is that they left far too much time in between songs, it absolutely killed the atmosphere each and every time). I really can't dance very well, but nobody cared about that (in fact, not many people outside of the Swing Club, which put on quite a display with a couple of numbers, could dance all that well), so I danced with lots of people. The music and dancing stopped at midnight, which is when we all headed back to GAC for the night.

Early Sunday afternoon it was time for Zach and Emma's violin recital in Bjorling. All of 202 (except John, who decided to be elsewhere) was even in attendance. It was a good recital too, they played some violin duets by Bela Bartok that were quite enjoyable, and Zach performed an entire violin concerto for the first time ever in a performance, so he was quite relieved to be done with that. Afterwards it was work work work until 1:30am doing my entire astrophysics assignment, minus the hour and a half for astro lab and the hour-plus playing an intramural frisbee game. Yep, the physics majors have formed an intramural frisbee team yet again, this one is called "The Dave Fowler Fan Club." We had nine people show up, which was pretty good, so we could at least have a couple subs for most of the game. But like every other year, every other IM frisbee team is from the Gustavus Ultimate Frisbee team, which is kinda lame in my opinion, because it's like having the varsity men's basketball team form a couple intramural basketball teams to compete against everyone else on campus. Because we were playing actual frisbee players, we lost something like 20-4 (we stopped keeping track of their score after awhile). I was involved in every score for our team, either throwing or catching, so that was cool. Our team did suffer an injury though, when Cory took on of my tosses in the face. Here's what happened. I saw Peter wide open way downfield, so I chucked it pretty low (head height), hard and straight. Well, I didn't see Cory behind a defender about 8-10 feet in front of me, so right after I released the frisbee, Cory made a hard cut across the field, right into the path of the frisbee. Fortunately it only appeared to cut his nose and not break it, but he still had to leave the game for good. When Cory called Dave and told him about his frisbee injury, Dave thought that was really cool, lol (Dave also took a frisbee in the head once).

Monday was just kinda long, I was just exhausted most of the day, and almost napped right through the general physics lab I'm supposed to TA every week, hehe. In the evening I finally watched another episode of "24," after missing the last three episodes because of physics seminars and our little East Coast road trip. My one question about this week's "24" is, if you're camping out in the desert, and big chunks of a jumbo jet (such as Air Force One) crash a couple hundred feet away from your tent, how do you either a) not hear it, or b) question whether that big explosion you heard was real? And since I haven't seen the previous three episodes, I'm not up to speed on what all has happened, but that veep (now prez) is definitely in on the terrorist attacks. No worries, Jack Bauer will probably take him out in two or three episodes. :-) Later on Monday night I went to Men's Christian Fellowship, which was interesting as usual, but afterwards I talked for quite awhile with Micah about all sorts of stuff. For awhile we were standing out in the rain, before we moved inside Confer for a bit until S&S closed the building and kicked us out, and then we continued just talking out in the rain for awhile more, it was cool. At any rate, I was really surprised when I got back to the section to see that it was 1am. I thought it was only around midnight or so, but in fact I'd been talking to him for two whole hours. I guess time flies when you're having fun. :-)

Today (Tuesday), since it was cold and still kinda crappy outside, our golf class was inside in the Lund Arena, where a mini-golf course had been set up for us. Believe it or not, this was my first-ever game of mini-golf. Seriously, I'd never played it before. But apart from knocking John's ball in the hole for an eagle with my ball on hole 1, and triple bogeying the insanely hard hole 9, I think I did fairly well with a +7. I can't wait for the next time it rains on a Tuesday or Thursday, so we can play mini-golf again! And in Senior Sem this afternoon, a bunch of the people who took Senior Sem last semester showed up for snack time, as a surprise to most everyone in the class. Carl brought some tea and scones, mmmm so good. :-) After supper Cory & Al decided to test the "high velocity produce ordinance" cannon (a spud cannon, essentially) that they'd made just for fun in the last couple weeks to shoot t-shirts. So we took this big two-meter long pvc-pipe cannon out to the football field, and twice got t-shirts to fly 50 yards, woohoo! I took a couple movies of the firings of the cannon, and I've put them on my Movies page, in addition to a bunch of movies I took in New Zealand. Anyway, we don't know what S&S would say if they saw us with the cannon, but we're planning on firing it pretty much every day from now to the end of the school year, hehe. Oh and I also found out today that I got a space in the on-campus grad student housing at Penn State for this coming school year, woohoo!

And like I've put a couple new movies on my Movies page, I've also put quite a few new photo albums on my Photos page. While I was on the road trip to the East Coast, during some of the time that I was just riding in the back seat, I was able to get a bunch of albums ready to upload, so I was able to finish the albums from the entire two weeks that my parents were down in Australia and New Zealand, plus a couple more of after they left NZ. Who knows when I'll find some chunks of time to finish the albums for the rest of my time in New Zealand, it might very well end up being this summer. Maybe then I'd also be able to throw up some albums from this spring at Gustavus. But at least now I'm caught up to almost mid-December 2004 on my photo albums. :-) I hope you enjoy them, let me know what you think.

The other day I saw this story on The Australian about some French guy who was able to calculate the 13th root of a 200-digit number in his head (no writing or typing allowed) in nine minutes. But apparently that took him awhile, because a few months ago he smashed the world record by mentally calculating the 13th root of a 100-digit number in a mere 3.62 seconds. Heck, I can hardly come up with the square root of a two- or three-digit number in 3 seconds. It boggles my mind just trying to think about how someone could calculate something like that in their head so quickly.

Posted by Jared at 12:38 AM | Comments (0)

April 07, 2005

East Coast Extravaganza

I haven't posted for a couple weeks, but for good reason. Most of that time I was on a spring break road trip with my roommates, and since the webserver was shut off (the college mandates that everything be unplugged in the res halls during spring break), I couldn't send periodic updates during the trip. That means I get to tell all of you about everything in one fell swoop, so here goes nothin. :-)

It was getting kinda difficult for everyone to concentrate in the week preceding spring break, I think we were all getting a case of cabin fever. But at least my Astrophysics test went fairly well, as did my Beginning Jazz Dance midterm. I was supposed to have a paper due in Senior Sem the last day before break too, but other people in the class successfully whinged (that's not a typo, that's Aussie for "whined") and got it pushed back to after break. So all in all it wasn't nearly as stressful a midterm week for me as it has been in the past, which was a nice change. I even wound up skipping Senior Sem on Maundy Thursday so that my roommates and I could get a bit of an earlier start on the road trip. Well, actually they were all kinda rude about it and forced me to skip, threatening to leave me behind if I actually went to class. That greatly annoyed me, since I enjoy going to that class (Senior Sem is one of my favourite classes ever), but in the end I decided to skip it to appease everyone else. I didn't think I should've been ridiculed and impugned just for actually wanting to go to class, but whatever. Blah.

At any rate I was the last one to get all my stuff packed, since I actually had lots of stuff to do that Thursday (unlike everyone else), and all five of us (myself, Zach, Josh, John & Ben) piled into John's Explorer (it had the most stuff in it that it could have while still allowing the driver to see out the rear view mirror, hehe) and headed out from Gustavus around 4. We stopped at Zach's house in La Crosse for an hour or two along the way for some supper. Zach's mom also gave Zach and I free haircuts. That's right, my hair is no longer approaching a curly mop top, sorry to disappoint so many of you out there. I was actually kinda startled/surprised when I saw just how short my hair was, but that was mostly because I hadn't seen it that short since I last cut my hair back in early-mid September in Melbourne. At times I liked the curly hair thing, but at other times it was a little out of control, oh well. Anyway, we left Zach's house around 9pm, and began our long drive to Baltimore. Josh took the first nine hours driving, and I had the last hour in Ohio and the first couple in Pennsylvania. It rained from the Wisconsin-Illinois border all the way until south-central Pennsylvania. It goes without saying that I wasn't overly successful at sleeping in the vehicle, even at night, so by the time we got to Baltimore around 4pm on Good Friday I was pretty tired, along with everyone else. We just hung out at Ben's brother Scott's house in Baltimore, and it was a pretty uneventful night apart from Ben's friend Mat having an epileptic seizure at the end of supper, which was a little scary. But he came out of it and was okay, so that's good. The downside of staying at Scott's house was that we had to sleep on hardwood floors, as only Ben brought a sleeping bag, and Scott had only one couch. None of the rest of us brought blankets or sleeping bags, because Ben had wrongly assumed (even though Scott had told him explicitly otherwise) that Scott would have stuff for us to sleep on. Oh well, it was alright, we were all so tired that we didn't care where we slept or even if we had any blankets or anything.

On Saturday the 26th all of us drove into Washington, DC, for the day. Since we didn't really want to walk miles and miles to see what we wanted to see, we hopped on something called the Tourmobile, which for $20 stops by each of the main monuments and tourist destinations in Washington every 20 minutes or so. So we got to see the Jefferson Memorial, Arlington National Cemetery (where we saw JFK's tomb, the Changing of the Guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, and the spectacular view of Washington from the hill on which Robert E Lee's former mansion sits), the Vietnam Veterans War Memorial, the Korean War Memorial, the Lincoln Memorial, the World War II Memorial, the White House (from the fence at the far end of the South Lawn), and the Smithsonian American History Museum. We would've gone up the Washington Monument, but it's still closed for renovations. It was supposed to open up April 1st, but we could tell they were gonna miss that target date, they still have a bunch of stuff to do. And the Reflecting Pool on the Mall between the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial was empty. Empty! Gah! And unfortunately, even though it was the first day of the Cherry Blossom Festival, the cherry blossoms were not yet in bloom. But what's so great about Washington is that all the sites, monuments and museums are completely free. That makes everything so easy and accessible, it's awesome.

On Easter Sunday we went back into Washington. I had been hoping to go to church either with Chantal and her family in Baltimore (but their service was too late for everyone else's liking), or the Washington National Cathedral, but that was too early for everyone's liking. Sigh. So while church on Easter didn't end up happening, we did manage to get to the Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum for a few hours, which was pretty cool too. (There are 17 or 18 different Smithsonian museums in Washington, and they're all free!) Then we also walked down to see the outside of the US Capitol building before Josh & I took John's Explorer and left for State College, PA. It started raining as soon as we got out of DC, and it rained pretty hard continuously until sometime in the wee hours on Tuesday morning, it was a lot of rain.

We got to the Sleep Inn in State College (which I'd been told to go to by the department secretary), but she hadn't made a reservation for me, so I just made one and billed PSU in the morning (apparently the secretary was unsure if I was actually coming or if I'd need a motel room, even though I specifically told her so several times in the previous three weeks, sigh). I gave my friend Jane a call, and she, Josh & I hung out at one of the local bars for awhile and chatted. It was so fun to get to see Jane again, she was one of my friends that I made in my weather class down at Monash University in Melbourne, and she's at Penn State this semester studying abroad as an exchange student, so that's pretty cool. She's been a bit homesick, so I was glad I could at least give her some reminders of home, like occasional Australian terminology that I'd use or some Aussie money that I still had in my wallet.

So here's the Penn State saga. I was supposed to be on campus at Penn State around 8:30 to start my meetings with faculty and students, but the day got off on the wrong foot when I woke up at 9:30. Curse my alarm clock not going off! So I quick called Linda (the secretary), explained the situation, that I was in State College, and that I could be ready in 10-15 minutes, so Dr Clothiaux drove down and picked me up. I had meetings every half hour all day long with students and faculty, and while it was a bit of information overload, especially towards the end, it was awesome. I thought the faculty seemed really nice and that they had a lot of really interesting research going on, and the students all seemed happy and pretty cool in general. Basically, I found out that Penn State has quite a bit of stuff going on in each of the three areas of meteorology that I'm currently most interested in, broadcast meteo, severe storms/tornado meteo, and tropical/hurricane/monsoon meteo, and all the students very highly recommended taking classes from and working for both of the severe storms profs, so that was encouraging. I also got the chance to watch the live taping of "Weather World," the daily 15-minute segment produced for Pennsylvania Public TV, which was neat to see. I met up with Jane for a little bit once I was done with my meetings again, and with one of her friends at Penn State who is also planning studying abroad at Monash next semester, and wanted to pick my brain a bit about what to expect. At any rate, I'd told Josh that I'd meet him in Panera just off-campus, and that I thought I'd be done with stuff around 4. But stuff happened, and so around 5:30 I tried giving him a call on John's cell phone to let him know that I'd be done around 6. I couldn't get ahold of him though, as John's phone was apparently out of money and thus not working. So Jane & I walked down to Panera and then the PSU Library in a vain search for him. We finally got through to him at 7, he'd gone to the Sleep Inn to look for me, so I told him to come meet me by Jane's res hall. So I was waiting out in the rain for him, when at 7:30 (after Jane had to leave to go study for midterms) I found a phone and called Josh to find out if he was lost. He said, "No, we have bigger problems than that. The keys are locked in the car. AAA is on their way." So I walked down to Panera to wait for him, and then at 8:30 when Josh hadn't come yet, I found another phone to call Josh with, and found out that the first guy hadn't been able to get into John's Explorer, and had to call a second guy who was on his way. At 9 I called him again to let him know that Panera was closing and I was gonna have to wait outside, but fortunately the second guy had arrived and was close to getting in. Josh finally picked me up at 9:15, we went to eat at an Indian restaurant to soothe our nerves, and decided that it'd just be a better and safer plan to stay in State College another night, since it was still raining hard, 10:30pm, and three and a half hours to Baltimore, where everyone else was hanging out still. So we went back to the Sleep Inn, and when we asked for a room for the night, they took pity on us and gave us a discount on our room because of the night we'd had. When we hopped on the net at the hotel, Zach was online and initially aggravated when he found out we were still in State College and not coming back to Baltimore that night (apparently he was wanting to leave for NYC on Tuesday earlier than either Josh or I had known about), but after we explained the situation everyone calmed down. It was nice getting an actual good night's sleep (instead of the hardwood floor at Scott's house) and driving to Baltimore in the daylight. And that way I could also get a chance to see a bit more of Pennsylvania, which is without a doubt the prettiest state I've ever been in. I decided that during my two stints of driving through the state on this trip. :-) And I'll be getting even more chances to drive in the state in the future, as I've officially decided to accept the offer to attend Penn State University starting next fall! It feels so good to have that decision finally made. I'd been hoping to work there this summer too, but it didn't seem like anyone had any funding available for me, it had all been used up to fund current students, which I totally understand, but now I've gotta scramble and try to find a job for the summer, probably in the Twin Cities.

We got to Baltimore late Tuesday morning, picked the other guys up, and headed out for Philadelphia, where we saw the Liberty Bell and got a tour of Independence Hall (both for free!). The East Coast is so cool with all the history and culture that's there. And it was finally a nice day in Philly, it was the first time we'd seen the sun since we'd left Minnesota. We got to our motel in New Jersey a little too late to do anything in New York City, so we just hung out at the motel for the most part.

On Wednesday the 2nd (which was another nice and sunny day) we took the bus into NYC, and bought a day-pass for the subway so that we could get around really easily and cheaply. Our first stop was the site of the World Trade Center. It'll eventually be the site of a 9/11 Memorial, but right now it's still an active construction site, so there isn't a ton to see. Then we walked down to Battery Park where we had to wait in line for about three hours just to get on the ferry to Liberty and Ellis Islands. That was a bit annoying, but oh well, that's what you get for going to the Statue of Liberty over spring break. The Statue of Liberty was my favourite place in NYC, although we elected not to wait in the long lines to walk up to the top of the pedestal (they don't allow people to climb up in the statue anymore though). The other places we went to see before heading back to the motel were the Ellis Island Immigration Museum (though I was too worn out at that point from standing and walking to appreciate it fully), Times Square, Grand Central Station, and the United Nations building (at night). We also decided it wasn't worth $13 each to go up to the top of the Empire State Building, so we nixed that too. All in all, NYC was interesting, though just way too big for my tastes. I don't think I could really handle living there. It would probably have been nice to have another day to explore some of the museums in NYC, but we had to be moving on.

On Thursday we swung by Plymouth on the way to Boston, where we saw Plymouth Rock (a little disappointing since it's not as big as any of us had thought), and got a free lunch at Jonny's parents' Thai restaurant near Plymouth. Jonny was a prospie I'd hosted last spring that I got to be friends with, and we still keep in contact, which I think is cool. It was really good food too, and it was neat to get the chance to meet his dad. Jonny was at college though, and so wasn't able to come down either that day or the next when we were hanging out in Boston, which was a bit of a bummer, but oh well. We stayed the night at Jaquette's house (Jaquette is a senior at GAC who used to live with us in 202, he lives in suburban Boston and was home for spring break), and had a bit of fun. We went to a movie theater (which was the biggest theater I've ever been in, with the possible exception of the Crown Cinemas in Melbourne) right next to Fenway Park to see a midnight showing of the film "Sin City." Too bad it was the biggest waste of $13 (including my share of the parking) that I'd had in quite some time. Everyone else liked it or loved it, but I absolutely hated it. I seriously thought it was one of the worst films I've ever seen in my life. It was just way over the top with extremely excessive and overly gruesome violence, among other things that I didn't like about it. So afterwards I got ridiculed a lot again for my taste in movies (or lack thereof, in their opinion). Thanks guys.

Friday was an absolutely glorious day, with simply perfect weather to walk around Boston. We started out by getting a tour of the USS Constitution, "Old Ironsides," the world's oldest active naval warship. Our tour guide was awesome and extremely informative about the history of the ship. Its record in naval battles is a stunning 33-0, made even more amazing when one considers the era in which it fought its battles, and quite often against the British Royal Navy, the world's most powerful navy at the time. After that we walked the rest of the Freedom Trail, which took us up to the Bunker Hill Monument (which looks like a mini Washington Monument, and we climbed up the 294 steps to the top of it for some awesome views of Boston), Copps Hill Burial Ground (with some gravestones from the 1600s), Old North Church, Paul Revere's House, King's Chapel, Granary Hill Burial Ground (home to Samuel Adams' resting place), Boston Common, the Massachusetts Statehouse, and finally Cheers, where we indulged ourselves in a really nice dinner. I mean really nice. And expensive. As in the biggest bill any of us had ever seen. Let's just say that paying for that on my credit card meant I wasn't in debt to anyone else on the trip any more, hehe. Except for Zach, who was paying for all the gas for the trip on his card. But it was so worth it, Cheers was definitely one of the highlights of our entire trip.

When we left Boston in the morning on Saturday it was raining, and didn't stop the whole day while we were driving. We got over to Niagara Falls a little before dusk, but it was just about the crappiest weather imaginable for seeing it. It was about 30 degrees with 30 mph winds and a horizontal rain/sleet/snow mix, it was incredibly unpleasant. We hopped out of the car for about two minutes to see the American Falls, hopped back in and quick drove over to the Canadian side to see Horseshoe Falls for about another three minutes before we were all too cold to take it anymore. It really kinda sucked, but at least I can say that I've seen Niagara Falls now. While we ate supper in Niagara Falls, about three inches of slush accumulated, which was really fun to drive on. I know, because I got that shift of driving, oh yay. It was snowing/sleeting/raining basically the whole way across Ontario until shortly before the Michigan border, which made for plenty of white-knuckle driving. And we've all decided Canada's lame because they haven't yet discovered the arts of either gas stations being open late, or gas stations being anywhere near freeways. So frustrating. I took a break from driving around Flint, but then near Kalamazoo the check engine light came on. We couldn't figure out what the deal was, and it came back on again right away when we started driving again, so we pulled over into a rest stop that was right there. We couldn't get the hood open to check on anything, so we just decided to give the car a cool-down break for 45 minutes and just wait there, and when we got back on the highway again it was fine, fortunately. Until Portage, Wisconsin, that is (half an hour north of Madison), when the check oil light came on. We found a mechanic who was able to help us get the stubborn hood open (the mechanic's Explorer had done the same exact thing the week before), at which point we discovered that we were a quart low on oil (i.e., we were almost empty). We put some in, and made it to Zach's house in La Crosse for lunch, and then finally back to Gustavus by 6:30pm Sunday evening. We were all very glad to be out of a vehicle at long last. And be in our own beds too. The trip was awesome, I'm really glad I did it, it was just pretty tiring. I felt like I needed another break to recover from my break!

As for interesting stuff that's happened since then?> Well, Josh's laptop hard drive died overnight on Sunday, as did Zach's laptop internal CD-ROM drive, so both of those got taken up to the Apple Store on Monday. Ben's external HD also died Sunday night, but was able to be resurrected on Monday. And yesterday Josh found out he's been accepted into the JET program, meaning he'll be teaching English to kids in Japan next year. Congrats Josh, way to go! Oh yeah, and it's felt a bit like spring around here early this week, it was in the 70s on Monday and Tuesday, it was sooooo nice. That's meant that we're finally starting to get outside for Conditioning, Tennis & Golf classes, which is infinitely better than being stuck inside, especially in the case of Conditioning. I'm so tired of running around the blue track inside I can't stand it. And then I'm the lector in chapel this week, so that's a fun and interesting new experience for me. Well, I've written more than enough, so I should say good night!