Jared's One Blog

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January 29, 2006

So Many Wings

Hmm, I really should stop missing meetings, it's really not a good plan. Back on Friday Daniel & I went to lunch at Arby's a bit before 1, and we just got to talkin and everything, and before we knew it it was 2:45. So when we walked into the TA office in Walker, the others informed me that Dr Nese had stopped by a couple times looking for me. You see, I have a TA meeting with him scheduled for 2pm every Friday about Meteo 003. And I also forgot about it two weeks prior. Not good. Very not good. So now there's a post-it note taped to my monitor on my desk in the TA office, in big red marker letters in my handwriting that says, "TA Meeting - FRIDAYS 2:00pm." If I miss another one, I think I'm a hopeless case. But at least I was doing something enjoyable while forgetting there was someplace else I needed to be... I don't know why I've had issues remembering these meetings this semester, although I also had trouble remembering them last semester occasionally, when we'd meet with Bill. But at least last semester there were other people in the office that had the same meeting, so I was easily reminded usually.

Fortunately on Friday evening I was able to forget about my forgetfulness. The Sports Cafe happened to make this past Friday another 25c wings day, so we meteo grads used our $25 gift certificate from winning trivia last week to get 100 wings. That's right, a hundred wings. For six or seven people. Mmm mmm good! Too bad it didn't quite help us to yet another first place finish this week in team trivia, though we did pull down second for $15. Not too shabby, I'd say it's a good racket we've got going on. And then after trivia a bunch of us meteo grads went out bowling, which was heaps of fun. I managed to improve every game too, getting an 88, 105 and 110. That's certainly not the best I've ever bowled, but hey, at least I didn't go backwards.

On Saturday after running a couple errands I moseyed on down to the HUB for the off-campus housing fair. I figured that even if I don't know yet who I'll be living with (if anyone), I should probably start getting an idea at least of some apartments that are available. Fortunately there were a few places that said they did have places opening up in May, even though most places have August-August leases, which aren't terribly helpful to me...

I got a bit of grading done in the afternoon, and then it was off to Shannon's apartment for a game night with a bunch of the meteo grads. We all started out playing a few rounds of Taboo (always fun), before splitting up into a couple groups, where I played Lord of the Rings with Jacob, Mario, Walter & Ben, while everyone else played Pictionary. But our first game of LOTR (which was the first time Mario, Walter & Ben had ever played it) came out pretty well, with us setting a new high score. But then the second game showed us why the fellowship only has about a 10-15% win percentage versus the game (Sauron). I'm definitely hoping we do more game nights in the future, not only are they fun but they're also relatively free, which is key.

This morning Daniel & I went to church again at SCEFC, and there was a guest speaker named Jerry Bridges giving a sermon on 1 Corinthians 13. It was an absolutely excellent sermon (not the usual superficial 1 Cor 13 message that often gets preached these days), and it definitely gave us both a lot of food for thought... As for the rest of the day, I watched a bit of the Federer-Baghdatis Australian Open final (which Federer won in four sets, after flipping the "on" switch halfway through the second set - Federer's so amazing, his level of play is on a different planet compared to everyone else), went to Walker to finish the rest of my grading and start working on cloud physics hw with Daniel, and then I went to the PSCG Sunday night Bible study at Anna's. I maybe should've tried to get a bit more cloud physics worked on at some point, but oh well, it'll all be alright.

If any of ya are interested, here's a link to a picture of Jake's crunched-up Neon from his accident a week-plus ago. He's lucky his injuries weren't worse than they are.

And another Monday (effectively) starts in mere hours. Oh joy. Oh bliss.

Posted by Jared at 11:44 PM | Comments (0)

January 25, 2006

I Heart Tennis

I guess I haven't been up to too much the last few days, other than avoiding homework most evenings. Back on Sunday I went to church in the morning with Daniel, watched Pittsburgh clinch a Super Bowl berth in the afternoon (Steelers nation out here is loving it), and co-led the PSCG Bible study discussion on John 13 with Tim in the evening. During the course of conversation, Tim & I were also surprised to find out that we both knew about tiny and little-known St Andrew's College out in Moscow, Idaho. My parents tried to get me to consider going there for a year before starting at Gustavus (but I was frightened away by the prospect of oral exams in every subject multiple times a semester in front of the entire faculty, and a reading list the size of a large bookcase...), and I guess several of Tim's friends actually went there. Small world.

Monday was a typical Monday, 'nuff said. Though in the evening I watched another new episode of "24" (once I remembered that it wasn't on at 8pm here in Eastern time zone, but rather at 9pm - I hate Eastern time, everything's on so late...). After "24" I went over to Daniel's where we watched my recently-purchased "unrated, uncut & uncalled for" edition of "Anchorman." We both love that movie, it's so funny, especially the part with the rival news teams having a gang war.

On Tuesday Daniel & I continued our weekly tradition of getting some 25c wings at the Sports Cafe for lunch, definitely the highlight of just about every Tuesday. After I got done teaching my lab in the afternoon, I went to the info session about careers in TV Meteorology that Marisa was putting on. It was pretty interesting, with a lot of good info and food for thought, as I ponder whether that's something I actually wanna do with my life. I'm looking forward to getting a chance to get on-air a bit this summer for CWS (Campus Weather Service) and C-NET, so I can see if I like doing that sort of thing. And because I was busy in the afternoon, I had Daniel tape ESPN2 while they aired the Australian Open men's quarterfinal match between Cyprus' Marco Baghdatis and Croatia's Ivan Ljubicic. Mario, being originally from Croatia and all, wanted to see it too, so in the evening we both went over to Amber's place where we all watched the last couple hours of the match that ESPN2 had chosen to air on tape delay. And what a match! For starters, both the Croats and Greeks/Cypriots had very rowdy cheering sections, and somehow both groups were seated practically next to each other, though there were plenty of security guards and cops separating the two sections. The atmosphere was pretty much like a soccer match, with the red and white-clad Croatians and the Cypriots decked out in blue and white having dueling cheers/chants/songs between basically every point, while the Australians filling the rest of the stadium just sat there quietly, amused by the entire spectacle. And then the tennis itself was exciting too, with Baghdatis taking the first two sets, Ljubicic storming back to take the third and fourth sets, before the upstart Baghdatis pulled away in the fifth set to win the match, putting him in the semifinals vs Nalbandian. Baghdatis is so fun to watch, and the incredible crowd support he gets is amazing too. I hope he gets to the final with a crack at Federer.

Today for lunch Daniel & I discovered the joy otherwise known as Pita Pit. Mmmm, souvlaki pita... I can't believe we hadn't tried that place out before. Then this evening a bunch of the guys from PSCG came over to my apartment for a movie night, and the film of choice was "Dodgeball," which several of the guys apparently hadn't seen. That movie's great too, so funny. And then while I've been typing this, I've been watching another very entertaining Aussie Open match, a women's semifinal between Justine Henin-Hardenne and Maria Sharapova, which is going the distance in the third set. I love tennis!

Oh, and with it being Australia Day (similar to Independence Day here in the US), the ESPN2 announcers had an Aussie reporter layout a typical Aussie summertime feast for the announcers to sample, including a good cold beer, some kangaroo tail soup (which I unfortunately never had), shrimp grilled on the barbie, some vegemite (which Dan McEnroe proclaimed tasted like roadkill, and they were both making awful faces after tasting it, after the Aussie woman claimed it was the Aussie equivalent to peanut butter, lol), lamingtons and some pavlova. All that just made me hungry for some fair dinkum Aussie tucker!

Posted by Jared at 11:57 PM | Comments (2)

January 22, 2006

Paper Rock Scissors

Well, we now have our first homework set of the semester. Blah. Yvette handed out an assignment in Mesoscale on Friday, and then we'll get one in Cloud Physics on Monday. The semester's definitely beginning to get into full gear now. And I think in Dynamics on Friday, a bunch of us started fully realizing just how tough that class is gonna be. I'm actually getting kinda scared about that class now, I sense that it's gonna be a challenge just to keep my head above water in there.

After classes, with it being Friday evening, several of us went to the Sports Cafe for team trivia, as is our weekly habit. After last week's disappointing 5th place finish, we decided to redouble our efforts and focus, leading to a 1st place finish for our team, "El Cafe de Deportes." Go us. Free wings next week!

Once trivia was done we all went down to The Brewery, a bar I hadn't ever been to before. It's kind of a dive, actually. The place has a couple of interesting large murals that somewhat parody Michaelangelo's art; one giant mural is of the "David" sculpture, except he's holding a bottle of Rolling Rock in one hand... and it's next to the hallway that goes to the men's room. The other is a take-off on the scene from the Sistine Chapel where God is reaching down to touch Adam's hand, except God's reaching a glass of beer down to Adam, while holding a pitcher in the other hand. Interesting parodies. There was a band playing at The Brewery too, Mr Hand. Meh, they were okay, not all that good. Maybe one of these times I'll happen to run into a decent band that's playing here in State College. The bar also held a free Paper, Rock, Scissors tournament, and got a bunch of people to sign up, and our table represented well. I won my first round against some random person, in my second round I hung on to beat Vic, but then I fell in the third round to Frame, who went on to finish in second overall. That means he gets to come back again before spring break to PRS it up for a chance to win a free trip to Las Vegas for the national Paper, Rock, Scissors tournament, with a $25,000 prize going to the winner. I was just stunned to find out that there's a national tourney for this in the first place, but congrats to Frame. He'd definitely appreciate a trip to Vegas more than I would've anyway. But we all had a grand time hanging out like usual, and it was a bit after 1am when the last of us called it a night and headed home. I love Friday nights. :-)

This morning (Saturday) P. Allen, Daniel & I went up to the Bryce Jordan Center for the men's basketball game between Penn State & Ohio State. It was the first PSU b-ball game for both Daniel & I, and we picked a pretty good one, even though the Nittany Lions lost to the Buckeyes 75-64. Penn State hung close for most of the game, so it was actually a pretty good atmosphere with a somewhat lively crowd, unlike what it usually is for Penn State basketball. I was just happy to see that they played Ohio State better than they did a couple weeks ago in Columbus, when the Buckeyes throttled Penn State 104-69, in a game that, sadly, wasn't even as close as that score might indicate. But the halftime entertainment was totally worth the $5 price of admission just by itself, this guy was playing tunes on a big electric keyboard with a bunch of balls that he was simultaneously juggling. No description of mine here is really gonna do it justice, but I'd have to say it was the coolest halftime show I've ever personally witnessed at a sporting event. Seriously, it was absolutely awesome.

I also found out from my parents today that my younger brother Jake was in a bit of a car accident. My parents got a call from the police this morning wondering where he was, because they'd found his car smashed up in Rice Lake (it'd crashed into some cement wall or barrier or somethin), with the airbags deployed and blood in the car, and bloody footprints leading away from the scene. He apparently stumbled to a friend's house and spent the rest of the night there before calling my parents to tell them of the accident. He still really doesn't remember anything about the accident, as far as I'm aware, and we don't know the cause of the accident at this point since he has no memory of it. So anyway they got him to the hospital, and they were pretty sure he had a broken sternum and a cracked vertebra along with somethin wrong with his hip, because he was in a fair bit of pain and whatnot. Fortunately all the x-rays and CAT scans came back negative, he only has deep bruises and no fractures. But he'll have to miss at least a week of work, kind of a bummer for him. The bigger bummer for him though, even bigger than his car being wrecked and his sustaining some injuries, is that he just got a letter in the mail informing him that his car insurance was being cancelled on the 19th (I'm not sure why). The accident was on the 20th. Major bummer, that's not good. Anyways, Jake, if you read this, I hope you get better soon.

Other than that excitement and going to the basketball game I've basically been taking it easy the rest of the day, finishing up my grading from the first week and watching some fantastic college basketball on TV (including Duke losing! That always brightens my day!). For the last couple hours though I watched an exciting Australian Open match between 2nd-seeded (and heavily favoured) Andy Roddick and world 54th-ranked (and previously virtually unknown) Marcos Baghdatis from Greek Cyprus. Roddick always hits the ball so hard and has absolutely smoking serves, but Baghdatis, driven on by a very rowdy cheering section (Melbourne has the largest Greek population of any city outside Greece), stunned Roddick in four sets to make it into the quarterfinals. He absolutely blew him away and completely out-powered Roddick, it was jaw-dropping to watch. Baghdatis put on quite the display, and injected some excitement into the men's side of the tournament. It'll be fun to see if he makes it to the final for a likely matchup with Roger Federer.

Catch ya'll on the flip side.

Posted by Jared at 01:56 AM | Comments (0)

January 20, 2006

Two-a-Days

Well, I'm done with the first week of teaching labs this semester. I had one on Tuesday which went well (they were actually asking lots of questions!), and then today I had two, back-to-back at 10am and noon:15. At least I have a little 15-minute break in between the two labs so I can snarf down a little lunch, but I'm still not a fan of the whole back-to-back labs thing. If we had a couch in the TA office (something we might be able to arrange now that David & Mario have moved into different offices), I so would've been up for a nap after the second lab, I was so tired. But at least the enrollment in my three sections is slightly more reasonable now. After reaching a high of 84 (!!) students the other day, now I'm back down to "only" 78. Fortunately the department hired Adam, an undergrad, to grade 20 or so of my labs (I simply gave him one of my two "small" sections), so that I only need to grade about 60 every week. Every bit helps.

Yesterday our Dynamics class was only half as long as usual, because the prof apparently didn't get the memo about the class being moved to an entirely different building, hehe. Our one chance to enforce the "five-minute rule" and we didn't even bother enforcing the twenty-five minute rule. What's wrong with us?? And then after classes last night a bunch of us went out to Mad Mex for dinner to celebrate Shannon's birthday, which was a good deal of fun. I think we also discovered just how bad we meteo grads are at singing, "Happy Birthday" was sooooo out of tune it almost brought a tear to my eye. ;-)

The heat is on at the Australian Open, which I've been enjoying watching the last few evenings on ESPN2. For the matches that have been going on tonight (American time), the temp's gotten up to 99 degrees F down under in Melbourne, with temps expected to soar to 105 or above this weekend. I don't think I'm too sad that I missed out on some of those sweltering winds coming down from the Outback to the north...

And speaking of Australia, here are a couple of fun stories I recently found in the World Wide Weird section of The Australian newspaper online, one of my favourite websites. Like the story of a talkative parrot that exposed a secret London love affair, a drunk-driving nun in Poland who bribed a cop once but blew the whistle on the crooked cop the second time, and a cow that managed to run away from a slaughterhouse in Idaho. One other bizarre story (not in The Australian though) is about how William Shatner sold a kidney stone he passed for a stunning $25,000. That's absolutely disgusting, but at least the money's going to charity, Habitat for Humanity. But seriously, how would you feel if you knew your house was paid for (at least in part) by a celebrity's kidney stone? Kinda weird, if you ask me.

But perhaps the best story of all is one about Minnesota that found its way into the news all the way Down Under. It seems that a actual, real-life vampire (and former professional wrestler) nicknamed "The Impaler" has declared his candidacy for governor of Minnesota, on the Vampyres, Witches & Pagans party ticket. I never knew such a political party even existed! But one of his main campaign promises appears to be to personally execute convicted murderers and child molesters by impaling them on a wooden pole outside the state capitol building. Interesting. A small part of me actually hopes he gets 5% in the public opinion polls just so that he can make it into the gubernatorial debates in the fall, hehe. The entertainment value alone would be immense!

Well, time to fall asleep while watching the Australian Open, and short little clips of the CBD, Flinders Street Station, and the water taxi along the Yarra River, for yet another night this week. :-) I love you Melbourne!

Posted by Jared at 01:19 AM | Comments (2)

January 16, 2006

Stab Wound & 24

The last few days have been pretty interesting and fun. Well, fun apart from when I accidentally stabbed myself. But more on that in a bit. First, back on Friday to start out the evening there was trivia at the Sports Cafe, with basically the usual crew. We weren't able to defend our three consecutive first-place finishes however; we actually came in in fifth (out of six teams playing). It just wasn't our night, oh well. I guess that means we'll be paying for our wings ourselves next Friday night, instead of what we have been doing lately, letting our previous week's winnings pay for them. Le sigh. Shortly after trivia ended several of us went down to Bar Bleu to have a couple drinks and meet up with a bunch of other meteo people, all to celebrate Mario's 30th birthday. It was a great time! But even after Mario left for the evening, several of us still stayed, a few of us even until 1. The one potential downside of the evening was that the band "Plush" was playing, as they apparently do every Friday night at Bar Bleu. When we heard them back in October, they were a very, very bad punk band. But at least this time they weren't quite so terrible (though they still weren't very good at all), and they played some non-punk songs even, which was a plus. I guess ya gotta take what you can get.

On Saturday I just kinda dinked around for awhile, watching some college basketball and eventually the Seahawks-Redskins playoff game, most of which was absolutely painful to watch, the offenses were so dreadful. Anyway, after supper Daniel was gonna come over here so we could watch the much-hyped Broncos-Patriots game, so I decided to make myself some spaghetti before he came over. I was cutting some onions and green peppers to put in the sauce, and the knife blade was starting to come loose from the handle. At that point the thought ran through my head, "I have a feeling this is going to end badly." I should've listened to myself. So I pushed the knife back into the handle and began cutting again, only to notice coming loose once more. So, a bit frustrated by this imbecilic knife that was costing me time, I grabbed it (very idiotically), basically cupping my left palm over the tip. I pushed the blade back into the handle, but my hand slipped a little, and quicker than you could say "uh-oh" I had a nice little stab wound on my left palm about an inch below my pinky, about a half inch long and kinda deep. Crap. So what do I do? Slap a band-aid on it and continue making supper, and hope that the bleeding stops eventually. So I finish eating, Daniel gets here, and after a little while I look down and notice my palm's filled with blood again. Sigh. So do I decide to go to the hospital and get my self-inflicted stab wound stitched up? No, of course not. I'm too stubborn. I wanted to stick around and watch the rest of the football game with Daniel, so I just sat there applying pressure most of the rest of the evening. But it was all good, especially since the Patriots lost. I was getting sick and tired of how much the media was constantly slurping all over the Patriots.

Sunday morning I was beginning to realize that the wound just wasn't gonna be able to close on its own, leastaways not with it being kinda reopened any time I moved any muscles on the right side of my left hand. So after I got back from church I called the 24/7 nurse advice line here at PSU, and they told me that it was too late for sutures, and that I should just keep it clean, and put some neosporin on it or whatever, which I did. At one point in the afternoon my brother Nathan showed my parents how to get on MSN Messenger, so my mom kinda freaked out when she saw my screen name of something like, "stabbing yourself isn't a good idea, i wouldn't recommend it..." I guess I'm gonna have to watch what I put in my screen name from now on. ;-) Anyway, I basically wiled away the afternoon hours watching the weekend's other two playoff games, Colts-Steelers (which was a bizarre game, especially towards the end) and Bears-Panthers, though I ducked out of that one early to head to the Bible study over at Anna's with Penn State Christian Grads. But going to the Bible study meant that I missed out on the first hour and ten minutes of the season premiere of "24," the thrilling TV series I got hooked on last year. Fortunately, however, my friend Heather, another fellow "24" fanatic back at Gustavus, kindly filled me in over instant messenger on what I missed. :-)

This afternoon I went to the doctor's office on campus just to make sure my little wound wasn't getting infected or anything, and she said that everything was a-okay, that I'd been doing a good job taking care of it. They just slapped on a couple of steri strips (butterfly bandages), and I was on my way. Keen. Hopefully now it'll be able to heal a bit faster, since I've got those steri strips on keeping it closed. Then this evening my new Korean roommate Bon Gi (who's only been in the States for two weeks now), who was making some Korean food with a couple friends, invited me to join them. It was my first taste of Korean food, and it was pretty good. I forget what the dish was called that they made, but it was pretty spicy, with rice, some noodles of some sort, a fried egg, soy sauce, sesame sauce, a hot red pepper paste and some broccoli. Then tonight I've been just parked in front of the tele, glued to another two brand new episodes of "24" (that's such an AWESOME show!!!), then the last bit of the fascinating "Lincoln" special on the History Channel, and now I'm watching Aussie tennis star Lleyton Hewitt live in a first-round match of the Australian Open from Melbourne on ESPN2. Their occasional shots of the Melbourne area during the outros and intros to and from commercials are really making me wish I was back there in Melbourne again... I love that place so much, I can't wait till I can go back again!

Posted by Jared at 11:55 PM | Comments (0)

January 12, 2006

Groveling

Not too much to report from the last couple days for me. I've taken the initiative the last couple days to go around and talk to a few faculty members, to find out if they're looking for any grad students to do research for them. In essence, I'm groveling for funding, that's pretty much what it comes down to. For most of the professors I've talked to so far, especially the ones I'd most like to work for (researching severe thunderstorms, hurricanes or something like that), they either *might* get some grant money late spring, or have no prospects at all, which is kinda depressing. But at least today I found out that at least one prof will almost surely have money and a spot for me to do research, now it's just a question if I actually want to do that or not. I've got a few more people to talk to first anyway, just so that I get as complete a picture as possible of what the prospects are here in the department. But I figured I'd put forth some effort now to do this, because it'll just get harder once I get busy, and also because Dr Clothiaux basically told me that he's gonna get out his matches in 2-3 weeks to turn up the heat on me to find a research group. Sigh. It's a tough call between trying to wait a bit longer in the hopes that a more attractive project will come along, or just taking what I can get now, but almost certainly by spring break I'll need to have made a commitment.

Last night I went out to eat with some of the guys (Ed, Matt, Rob, Shane & Craig) from Penn State Christian Grads. I figured I should make at least one Wednesday night men's group before I get terribly busy like last semester, when I could rarely make them in the second half. We wound up deciding to head down to Fat Jack's BBQ Shack, which I must say was a good choice. I'd never been there before, but they have some really good bbq. While we were there, something rather amusing happened. A youth tried to buy some beer from the adjoining bottle shop, and the guy running the shop was comparing the kid's ID to a book of ID's from each state. The shopkeeper told the young man to get outta there, that he couldn't accept his Florida ID. So while the kid was in his car trying to turn onto Atherton, the shopkeeper just calmly walked outside and took a picture of the kid's license plate with his cell phone right before the kid pealed out of the parking lot. Then we overheard him calling the cops saying, "yeah, another fake Florida ID." I'm sure that kid'll find a ticket in the mail pretty soon, because the cop came to take a statement from the shopkeeper, and was made aware of the video surveillance in the bottle shop that got a real good look at him. We were all heartened to see the shopkeeper actually call police about the fake ID, we'd figured that most people would just kick the kid out and then forget about it.

There was a bit of a bomb scare yesterday in Madison, Wisconsin. That wouldn't be all that noteworthy to me, except that my friend Allison lived right by where one of the "suspicious packages" was dropped off. Allison was quoted in this article and also apparently was on the local TV news in Madison. Fortunately none of the suspicious packages were actually bombs.

And apparently flying shrimp can be deadly. Or at least an infection resulting from a surgery needed for a neck strain suffered while trying to avoid the airborne shrimp. I'll have to watch out for that next time I'm at a Japanese habachi restaurant. But seriously, why are you ducking out of the way of a measly shrimp? It's not like it's a brick or anything that'll actually hurt you. I hope that $10 million wrongful death suit gets dismissed, it's ridiculous that the family suing, especially for that much.

And since tomorrow's Mario's 30th birthday, I figure I may as well give an early shout out to him. Happy Birthday Mario! We'll all be celebrating tomorrow night, it should be fun!

Posted by Jared at 11:47 PM | Comments (0)

January 10, 2006

Moving Party

Well, it has begun. Classes started yesterday, and the spring semester is underway. Oh goodness, this one could be a doozy, we have term papers due in all three courses this semester. I think I wanna cry already. But anyway, after Mesoscale Dynamics and Cloud Physics, Caren invited several of us along to Starbucks, and treated us to the use of a gift card she'd received over Christmas. Yes, I caved and finally ordered a coffee at Starbucks, I'd managed to avoid that my whole life until now, but I guess there's gotta be a first time for everything. :-) But the cafe mocha was actually really good, I might end up going back sometime... Anyway, since it was warm out in the low 50s, we even sat outside at the patio tables. It was definitely good to see everyone again though, and hang out for a bit. We didn't have any homework assigned yesterday, which allowed me to relax and spend the evening just writing a couple overdue emails to people, plus getting a few more photo albums up on my Photos page.

Today for lunch Daniel & I resumed our regular Tuesday tradition of heading down to the Sports Cafe for their 25-cent wings. Mmm, so tasty... I also did a bit of work in Walker on making my syllabi for my lab sections, and getting my grade spreadsheets ready, in preparation for the labs starting next week. I'm gonna be kept so busy by Meteo 003, this semester I have 79 students currently, it's insane. And they all have assignments every week they have to turn in, which means I have that many to grade every week. I thought it was tough enough last semester when I had only 50 or so students... So I talked to Bill about my predicament (usually they try to cap at 60 the number of students any individual TA has), of which he was unaware, so he's gonna try to talk Dr Shirer into having the department splurge for an undergrad "floating" grader or two to help us Meteo 003 TA's cope with our ridiculous class sizes. Here's to hoping that works, otherwise I'm gonna be driven straight out of my mind.

This afternoon several of us (me, Daniel, Amber, Mario, Amy, Levenia and Caren) all helped Kerrie move to different apartment. Helping to fill up the moving truck kinda made me glad that I can still currently fit all my belongings in my car. :-) But I was glad we could help her out and all that, and fortunately unloading everything went far faster than loading it, but that's always the case. We even got a little help from a random guy (who I think called himself DayDay or somethin like that) who lives in Kerrie's new building, he just happened to be outside when we all pulled up, and graciously volunteered to pitch in. He was actually pretty amusing, constantly calling both Daniel & I by the name "D" the whole time, though Kerrie was made a bit nervous of his calls of "just push it in" and stuff like that when we were trying to get her couch and other large furniture up the small staircase and into the small doorway, hehe. But we got it all in, and then just sat around in Kerrie's new apartment talking for a few hours and having a good time just hanging out, until suddenly we realized that it was 9 o'clock. Yet more evidence that time flies when you're having fun!

Well that's about all the excitement that's going on for now. Well, apart from Josh trying to sully my name in Japan. Josh-san wa baka desune!

Posted by Jared at 11:52 PM | Comments (6)

January 08, 2006

Back in Pennsylvania

Okay, I know it's been a few days since I've posted, and a fair bit's gone on, so in order to appease Josh's anger, here goes. I apologize in advance for the ridiculous length of this post.

Last Monday evening I drove down to the Twin Cities to have dinner with all my old Gustavus roommates from 202 (Josh, Zach, Ben, John & Nate) down at Granite City Brewery in Eagan, which was quite good by the way. Josh came bearing small Japanese gifts for us all, including two action figures for me. And yes Josh, they're sitting on my desk shelf currently, I'll send you a photo as proof. I haven't "lost" them, at least not yet, wink wink. In return I got Josh the book, "The Big Bento Box of Unuseless Japanese Inventions," which he seemed to get a kick out of. The Japanese are weird, plain and simple, I don't know that there's any other way to explain it.

After dinner all of us except Nate drove down to Gustavus, where Ben, John & I stayed in Zach's apartment in Arbor View on campus. The four of us hung out and played various games, including "Power Grid" and "Carcassonne," and had a fun time just hanging out. On Tuesday morning I woke up and wandered around campus visiting a few people, including Chuck, one of the profs in the physics department, and then I also stopped by and said hi to a few of the counselors in the Admission Office, where I worked for three years as a tour guide. It was good to see everyone again, though I wish I also could've connected with a few of my other friends who are still at Gustavus, but I didn't have any luck getting a hold of them, oh well. And in my wanderings around campus I also took a looksie inside the newly remodeled Old Main building, and it's soooooo nice inside. Definitely the nicest building on campus now, it's quite lavish. It was the first time I'd been back on campus since graduation, and it felt somewhat strange being there but not being a student there anymore.

Tuesday afternoon on my way back from Gustavus I dropped John off at his place in Eden Prairie, and since I was in EP anyway I decided to swing by Choice Auto Rental (where I worked this summer) to say hi to them for a few minutes and see how everything was going. All in all I made it back home just in time, literally ten minutes before the start of the Orange Bowl, between Penn State and Florida State, which I'd been looking forward to all break long. Wow, what an exciting and tense game! Both teams brought extremely fast, hard-hitting and dominating defenses into the game, and it showed as both offenses sputtered for most of the game With the score tied at 16 with less than a minute left in regulation, PSU's kicker shanked a chip-shot field goal, sending the game into overtime. At this point I was getting pretty worried, and I'd already been shaking and my heart had been racing and pounding for some time now. In the first OT, FSU's kicker missed a long FG, meaning if Penn State could manage a score of any type they'd win. But the Lions' kicker missed another FG wide left, aaaaarrgghhh!! In the second overtime both teams traded touchdowns, sending it into a third overtime session. The Seminoles' kicker attempted another field goal, but this one hit the goalpost and bounced back into play, no good!! My parents were both well asleep by this point, so I started jumping up and down in the living room, but trying to land softly and not shout for joy, for fear of waking them up. Penn State made good on their ensuing possession, as the kicker finally booted a field goal attempt through the uprights, giving the Penn State Nittany Lions a thrilling 26-23 victory over the Florida State Seminoles in a marathon 3 overtimes. I was sooooo happy!! The only downside is that I had to be quiet, since my parents were sleeping. But we're Orange Bowl champs, woohoo!!

I had lunch on Wednesday at Applebee's in Rice Lake with Brooke, it'd been something like two years since I saw her. I'm glad I was able to see her for at least a little bit, particularly since she wasn't able to come to dinner with Janelle, Abby, Martin, Sarah & I a couple days before New Year's. It was good to catch up with what she's been up to, and also to fill her in on what I knew of some of our other friends from high school and how they were doing. Before heading home to pack up my stuff, I swung by the radio station for a quick visit with some of my former co-workers there. Once my dad got back from work my parents drove me down to the Cities, meeting up with my brother Aaron part-way in Lino Lakes, where we all had a tasty pizza at Green Mill, a good restaurant I'd never been to before. By the time Aaron & I got back to his house, it was 10pm and late in the 3rd quarter of the Rose Bowl. I'd been hoping to catch a bit more of it, but at least I got to see a quarter-plus of that great Texas-USC game.

For whatever reason I didn't get very much sleep that night, not that there was a whole lot to get. I woke up at 4:30, and left with Aaron at quarter past 5, so that I could get to the airport by 6 to catch my 7am flight. Ugh. I landed in Pittsburgh at 10am, and just sat around reading all of "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" and the first 100 pgs or so of "God Emperor of Dune" before Daniel's flight arrived a bit before 5pm. The drive back to State College took awhile, partly due to missing an exit and kinda getting almost lost in downtown Pittsburgh, creeping rush hour traffic, plus drizzle, a few snowflakes and the occasional sudden wall of dense fog just for an extra dash of excitement. We also stopped for supper at a small family restaurant along the way in Delmont called Spaghetti & Steak House, which we discovered is a bit of a hidden gem, with large portions of good food for relatively cheap. And a cute cashier too. :-) It's fun taking a little time to try out new places like that. It was around 10 o'clock before we got back to State College by the time it was all said and done, but along the way my muffler started making noise, likely from a big jolt when I pulled into a gas station. Sigh. I hate bad interfaces between the road and parking lots, argh!

After relishing a chance to sleep in on Friday, I had to go to Walker for a meeting with Dr Nese about Meteo 003, which as far as I know I'm still TA'ing this spring. And the sun came out for about 10 minutes too. The only reason I mention that is that it was the first time in about three weeks that I've seen any sunshine, it's been so cloudy of late. I went on a bit of a shopping trip to restock my groceries, and I also picked up a crock pot at Target, which Nathan gave me some money for at Christmas. From there I went down to the Sports Cafe for a couple hours to resume the weekly tradition of trivia. Then to wrap up the evening I went over to Daniel's place to watch "Memento." It was the first time he'd seen it, and the sixth time I've seen it, and there were still new things I noticed. In fact, I came away from the film not totally sure what actually happened. That movie messes with your mind so much, but it's so good.

Yesterday I got my muffler fixed at Midas, though it would've been nice had it been less than $240... At least they had the parts in stock so that I could be on my way 45 minutes after I got there. The back half of my muffler pipe was rusted badly, with a clean break in one spot and another spot that was about to break, so I got the mid-pipe and back muffler totally replaced, meaning that now my entire exhaust system is practically new, since a couple years ago I needed the front muffler and a portion of the mid-pipe replaced because of a hole and a bunch of rust. After that I swung by Target to pick up some DVD's that were on sale for pretty cheap, "Hotel Rwanda," "Anchorman" and "Dune." Target's marketing team's gonna have a tough time figuring me out with those three radically different films, hehe. Then I spent the rest of the day just dinking around in my room, cleaning up stuff and watching some football, in addition to making my first meal in my new crock pot. :-)

Daniel & I went to the 10:30 service this morning at State College Evangelical Free Church, then afterwards we were trying to figure out some flights for spring break, as he's goin' back to Alabama, and I'm going to Arizona. Daniel found a couple cheap flights on Orbitz and Travelocity, but gave up in frustration after going through the whole reservation process with both sites, only to have them say at the last minute, "sorry, but those flights are full." Aggravating. But I did manage to find a pretty cheap flight from Pittsburgh to Phoenix with Delta, just $190. Not bad for it being $260 just yesterday! I'm going to Arizona to visit some relatives down there, and since my parents are also flying down there that week to see said relatives. I'm also hopin to go visit Cory down in Tucson, that'd be fun. And besides, it'll be nice to go someplace warm for spring break in the first full week of March. :-)

The Associated Press has an interesting story out about how the weather has become the modern-day boogeyman and an over-hyped staple on the news, which it is. I was reminded of that when I was home over break, and the news reporters were breathless about a potential 3-inch snowfall hitting the Twin Cities. Imagine that! Snow! In winter! In Minnesota! Perish the thought! The whole thing's getting a little out of hand, I'd say. Now, they'd have a legitimate reason for making it a top story if it were snowfalls like Japan has had this winter. Just recently, some areas of Japan have received a stunning 4 meters (13 feet) of snow, paralyzing those regions. Now that's a snowfall to get excited (or concerned) about.

Well, it's time for me to eat a bit of supper before heading out to the Sunday night Bible study with Penn State Christian Grads. And then classes start tomorrow, le sigh. Break's never long enough.

Posted by Jared at 06:07 PM | Comments (0)

January 02, 2006

Goodbye 2005

The last couple days of 2005 were good. On Friday evening, I braved the snowy roads to drive down to Osseo to hang out with a bunch of my physics major buddies from Gustavus. Cory's dad owns a bar so we all met there for a good time. It was awesome to see everyone again, and there was quite a good turnout, I'd say, about 15 or so showed up, including Cory (of course), Dave, John, Mueller, Seth, Jolene, Carl, Al, Mike, plus a few other non-physics people like Jess, Sara and Liz. I've missed hanging out with all those guys, we had so many good times in Olin, despite the fact that it was usually while we were working on physics homework. Who knows when we'll be able to get so many of us together again. I spent the night at Cory's place, and despite the best efforts of Regis, Cory's dog, I actually did get a few hours of shuteye. ;-) There's a story there, ask me sometime if you wanna hear it.

Saturday morning I drove from Cory's place down to Eden Prairie to visit John. Ben was there too, and we played a game of "Acquire" before Matt showed up, since we all like that board game and Matt hates it. At that point we played some "Pac Man Vs.," on the GameCube, a few games of "500," some "Wario Ware" on the GameCube (a game that'd be great for someone with ADHD, it was kinda annoying), and finally a couple games of "Apples to Apples" before we all headed out. It'd been awhile before I'd spent basically an entire day playing games, it was fun. Matt also mentioned at one point that he thought it might be fun to write some sort of political book with me, where we each talk about our perceptions of the other's political ideologies. I'd say that's definitely an intriguing possibility, that might be kinda fun. :-) But I got back to Cumberland around 10 or so, I didn't want to be out driving around much later than that because of how many drunks were likely to be out on the roads as well. So I just had a relaxing last couple of hours of 2005 before watching the ball drop to ring in 2006. And as always, probably the most spectacular New Year's celebration was in Sydney, they always put on an amazing fireworks display over Sydney Harbour, by the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House. Man I hope I can be there for New Year's someday... But like for some down in Texas and Oklahoma, New Year's has been a bit nervewracking for many Aussies in Victoria and New South Wales, with wildfires being fueled by temps of 45 C (112 F), low humidity and high winds. Bad combo.

Yesterday my parents and I went down to church at Searching Together in Taylors Falls, I enjoyed getting a chance to see all those people again. I spent the afternoon watching the final Vikings game of head coach Mike Tice's career, and then in the evening Nathan & Jake, although Nathan spent almost all evening over at a neighbor's place fixing their virus- and spyware-infested computer.

Today I woke up at the crack of 10:30, and have basically been lazy all day, watching a bit of the Tournament of Roses Parade in rainy Pasadena, and since noon I've been watching the Citrus Bowl (I refuse to call it by its current name, the Capital One Bowl) between Auburn and Wisconsin. Prior to this year I might've cheered for dem stinkin Badgers, but Daniel's converted me into a bit of an Auburn fan this year. And besides, he's down in Orlando at the game, so whenever the TV does crowd shots in the Auburn sections I'm scanning the screen to see if I can spot him, hehe. The game just finished though, and Wisconsin came out on top 24-10, bummer.

In a half hour or so I'll be heading down to the Twin Cities to have supper with all my old roommates from 202, including Josh, who's back from Japan for Christmas. Then the plan is to head down to Gustavus tonight and visit a few people, and then I'll be heading back tomorrow afternoon, making sure that I get back up here in time to catch the entire Orange Bowl, which is between Florida State and Penn State. I won't wanna miss a second of the Nittany Lions' BCS debut! LET'S! GO! P.S.U.!

Posted by Jared at 03:41 PM | Comments (0)