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February 27, 2006

Weekend in Walker

I'm definitely overdue for a new blog entry, so I thought I'd throw one up here. I definitely didn't accomplish a whole lot more last week, apart from finishing grading my smaller section of labs Wednesday night. Teaching back to back labs on Thursday tired me out like usual, I can't really remember what else I did the rest of the day, except for Daniel comin over in the evening to finish watching "Forty Year Old Virgin," which we'd started last Saturday night when Carl was here before we all fell asleep sometime after 4am. I was expecting it to be pretty bad and stupid, but I was pleasantly surprised overall, I thought it was pretty funny. And Steve Carrell is absolutely hilarious. After the movie it started snowing just about the biggest, fattest flakes I've ever seen (no joke!), which scared Daniel into driving home earlier than he was planning, since he didn't want to be sliding through intersections on the way back or anything. (Though at least it wasn't brown snow like Colorado had this weekend.) So I spent the rest of the evening watching the ladies' figure skating finals with my roommate Emre. It was disappointing to see everyone falling though, I was really expecting a higher level of performance in the Olympics, especially from the top skaters, but oh well.

Friday was Friday. Couple classes in the morning. Had lunch with Daniel at the Golden Wok. Remembered my TA meeting with Dr Nese for I think the fourth week in a row (go me!). Dynamics was so horrible and excruciatingly confusing and pointless in the afternoon (seriously, the worst single lecture I've had at Penn State, we all wanted to stab ourselves in the eye with a pencil) that it drove me to drink at the Sports Cafe for trivia in the evening. Okay, so I would've had those couple beers anyway. But it made them taste just that much better because they were taking my mind off Dynamics. This week we chose the team name "The Edmund Fitzgerald Swim Club" (I know, it's horrible and I apologize to anyone that's offended :-), and we came in third, which isn't bad for having absolutely no clue on the final question. After trivia Jacob, Vic, Walter and P. Allen came over to play a couple games of LOTR (though Allen elected to watch "Memento" instead). The first game was over frighteningly quick, and then on the second game we lost at the very end, KAAAHHHNNN!

On Saturday I went up to Walker around 1 o'clock to start workin on Mesoscale homework. Daniel & I were slavin away on this one problem for a few hours, before we finally figured out that a hint that Yvette had given us in class was wrong. Sigh. So by the time 7 rolled around we were both burned out a bit frustrated, and more than ready for a break, which came in the form of a play that our fellow meteo grad David was acting in over at the Forum. (No, nothing terribly funny happened on the way to the Forum, other than neither Daniel nor I had a proper coat on, since it was about 50 out when we came in to Walker, and about 15 or 20 on our walk to the theater... stupid cold fronts... though it's our own fault for not paying attention to the forecast...) Anyways, a whole group of us went up there, Kerrie, Amber, Caren, Mario, Walter, Frame, Vic, P Allen, Jacob, Daniel & I, and it was a very good break from homework. David had jokingly advertised it to us beforehand as "a vile, offensive play," but it was pretty funny and extraordinarily random (think way more random than Monty Python, and then you're getting close). I managed to get a few decent pictures during the play, despite not being able to use flash. Not like flash would've helped from that far anyway. At any rate, David played several roles, including a raging drunk, a deputy, a beggar, a gangster, a purple-caped guy named "Thunderlips" and the personification of justice. Like I said, it was a really random play. :-) Daniel & I had been planning on doing more homework after the play, but by then all motivation had been lost, so instead we joined Kerrie, Frame, Vic & P Allen down at Sports Cafe for a few hours. Good times, good times. There was especially some entertaining people-watching, let's just leave it at that. :-)

This morning Daniel & I went to church again, which was enjoyable as usual. And guess where we both spent all afternoon and the first part of the evening again? You guessed it, Walker. We were there from about 1 or 1:30 until almost 9, when we realized we were quite hungry and very unproductive, when we went to Back Yard Burgers for supper for the first time to see what it was like. Daniel was pretty excited to find a place way up north here that had sweet tea finally, so he's a big fan of it. It was my first time having sweet tea as well, and I must say it's pretty tasty. And the burgers are very good there too, so we'll definitely be back again sometime. But we actually got a fair bit accomplished today, we finished that Mesoscale problem that had given us so much grief yesterday, plus we did about two-thirds of the Cloud Physics assignment. Go us.

Who doesn't like a good stupid criminal story? This one from Britain is pretty good, where robbers used a blowtorch to help cut open an ATM, unfortunately (for them) not realizing that paper money is indeed flammable. I love it.

Less than a week to go until Spring Break, woot woot! This week's gonna be really busy, but at least we got a nice jump on it this weekend, that'll be a huge help. It'll be so nice to go someplace warm for awhile, I can't wait!

Posted by Jared at 12:30 AM | Comments (7)

February 22, 2006

Grading Sucks

I really hate grading these days. Not really much more to say about that, other than it's sucking up just about all my time. As soon as I finish one week's set of grading it's time to get started on the next. I suppose I would be more productive if I weren't also watching the Olympics (or, in last night's case, '24') while grading, but that wouldn't be as enjoyable, now would it?

25-cent wings at Sports Cafe with Daniel for Tuesday lunch, however, are good. So so good. Though some of the wings there lately are giant mutant wings. Seriously, I had one today that was practically the size of a cornish hen, it was ridiculous. They've gotta be giving those chickens some sort of growth hormone. If they're even chickens...

I found out Monday afternoon that my cousin Jonathan's actually bought his plane tickets down to Arizona, meaning I'll get to hang out with him for the first few days of spring break, yay! Not quite sure what we'll do yet or where we'll go, anyone have any ideas or suggestions (aside from the Grand Canyon of course)?

Went and saw a couple apartments with Petters today in his current building, and we'll be going to a couple more tomorrow (Wed). It'll be good to have something to compare against.

TV ratings for the Torino Olympics are down from previous Olympiads, but I bet they'd go right back up if they introduced woman vs polar bear wrestling as a new event. It'd certainly be more interesting than snowboard halfpipe at least.

It appears that there's a worm virus out there for Mac OS X machines (one of the first I've heard of that targets Macs), but you still have to basically infect your machine yourself with your own stupidity in order for it to cause harm.

And in case any more evidence was needed why it's not worth it to get so wrapped up in politics that you get angry about it, here's some.

And finally, apparently it can be deadly in Florida to run out of toilet paper. Death by hammers. Doesn't sound like a pleasant way to go.

We get back our Cloud Physics exams tomorrow morning. Dr Harrington stopped by the TA office several times today while he was grading them to say they weren't too bad overall, except for mine, he told me I got a zero, haha. I think he likes torturing us. :-) We'll believe him when we see 'em...

Posted by Jared at 12:47 AM | Comments (3)

February 19, 2006

Carl's Weekend Visit

Well, even with getting the Cloud Physics test out of the way back on Wednesday evening, the week still had plenty of stuff to get done. Mercifully my Meteo 003 labs on Thursday both ended early without too many questions, which allowed me to get started just a bit earlier on reading that journal article about CSI (not the crime show, but rather Conditional Symmetric Instability) for Mesoscale Dynamics. For all the non-meteorology nerds out there, in case you care, CSI is a stability state that the atmosphere can be in, that often leads to banded clouds/precipitation. It was at times an interesting enough paper, but it was just too long and dense, so that by the time midnight rolled around and I had to write a review of the article, I was in a somewhat punchy and un-objective mood about everything. I wonder if that came through in my review... :-)

We were all awakened at about 7:40am on Friday morning with the passage of a massive cold front. In a span of 20 minutes the temp dropped nine degrees (from 54 to 45), the wind was gusting over 50 mph (which is what actually woke up everyone) and knocking down limbs and branches off trees and everything. It was quite the impressive front, let me tell ya. So on Friday I managed to finish my Dynamics assignment before class in the afternoon, meaning that I survived my scary, stressful week, hooray! I was so glad to get all that over with before the weekend, because it meant that I had next to nothing that I actually had to get done this weekend. :-)

That was especially nice since my friend Carl came up from Baltimore for the weekend. (Carl was in my physics class at Gustavus, but is doing Teach for America this year and next, teaching high school physics and chemistry in a public school in inner-city Baltimore.) He was so happy just for the chance to get out of Baltimore finally, and it was great to show him around up here and hang out with him again. Carl got up here just in time for the start of team trivia at Sports Cafe. Unfortunately we weren't able to place, after pulling off one of our classic choke jobs after leading heading into the final question. Vic, Daniel & I were reasonably confident with the answer, but nobody else was so they wagered zero points, which ultimately doomed us to miss placing at all. Oh well, you win some, you lose some. After trivia Carl, Daniel & I decided to go watch a movie at my place, but we had to make a couple trips back to Sports Cafe, once because Daniel realized he'd forgotten his debit card there, and then after when we were at Blockbuster I realized that I didn't have my credit card either. It turns out that the server, when she gave us the receipts to sign, neglected to give either of us our cards, and we simply didn't notice. Man, that's a horrible feeling though, to realize that you left your credit card somewhere. Anyway, so it was pretty late by the time we finally started watching the movie, which probably didn't help either Daniel or I to understand what was going on in "Primer," an independent film that Carl strongly recommended. It's about a couple of engineers who accidentally build a time machine in their garage, and some of the interesting paradoxes and events that result from that. I'm sure I would've been less confused if it wasn't so late, but oh well.

After sleeping in a bit on Saturday, Carl & I headed out for a walk around downtown and campus, swinging by Bell's Greek Pizza for lunch, the Lion Shrine and finally showing him the dark, dank prison otherwise known as Walker Building, where I ultimately spend most of my time. For the rest of the afternoon we just hung out in the living room watching a couple basketball games and some Olympics while playing with photo stuff on our PowerBook laptops. But that was all just biding time until the evening, when Kerrie hosted a party for the meteo grads at her apartment. We all had a great time, I think that's safe to say. :-) Maybe the only disappointment of the evening was that Carl didn't show off the Electromagnetic Jive to everyone. Or maybe that's a blessing. Guess it depends how you look at it, hehe. After we left at 2:30 or so, Daniel, Carl & I all watched another movie at my place, making last night the latest night I've had in a loooooong time. But I had so much fun, it was awesome!

The late night last night pretty much necessitated sleeping in again this morning, so once we finally awoke from our slumbers we just kinda did nothing for awhile, just swapping photos from each other's computers that we wanted and whatnot. Carl left about 3 or so, and then I went up to Walker for a wee bit to get started on a little grading. I mean, I needed to accomplish at least *something* this weekend. :-) And then tonight I went to the Bible study with Penn State Christian Grads as usual every week. So that was pretty much my weekend. I'm actually kinda worn out, I kinda wish I had another day to recover from the weekend before classes start up again tomorrow, oh well.

Posted by Jared at 11:41 PM | Comments (12)

February 15, 2006

Not Exactly on Cloud Nine

Well, at least it's over. Earlier this evening I took the Cloud Physics exam, which I'd been studying for for the last couple days (minus interruptions for watching stuff like "24" and the Winter Olympics). Dr Harrington said the test was only intended to take an hour, but that he'd give us as much time as we wanted, up to a max of three hours. Well, guess what, I took the full three. I think I did okay on most of the problems, but there were a couple where I'm not at all sure about my answers, and one in particular that was very tricky and confusing to just about everyone, myself included. I spent over an hour on that stupid problem about what percent of molecules in liquid water have a sufficiently high energy to break their hydrogen bonds and enter the vapour state, and I still have no idea if I got anything remotely close to the right answer. Sigh. At least we were able to make a one-page "cheat sheet" to bring into the test with us, it made the test (and studying for it) a bit less stressful, and the sheet will certainly be a big help when it comes to reviewing for the final exam the first week of May.

I had big plans to do a bit of homework tonight, such as working on finishing the Dynamics hw or starting to read that 20-pg, dense journal article for Mesoscale about conditional slantwise instability that I have to write a review for (both assignments due Friday), but my brain is so fried right now I just wanna veg a bit. And then go to sleep. Oh sweet, sweet sleep.

I've been forecasting since last September or so in the NCWFC, the National Collegiate Weather Forecasting Contest, and just this week I joined a second contest, WxChallenge, which is sponsored by the University of Oklahoma. For both contests everyone forecasts for a particular city for two weeks (NWCFC is just finishing a stint for Fairbanks, AK (which has been a total crapshoot, forecasting for there is all luck and no skill for a myriad of reasons...), while WxChallenge just started the first forecast period, in Anchorage, AK), and there are certain prizes for the top forecaster(s) nationally in each category (freshmen/sophomores, juniors/seniors, grad students, faculty) for each two-week period. It takes a bit of time, especially to forecast for two cities every day, but I think it's valuable to learn where to look and what to look for and whatnot, especially since prior to coming to Penn State I had no forecasting experience. For both contests we have to forecast the high/low temps, but instead of then predicting a category of precip like in the NWCFC, the WxChallenge contest requires us to forecast precip to the nearest hundredth of an inch as well as the max wind speed, with penalties for each degree, hundredth of an inch (precip) or knot (wind speed) that we're off by. Kinda tricky, but it should be good for me to learn to forecast for all that. I may get to be a real forecaster yet someday. :-)

Posted by Jared at 11:58 PM | Comments (4)

February 13, 2006

Semi-Productivity

I've actually had a few fairly productive days recently, it's been good. Thursday didn't start out so productive, as my back-to-back Meteo 003 labs that I TA kept me so busy with constant questions that I didn't even have time to snarf down my sandwiches until after they were both done. Kinda frustrating. So after colloquium, floor managing for "Weather World" (where Marisa basically told me she's looking forward to getting me some camera time this summer for CWS, yay!) and re-doing a Cloud Physics problem that we'd all apparently done incorrectly (grr), then it was time to get working on Dynamics. Everyone else went home, but Daniel & I decided to stick it out in Walker until late in the night to work hard and get stuff done, just like old times (in other words, last semester). Even with taking a nice long break for supper down at Bell's Greek Pizza (my favourite restaurant here in State College so far, or top three for sure) and then catching "The Office" on TV back at my apartment before heading back to Walker, by the time we gave up for the night at midnight we'd gotten all but the last problem done (I hate diff eq's!). That was an awesome start on the assignment, particularly since it's not due till this coming Friday. I so needed to take at least one night out of the week just to focus on work, otherwise I'd be sunk.

Got some stuff done on Friday, but most importantly we won team trivia again. Go us. I loved the final question too: "What's the only venue to have hosted the World Series, Super Bowl and Final Four"? Answer: The HHH Metrodome, of course. Being from Minnesota/Wisconsin finally came in handy. :-) I elected not to go out with most everyone to the Skeller afterwards, and instead decided to do a bit more trivia, helping out Crazy Carl down in Baltimore with the annual 50-hour KVSC (a radio station from St Cloud, MN) Trivia Weekend contest he's competed in for several years now. I was gonna head down there for it, but with all the work that piled up and the impending nor'easter comin up the Atlantic seaboard, I just decided it wasn't a good idea to drive to Baltimore. So instead I tuned in to the station over the net and was googling away and calling in some answers for the team, "Crabs? We Got Em!" (Baltimore's known for its crabs, haha). I was only able to do it for a couple hours before I got too tired, but at least I was able to help them out some by answering a few questions. Mmmm, double dose of trivia...

Saturday morning I took a walk down to PNC Bank to try to clear up why I got three overdraft fees charged to my account. At the end of last month I'd set up a balance transfer online from my savings to checking accounts, but apparently it didn't happen, resulting in me overdrawing my account a few times. Sigh. They still couldn't find any record of it being arranged to prove that I was telling the truth, but they still refunded me the overdraft fees this time. Glad that's taken care of. One thing's for sure though, from now on I'll be checking my account status online every couple of days to make sure nothing quirky is happening, and writing down all my transaction authorization numbers and such.

After that I went into Walker to get a bit of grading done, and then Daniel & I went to the men's basketball game between Penn State and Wisconsin. It was a "white out" so the whole student section was wearing white t-shirts (not quite as impressive as at the football games, but still cool), and the fans were energized and really into it in the first half (it was like a real college basketball atmosphere!), as Penn State took a 36-34 lead into halftime. But it was all downhill from there, as the Badgers took control and cruised to an 82-62 rout. But hey, at least the first half was fun. :-) The halftime show was great yet again too, this time they had a group called "Quickchange" performing, a man and woman doing a magic/illusion routine, where they both completely change costumes multiple times in the span of about a second, it was flat-out amazing. I really don't know how they do that, but it was awesome to watch.

Following the game Daniel & I joined Petters, Steph, Shannon & her friend Rachel for dinner at someplace neither of us had ever been before, Home Delivery Pizza Pub. From the name it doesn't sound all that great, but it's actually pretty nice and pretty cheap, and not just for pizza. There are so many cool places in this town, and we keep discovering them. A bit later a bunch of us went out to Bar Bleu for the jazz night with the band Andrew Jackson. I guess he plays there every Saturday night, but it was the first time I'd made it down there to hear him. In fact, I think that was the first time I'd ever heard jazz in a bar at all, and I loved it. It's so much more relaxing and comfortable than listening to an obnoxiously loud and bad punk band while you're trying to talk to people. To finish off the night, P Allen, Daniel & I all went over to Jacob's place to watch some "Family Guy," though he couldn't find the "Family Guy" movie he'd promised us. Tsk tsk. :-)

Today was fairly productive too, after church I holed myself up in Walker and got in a zone grading Meteo 003 labs, managing to finish my last 35 in five and a half hours. I'm so glad I got those done, because now I can focus on studying for Wednesday night's Cloud Physics exam the next couple days/nights. My evening tonight consisted of going to the PSCG Bible study, and then talking to my parents on the phone for a bit while watching some of the Winter Olympics. I figure I may as well take a respite from studying for a brief little while.

Some other interesting things have transpired in the last few days. Now that Kerrie's accepted a research offer with Dr Young, I'm the last student in the department left who hasn't found summer research funding. Go me. I expect that Dr Clothiaux will start turning up the heat on me to find something now that I'm the last one. I wonder what'll get worked out... And I also found out late last week that the deadline for signing leases for next academic year here in White Course is this coming Friday (if we want to stay in our current rooms, that is). I really like how they hid it at the bottom of a random page in an electronic newsletter, without really advertising that this deadline is coming up or anything, grr. So now I'm frantically trying to decide if I want to stay in White Course or get a different place off-campus starting in either May or August. Fortunately for me, I found out that Petters, another of the meteo grads, is also looking for a place, so we're looking into possibly getting an apartment together somewhere, which'd be cool. It'd be great to get a fairly nice place off-campus but be able to split the cost with someone and save around $100/month from what I'm paying now, definitely. It'd be nice if I could have both the research and apartment stuff semi-figured out by spring break, which is suddenly only three weeks away.

Most of you have probably seen or heard about the mega snowstorm that walloped the eastern seaboard this weekend, including dumping a record 26" of snow in NYC (especially if you've been watching the Weather Channel at all, they've been absolutely breathless about it for a few days now). All last week the snow geese were honking around here and wishcasting for a big snowfall, but as the week wore on all the models started indicating that the storm was gonna slide a bit too far to our east to bring us much. So while places as close as Philadelphia got a foot of snow, we got only a measly inch. Sigh. I want a big snowstorm! But even the little bit of snow and ice made for some interesting driving on Saturday evening, particularly for the southerners in our midst who admitted they were "driving like an old grandma." ;-) Too bad the snow won't stick around too long though, it's supposed to get into the mid-upper 40s around here by mid-week. This has really been a weenie winter overall, it kinda sucks.

Posted by Jared at 01:01 AM | Comments (1)

February 08, 2006

Definitely a Hump Day

I guess there hasn't been too much going on the last couple days, just some Cloud Physics homework (almost done!) and fun distractions, like "24" and "Stargate SG-1" and some good ol' college basketball, like the Duke-UNC dandy on TV last night. Even though I hate both those teams with a passion, it was still a great, close game to watch, especially to see J.J. Redick show off his out-of-this-world shooting ability.

And speaking of college basketball, this evening I went with Ed, Ben, Craig and Byran to the Penn State vs Minnesota men's basketball game over at the Bryce Jordan Center. It was PSU's first game after their stunning 66-65 upset of #6 Illinois in Champaign, so naturally the expectations were for the Nittany Lions to beat the bottom-feeding Golden Gophers at home. And it looked like that was gonna happen when PSU jumped out to an early 10-0 lead, but from there on out Penn State looked absolutely listless, and wound up getting beaten by Minnesota 77-66. Hopefully they can do better against Wisconsin on Saturday afternoon. Apparently a white-out has been declared for the game, but I doubt it'll be as cool as the white-out of the football game vs Wisconsin last fall...

Adding to the hump day doldrums, today our workload for the upcoming week or so just got quite a bit heavier, with a Cloud Physics midterm on Wednesday night next week, and for next Friday in Mesoscale we have to read some long journal article and write a review for it. And that's in addition to what looks like a nasty Dynamics assignment due Friday, and my weekly contingent of ~60 labs to grade for Meteo 003. The next week isn't gonna be fun, and I know I've had it much worse than this, but I just like to complain sometimes. :-)

Attention fellow meteo grads: I picked up "Apples to Apples" the other day, so now there'll be yet another option at the next game night for a group game. :-)

I wish I didn't have back-to-back Meteo 003 labs to teach tomorrow, but hopefully I'll know more what I'm talking about than I did on Tuesday, when I got pretty confused by a couple questions by my students that I wasn't really prepared for. Oh well, I guess it happens to everyone, but it's still frustrating.

I don't know how credible this guy is, but some Russian astronomer is predicting that the planet will experience another mini-Ice Age in the middle of this century. We'll see if that one pans out.

And Japan was all set to change their monarchy succession laws to allow for female emperors, but that's all on hold now because the Princess is apparently pregnant. So now nobody's wanting to pass the law just in case she gives birth to a baby boy, who would then be due to become Emperor someday. Whatever they do, just pray that they don't change their laws to allow Josh to become emperor. At least if that does happen, he'd probably give everyone their own domo-kun, so maybe it wouldn't be so bad after all.

Posted by Jared at 11:57 PM | Comments (1)

February 06, 2006

Tasty Turducken

First of all, thanks to everyone who reminded me on Friday about my TA meeting at 2pm. From Nathan's email shortly after I woke up, to Kerrie, Amber, Walter & Daniel reminding me about every 5 minutes in the TA office, I did indeed remember to go to my meeting on time this week. Couldn't have done it without ya! :-P

Friday afternoon I finally got a chance to talk with Dr Stauffer about potential research. He does a lot of mesoscale modeling, and in addition to having created MM5, one of the premiere meteorology models in existence which is used by forecasters the world over, he's also one of the main forecasters for the upcoming Winter Olympics in Torino, Italy. And he's got other cool stuff going on with developing "nowcasting" tools for the military as well, so I figured he'd be a good guy to work for. I might still end up working for him, but it doesn't look like he'll have funding coming in until October... I wonder when I'll get my summer research/funding situation figured out...

Trivia on Friday evening was fun, although the new owners of the Sports Cafe pushed it back to 8pm, which is a bit late in our opinion (it was at 6pm last semester, and 7pm last month, both of which were much better times). After a few mediocre team names the last few weeks, we had a pretty good one this time: "Wilford Brimley Has Diabetes." Not quite sure where that one came from, but it got a lot of laughs from everyone else in the bar when the standings were being read aloud at halftime. (Last week's best team name at Sports Cafe was "The Steelers Ride the Short Bus," absolutely hilarious!) Too bad it didn't help us bring home the top prize though, but again, second ain't too bad.

Saturday afternoon I went into Walker to work on some grading for awhile, and at least I wasn't the only one calling Walker home on a Saturday, Daniel & Caren both were up there too for at least part of the afternoon. Oh, and I got a couple humorous (or sad, depending on your point of view) answers on some of the Meteo 003 labs I was grading. For instance, did you know that Minneapolis's winters are cold because it's way up in the mountains? (More than one person wrote that, that midwestern states like MN, IA, IL & NE were in the Rockies.) Or that the southern hemisphere (SH) has cooler summers than those in the northern hemisphere (NH) because "the cold air falls from the NH to the SH"? Or that Maine stays warm in winter (ignore for now that Maine's in reality of course very cold in the winter) because of "subtropical winds"? I don't know whether to cry or laugh sometimes.

Saturday evening I had a few people (Daniel, David, Amber, Mario, Kerrie & Caren) over to my apartment to watch the classic movie "Groundhog Day." Considering that it was just Groundhog Day back on Thursday, and because David, Amber, Kerrie & Caren all actually went to Punxsutawney on the 2nd to see the world's most famous groundhog/weatherman, we all thought we needed to catch the movie again. Man I love that movie! We all just hung out for awhile longer afterward, mostly being amused by a couple History Channel specials on giants and circus sideshows/freakshows, before a few amusing Steve Martin skits on SNL. Gotta love the random amusement cable provides.

Daniel & I went to church again this morning, though neither of us were amongst the many who were wearing black & gold in a not-so-subtle show of support for the Pittsburgh Steelers; even Pastor Tober was wearing black & gold. :-) I managed to get a bit more grading done this afternoon before heading over to Shannon & Steph's place for the big game. It was a big meteo grads party with more than 20 of us over there to partake in the Super Bowl XL festivities. But as good as a traditional Wisconsin Super Bowl party is with Packer brats, cheese, sausage & beer, it's hard to top a good old-fashioned turducken and beer. That's right, we all chipped in to have a real genuine turducken shipped up here straight from the bayou in Louisiana, and it was delicious! For those of you who are unfamiliar with the gluttony otherwise known as a turducken, a turducken is a chicken stuffed inside of a duck stuffed inside of a turkey. I'd never had one before, so this was a new experience for me. And I must say, it was a mighty tasty turducken! And of course there was heaps of other food there too, including the obligatory abundance of artery-clogging junk food. I ate so much... And Steph made a bunch of Steelers cookies just for the occasion too, since she's a HUGE Steelers fan. There were several fairly entertaining Super Bowl commercials this year, but overall they weren't as memorable as some years past. I think we all agreed there were too many car commercials, any time one would come on we'd all boo. That and the Diet Pepsi ads were horrible. I think the favorite was the FedEx one with the cavemen though, that one was great! But as for the game, which I thought was decent -- definitely not great, but at least far better than a blowout -- one might've thought that the room would've been full of Steelers fans. I mean, we are in central PA after all. But by my count, there were 3 Steelers supporters and a total of 20 Seahawks/indifferent fans (including myself), which I thought was quite impressive. I kinda like both teams, and even though I was kinda cheering for the Seahawks (largely to return the favor from when my cousin Jonathan from Spokane cheered for Penn State in the fall and the Orange Bowl, hehe), I was mostly just hoping for a good game, which it was for the most part. But by the time it was all said and done, the Steelers came out on top 21-10, which made Steph so happy she was dancing on the table. :-) It was too bad the Seahawks couldn't have made it a bit closer, but I'm still not at all unhappy that the Steelers won, because like I said, I do kinda like them, and it's also kinda cool to be living in an area where the "home team" wins the Super Bowl for once.

But man alive, all that food, fun and football's made me a bit tired. Hopefully it won't be so chilly and ferociously windy out tomorrow. Today was kinda ridiculous in that respect, especially after not having had much real winter since December.

Posted by Jared at 01:15 AM | Comments (0)

February 02, 2006

Groovy Groundhogs

And just like that, the month of January is officially in the books, and we're a quarter done with the semester. Yikes.

Well, much of the week hasn't been too out of the ordinary I guess. Y'know, the usual, 25c wings on Tuesday with Daniel (they're still worth a 45-minute wait), watched the State of the Union address on Tuesday evening, teaching labs, being unproductive here in my apartment while trying to grade hw, nothing too different. The Cloud Physics and Dynamics assignments that were due on Wednesday weren't too bad actually, which was a pleasant surprise.

Wednesday evening I hung out with some of the PSCG guys, we played some Scattegories at Shane's place. Ryan and I loved the categories where we had to come up with some sort of geographical location, we'd try to outdo each other by trying to come up with increasingly obscure places for whatever letter was rolled, it was great. :-) And for "things in the sky" starting with S, yes, I put "scattering centers." I'm a nerd, but I'm proud of it.

Tonight I'd started grading some more hw's, but then I saw my friend Scott online for the first time in forever, it was so good to catch up with him. He's been in the Navy for the last few years as a helicopter pilot and rescue swimmer, and is getting back into civilian life in April. He sent me some really cool photos from some of the helicopter training missions he's flown, and a stunning picture from Sumatra a year ago, shortly after the tsunami. I guess his helicopter squadron were the first choppers on the scene in Sumatra, the day after the tsunami hit. The devastation still amazes me. The picture I've posted here was taken by Scott on January 8th, 2005, a couple weeks after the tsunami, but this was once the location of a large city. Wow... But on a lighter note, now I'm wondering if I can fit in a quick road trip to visit him in San Diego while I'm in Arizona for spring break in March, hmmmm... :-)

And today was Groundhog Day! Kerrie, Amber, Caren & David all decided to get up at 2 this morning and drive over to Punxsutawney (about 2 hours west of State College) to see the oversized rodent ascertain whether he saw his shadow or not, so that he could choose the right proclamation about the remaining length of winter. And Punxsutawney Phil apparently saw his shadow this morning (even though it was cloudy), meaning that winter will last another six weeks yet. Though you'd never know we were still in winter from the unseasonably warm weather we've been having the last month. But I guess a taste of winter's coming over the weekend and into next week, it's not over yet. But anyway, the meteo crew had an absolute blast on their road trip to Punxsutawney, so much fun in fact that I may just have to tag along next year. :-) In fact, the main reason I didn't go this year was because I had to teach a lab at 10am this morning, which wouldn't have left enough time to get back to State College after Phil's proclamation. Oh well. At least Kerrie got Daniel & I nice little souvenirs from their morning festivities; she got Daniel one of the plastic top hats that were so abundant in the crowd, and for me she got a quarter stamped with a Punxsutawney and groundhog design. I'd actually suggested that as a souvenir too, so that was cool. :-)

And apparently Josh doesn't think I mention him enough on my blog. Well, maybe if he'd do more zany things like become a roadkill chef I'd have cause to mention him more. That, or if he'd halt his unhealthy obsession with his domo-kun. The Japanese are a strange, strange people.

Posted by Jared at 11:58 PM | Comments (0)