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September 28, 2006
23rd Birthday!
First of all, I'd like to send out a big thank you to everyone who wished me a happy birthday in the past day or so, whether it was by email, facebook, messenger, phone, snail mail or in person! You're all awesome, and I'm lucky to have you all as friends and family!
Today was a very good day. When it comes to work I got so little done though, but those days are bound to happen now and then. ;-) Shortly after I got into Walker I found out that there was an EMS Grad Student reception over in the EMS Library in Deike, so I chowed down on some free doughtnuts and muffins and whatnot. 
Then not long after that Daniel came down to my office and was like, "You need to come down to 402 right away. Okay, so maybe not right away, but it's boring down there, come visit." So I get down there, and most of the other grad students are waiting in there for me, and start singing me Happy Birthday. And then they gave me an awesome card signed by everyone and the coolest cake ever! The frosting was a weather map, of a low pressure system over the Carolinas, with the attendant cold & warm fronts and an isobar pattern, it was sweet! I was stuffed from having sweets all morning, but right after that it was time for lunch at the Golden Wok with Daniel, Frame, Jacob & Gall, which was quite tasty. 
About the most productive thing I did with regards to uni/work was go to Grad Synoptic and pick up an assignment that's due in a week. I duly informed Marko that that was not a very kind birthday present, haha. After awhile of sitting unproductively in front of my computer at work, I decided it was best to slack at home for a short while before our final flag football practice preceding next week's IM season opener. After practice a bunch of us headed down to the Darkhorse for awhile. I wasn't planning on being there for more than a couple hours, but before I knew it two turned into four pretty quickly. :-) Thanks again for a great day and evening everyone!
Posted by Jared at 01:25 AM | Comments (8)
September 26, 2006
Donation Number Seven
This was not a good weekend for me when it comes to football. First off the Gophers did a classic Glen Mason choke-job against a horrid defense at Purdue, then Penn State hung in there against #1 Ohio State in the 'Shoe before Anthony Morelli quite literally threw the game away (making Andrew very happy), and to top it off Moo (Michigan St) blew a huge 17-point second half lead at home to Notre Dame -- the annual Moo fade just when it looks like they're doing well. On top of that several of my other Dirty Dawg picks all picked a wonderful day to lose. The NFL games on Sunday weren't a whole lot better either for my Dawg (thanks New England), and the Vikings lost a heartbreaker to Da Bears 19-16. To watch that one I went to Damon's with a bunch of the other meteo grads, including Andrew and Petters, who are both Bears fans. At least it was a good game throughout, and there was plenty of shouting at the TV and needling of each other to go around, haha.
Right after the first half of the Penn State-Ohio State game ended it was time to head over to the E Free Church for Julian & Suzanne's wedding, the one I would've played in had I not fractured my finger (Sarah played very well in my stead, I might add). It was a really nice wedding, with the processional being "You're Beautiful" by James Blunt, but played and sung wonderfully by Blair from church. It may not sound like a traditional processional or anything, but it really fit. After the wedding Tim & I stuck around for awhile to help clean everything up, but neither of us went to the reception. I didn't go primarily because I had forgotten to RSVP. It's been a busy few months for weddings, this was the third one I've attended since June, in addition to being invited to another one or two.
We had been planning a hike with Penn State Christian Grads on Sunday afternoon at Shingletown Gap, but the forecast on Friday and Saturday looked so rainy for Sunday that we decided to cancel it. Of course, there didn't end up being much rain on Sunday, and what was the weather like during the hike? Partly to mostly sunny. Oh well. I'd been wanting to watch the Vikings-Bears game during that time anyway, but the only motivation for pushing for the hike to be cancelled was that I didn't think people would enjoy getting wet and muddy. We'll see if people listen to my forecast next time. :-)
Yesterday after work I had an appointment to donate blood at a Red Cross drive at my church, the first one that had ever been held there. From what it sounded like it was a big success too, with a whole bunch of first-time donors giving blood. That's a very good thing too, because the Red Cross had some statistics there showing that here in the Greater Alleghenies region they are in absolutely dire need for every unit of blood that is donated. Most of the time they have less than a two day supply of almost all blood types, and quite often they have less than one day's supply. One of the blood types they were in critical need of yesterday was A+, so I was very glad to be able to help out. The way I see it, I may not be able to save the world, but by donating blood I can directly help save up to three lives. I think next time I donate will be my eighth, totaling a gallon.
At IM softball tonight we pushed our record to 2-2 with a 16-4 drubbing of some poor team made up of all freshmen. They were probably the laziest team we've ever played (mostly refusing to do much more than walk or jog toward balls in the outfield), and really didn't care that they were a bad team (they were laughing about it), but hey, at least they kept a positive attitude. I went 1-for-2 and I was just glad that my line-drive base hit up the middle didn't hit their pitcher in the face, it missed only by a few inches. Barring a miracle in the standings our final softball game will be Thursday evening, perfect timing for the IM football season to begin next week at long last.
The Twins are in the playoffs!! They clinched a playoff berth last night by virtue of their victory over Kansas City and a loss by the White Sux. They're still only a game behind Detroit for the Central division title, but hey, I'll take the Wild Card, even if it means playing the Yankees, because it's still the playoffs!
In less than an hour I'll be 23! We'll be getting an assignment in Grad Synoptic tomorrow, but hey, it'll be better than my birthday last year when I had to spend the whole day cramming for a GFD exam the following morning. I'm used to having tests on/near my birthday, so it's nice to have a respite from that this year for a change!
Posted by Jared at 11:32 PM | Comments (2)
September 21, 2006
Pinky on the Mend
So how did my pinky finger fare while playing sports the last couple of days? Just fine, I'd say, even though it's still a bit sore and tender. At football practice yesterday I was playing a bit gingerly and dropped at least a couple passes I normally would've caught. The splint served me well though, absorbing some shocks, especially on one pass that hit my finger just right and popped it right off, despite me taping it to my hand. And then at softball this evening we didn't have any extra players so I had to put on a glove and head out to right-center. But again my finger didn't bother me too much, as I was able to catch the only fly ball that came my way without pain. I also went 1-for-2 with a run scored in our 13-8 win, it's nice to put a W on the board finally.
We're definitely having a touch of fall around here, the temp dropped into the upper 30s overnight last night, and should do so again tonight. And quite a few trees have started changing colours too, due to our very dry August and very cool September. Usually peak isn't until mid-October, but it's looking like it'll probably happen a little earlier than that this year.
Even though the Twins dropped a game tonight to the Red Sox in which Johizzle took the mound, these are very good days to be a Twins fan. They're red hot, and have shaved 12 games off Detroit's lead, now trailing the Tiggers by only half a game in the AL Central. We're comin! And with Chicago's loss tonight, keeping them at 5 1/2 games behind the Twins in the Wild Card race, the Twins' magic number for clinching a playoff berth is now at 5. They're pretty much ensuring that my Twins "TC" cap will remain firmly ensconced on my head well into October at the very least. Go Twins!!
My Uncle Gary sent me a link yesterday to a very interesting article, an excerpt from the book, "From Squaw Tit to Whorehouse Meadow: How Maps Name, Claim, and Inflame" by Mark Monmonier. Now, I'm naturally interested in maps, and also quite intrigued by odd placenames, so I found it quite a fun little read. Gary brought up something in his email that this author didn't though, which is that fairly recently the State of Minnesota mandated that all the many Squaw Lakes had to be renamed (the one in Cook County was renamed Olga Lake, for instance); Jap Lake in Cook County (which was named after a local, J.A. Paulson) was renamed Paulson Lake; and that Fag Lake and Hooker Lake still retain their names, along with Lake County's very own Neglige Lake. Does anyone else know of any strange, vulgar or risque lake or place names? This could turn into a fun little exercise. :-)
The screenwriter for "The Path to 9/11" has come out with an editorial defending his docudrama that's very much worth reading.
Could the recent spate of suspicious passenger behavior on airlines be more than just airline crews and passengers being overly cautious? Hopefully it's just that, but you can never be too sure in this day and age.
As a final note, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hugo Chavez both just need to shut up. I really don't understand how anyone can treat either of them with even a modicum of respect, much less fawn over them with a sense of awe, like several members of the mainstream media do with crazy Mahmoud in particular. And Chavez's tirade doesn't sound much different from what's being spewed by large swaths of the far left in our country either, unfortunately.
Posted by Jared at 10:52 PM | Comments (0)
September 19, 2006
Sidelined No More
I really hate being on the sidelines when I feel like I can contribute and do something. It was hard enough for me to sit out of softball last Thursday, and my pinky's been gradually getting better enough that I decided to play some tennis last night with Kerrie, Shannon & John. It's not like playing tennis really involves my left hand anyway, so I was fine. Kerrie & I played a couple sets against Shannon & John, winning 6-2 in the first set and 7-6 (7-4) in a very fun, back-and-forth second set. My serving was definitely better than the last time I played (particularly my second serves), so I'm wondering if the key to that was tossing the ball up with a splint on one of my fingers. ;-)
I had a rather productive meeting this morning with Joel & Sue. We finally figured out what was wrong with our codes (and surprise, surprise, it's something I unwittingly messed up), so I should be able to get off and running with all that tomorrow once I finish the Grad Synoptic homework. Also, after talking with Sue, I'm thinking a bit more like maybe I'll stick around for a Ph.D. Well, it's at least the most positively I've thought about staying for a doctorate in quite some time, which is definitely not the same thing as saying I think I'll definitely be staying. I fully expect I'll be feeling differently from day to day or week to week about this, but sometime before the end of the winter I'll need to have made a decision about that one way or the other, for my own peace of mind. Maybe what I'm supposed to do will become clear in the coming weeks and months, we'll see.
Right after I got back to Walker from my meeting with Joel & Sue in the Water Tunnel Building, I was waiting at the 1st floor elevator when I felt something on the side of my neck. I brushed it off, but not before whatever it was stung me. My guess is that it was a hornet, because it hurt more than I remember bee stings hurting (I've had quite a few over the years). I didn't have any Benadryl on me, so I decided it'd be a good idea to head down to Ritenour, just in case I had an allergic reaction. I've been unsure if I'm allergic to bee/wasp/hornet stings because ten years ago I was stung by a hornet between the eyes, and by the following morning my eyes had swelled shut, so with a sting on my neck I wasn't gonna take any chances, on the off chance I suddenly started having trouble breathing. But everything was fine, I didn't have an allergic reaction or anything, just a little swelling at the sting. The nurse didn't even give me any Benadryl, just a small cup of juice and an icepack, while keeping me for observation until an hour after I'd been stung. I'm glad it doesn't appear I'm allergic to bee stings after all, but I was none too pleased about getting stung again, especially INSIDE Walker Building.
This evening I had to go to some sort of student organization meeting down in the HUB, representing both Penn State Christian Grads and Chi Epsilon Pi. The ironic thing is that one of the main things they were going to emphasize to us was the new rule about no food/drink being allowed in any classroom, all while giving us all some free food. But basically the event was semi-worthless, just trying to help all the undergrads think of ways to advertise their clubs and retain new members, so I wasn't at all sad when I ditched out an hour and a half early to go play softball.
Since I hate being on the sidelines, I decided to give softball a go tonight, and fortunately we had enough people so that I could play DH, and hence avoid putting on a glove and playing the field. My grip on the bat made it look like I was getting ready for afternoon tea (I had my pinky sticking up in the air below the handle of the bat, so that the swing wouldn't pressure/slide against my pinky at all), but I managed to go 1-for-2 with a single, a run (our team's first of the game) and a fielder's choice. We came back from a 3-2 deficit to take a 4-3 lead in the top of the 5th (fall IM softball games only go 5 innings), but we wound up losing 5-4 in the bottom of the inning. Oh well, at least it was better than last Thursday when we lost 10-0.
Now we'll see how much I can manage doing at flag football practice tomorrow. If I can't really catch a ball all that comfortably, I might just switch to defense for tomorrow. I'm still officially listed as "questionable" for practice, however, since I haven't tried catching a football since I fractured my finger almost two weeks ago, so I don't know how it's gonna feel. I'm not gonna do anything overly stupid to risk reinjuring my finger though, I'll be careful, don't worry. :-)
And is it just me, or does it seem like the Islamic world's (over)reaction to Pope Benedict XVI's lecture the other day seems to prove his point? It's almost stunning how in response to a claim that spreading a religion by violence is wrong that people respond in violence and death threats to the Pope, and almost even more stunning how much of the West is condemning the Pope's remarks while turning a blind, or even approving, eye to the Islamic violence.
Posted by Jared at 11:44 PM | Comments (2)
September 17, 2006
Three Nights Of Dune
I really should update this thing more often than I have been lately. Because sparse posting typically leads to long posts that take way too long to write or read. Oh well.
Last week on Tuesday, Wednesday & Thursday evenings Jacob & I watched the DVDs of the 5-hr long "Dune" miniseries that was made for Sci-Fi Channel back in 2002. I'd read the book and loved it, so I was really curious to see a film adaptation of it. While I know that there were some problems with the film when comparing it to the book, most films that were first books leave out or change a bunch of stuff anyway, so it's not a surprise that I thought the book was better. The acting was a bit wooden on occasion, and there were some scenic backdrops that were so obviously matte paintings that it was a bit ridiculous. Overall I liked the film though, and thought they did a pretty good job. Now I'm definitely interested in seeing the two-hour film that was made for theaters awhile ago, to compare it with the miniseries and the book. By the way, if you haven't read "Dune" by Frank Herbert, I'd highly recommend that you check it out sometime, it's a sci-fi classic and an excellent novel.
Thursday afternoon instead of colloquium we had the EMS (College of Earth & Mineral Sciences) Poster Exhibition down at the HUB. Kerrie, Anke, Walter & I all entered our posters into the contest, and there were 35 entries in all, with $100 awarded to five honorable mentions, $300 to third place, $500 to second place and $700 to the first place poster, so there was definitely extra incentive to explain things well. :-) 
The only one of us four meteo grads to win anything though was Anke, who nabbed an honorable mention for her poster. Congrats Anke! I wish they would've had each poster judged by more than just two people though, to help smooth out the inevitable inconsistencies between different judges. One kinda funny thing was that one of my two judges was Petters, my roommate. No conflict of interest there, haha. :-) And Walter's two judges were Petters and Steph, so the organizers definitely weren't trying to prevent people from judging posters from their own department.
Last Thursday evening for Men's Group we tried something new, a "theology pub." The idea was to hang out and get to know each other better by discussing ideas and why we believe what we believe, all over a good-tasting beer. So there were six of us that met up at Otto's (the first time I'd ever been to Otto's, incidentally), and no theological issues were discussed at all, but that was totally fine. A couple of the people who came were new grad students, so we used the time as more of a getting to know each other time, which was still fun. Another discovery from that evening was that Otto's Apricot Wheat beer is pretty darn good!
On Friday evening we had a PSCG Game Night at Steve & Elizabeth's place, which was a blast. A bunch of us played a good long game of a new version of Balderdash, where in addition to coming up with definitions to obscure words, there were also obscure abbreviations that you had to supply the full unabbreviated organization/saying for, "famous" people for which a description of why they were well-known was required, and movie titles where you had to come up with a brief synopsis. I liked regular Balderdash before, but with these new additions I like it even more, because it just provides a bit more variety and creativity (and obscure trivia as well). The whole evening was another fun opportunity to get to know some of the other people in the group better, particularly the newcomers.
Ahhh, I love Saturdays in autumn. It was another home gameday here at Penn State, which means it was time for another tailgate party! Fortunately this one was way more enjoyable than the first tailgate two weeks ago, which was just a bit damp due to good ol' Ernesto. Anyway, we got to the field/parking lot and got everything set up at 10am, which allowed plenty of time for tailgating before the kickoff at 3:30. 
I didn't actually go to the game though, because, well, I didn't have a ticket, we were playing Division 1-AA Youngstown State, and there was an entire slate of fantastic games on TV at the same time. I just figured that Penn State would roll over the Penguins (which they did, 37-3), so I went up to Houserville with Daniel to watch bigger and better games on their three-TV setup the rest of the afternoon and evening. Ahhh, college football...
I was a big fan of the song selection in church today, four hymns and a couple of "oldie but goodie" choruses. I always wish they'd do more hymns. And shortly after the service today I ruled myself officially "out" of Julian & Suzanne's wedding this coming Saturday. I tried to play a couple of chords, but my left pinky hurt too much when trying to play even at a mezzo forte level. There's a decent chance my finger will feel fine sometime this week (I'm still listed as "questionable" for IM sports this week), but it was just time to make a decision so that everyone (including Sarah, who's taking my place) can know and move on with certainty. As a further update on my pinky, the radiologist called me back on Tuesday to let me know that his diagnosis was officially a "non-displaced hairline fracture of the distal bone." His advice was to wear the splint for another couple weeks, but I really haven't been wearing it much the last few days because my finger's been feeling better by the day.
I was happy that I got to see parts of the Vikings overtime win over Carolina today, especially the fake field goal for a touchdown (bonus: Longwell is the kicker on my fantasy team, booya!). It wasn't on regular TV in these parts, so I went down to Champs with Frame & Andrew, who were there to watch the Lions-Bears game. I'm more interested in the Vikings this year (partly due to sucking quite a bit less and no love boat scandals), so I think I'll go to places like Champs or Damon's to watch them a bit more often.
For the Bible study we had this evening for PSCG, we had 18 people show up! That's the most we've had at a Bible study since last fall, hopefully we can keep the numbers up. This fall we're examining the book of James.
Could gasoline prices fall all the way to $1.15/gallon? This analyst thinks it could go that low.
And who knew punting could be such a dangerous job? I think that's what you call being too competitive.
Well, that's all for now. Time for bed.
Posted by Jared at 11:20 PM | Comments (3)
September 11, 2006
Pinkies and Picnics
Another school year is officially underway. Hooray. (Can you feel the excitement?...) Classes began last Tuesday, and this semester I'm taking two classes (Graduate/Advanced Synoptic Meteorology, and a one-credit Meteo Research writing class) while also sitting in on another (undergrad Synoptic). I'm putting a focus on synoptic meteo this semester because it's very important to understand in order to forecast well, I've never taken a course in it before, and it's supposed to help everything gel at long last (the dynamics/math/physics and the real weather). So we'll see how all this goes this semester, and if I get out of it what I'm hoping to. In any case, only time will tell if this was the last "first day of the school year" I'll personally experience, but there's a pretty decent chance it was.
Thursday evening we had another flag football practice for the meteo grads IM team, and after I took a "TV timeout" to go floor manage for "Weather World," one of the first passes I saw from Moyer was a bit tough to see, right next to the sinking sun from my perspective. I stuck my hands down to where I thought the ball was coming. The ball ended up being a bit lower than I thought, and I most definitely felt it as the nose of the ball glanced off the tip of my left pinky finger. I just thought it was jammed, but I kept playing. Fortunately the next couple passes Moyer threw to me were overthrown, because in hindsight it wouldn't have done my pinky any favors to try to catch another ball.
By the next morning I was starting to suspect that maybe it wasn't just a jam or a sprain. For one, my pinky was all sorts of bluish/purplish shades, it still hurt quite a bit (more than other jammed digits I've had before), and most of the pain was above the joint, almost halfway between the last knuckle and the tip of the finger, which is not what I would've expected from a sprain. It wasn't obviously broken or anything, but I had my suspicions. So I managed to get myself a doctor's appointment at Ritenour on Friday morning, and the doctor said the x-rays were inconclusive; two of the angles from which x-rays were taken showed pretty much nothing, but the third showed what looked like a hairline fracture. So he said he'd send along the x-rays to the radiologist for him to make an official diagnosis, but in the meantime he had me get a stack splint on my pinky. I've kept it on most of the time since, but when I accidentally bump my pinky without the splint on there's a sharp enough pain even still that I'm even more confident that my finger is indeed fractured, and not just sprained. As a result, and to go along with our taking the flag football thing wayyyy too seriously, our team injury report had me changed from "questionable" to "doubtful," and I think I'm gonna rule myself "out" of this Wednesday's practice right here and now.
In addition to of course missing football practice time, a broken finger is a bit of a hindrance to piano practice time. That's somewhat unfortunate since the plan was for me to play in Julian & Suzanne's wedding on 23 September. I emailed them right away on Friday informing them of my fractured finger. I haven't heard back from them yet, but I'm sure they absolutely loved hearing that news... Fortunately at church yesterday Sarah said she might be able to step in and do it in case I can't, which at this point I'd say is a very distinct possibility.
Both Daniel and Petters had birthdays on Friday, and Vic had one today too! Happy Birthday guys!
Was it just me, or did the college football games on Saturday just flat-out bore you all? Penn State-Notre Dame was lame (especially when Charlie Weis showed tremendous sportsmanship by going for a fake punt when leading 27-3 and kept Brady Quinn in there passing in the 4th quarter to go up 41-3 -- I never thought I'd say this, but I might be cheering for Michigan to destroy the Irish next week, I'm that bitter about Notre Dame's lack of sportsmanship). Iowa-Syracuse went into overtime but it was still so excruciatingly and painfully boring that I wanted to poke my eye out with a sharp stick. And then Ohio State-Texas was exceedingly dull for a much-ballyhooed #1 vs #2 matchup. Hopefully next weekend's games will be more entertaining.
After church on Sunday morning (which Daniel & Katie came along to, yay!) it was time to head to Lederer Park for the Chi Epsilon Pi/Department of Meteorology picnic. It was pretty well attended, though I suspect that many people stayed home because their favorite NFL teams were opening the season at that time slot. Zack, Vic & I were kept pretty busy at the grill, and once everyone else seemed sated I finally could grab a couple burgers and a hot dog for myself. 
Then right after the Meteo picnic officially ended it was time to head down to Holmes-Foster Park for the Penn State Christian Grads picnic. Yup, back-to-back picnics for organizations for which I'm an officer. At least I didn't have to worry about paying for food today! We were all really encouraged by the fantastic turnout at the PSCG picnic, and our advertising must've really worked because we had quite a few new people show up. Towards the end of the PSCG picnic we had a really interesting talk by Dr. Suresh Canagarajah, a visiting English/Linguistics professor from Buruch College at the City University of New York, about Daniel 1 and what it means to be a Christian grad student. All in all it was a good day, but I'm sort of picnic-ed out!
After getting home from the picnics, instead of watching the Manning Bowl on Sunday Night Football, I elected to watch the docudrama "The Path to 9/11," which has gotten quite a bit of publicity in recent days. They aired it commercial-free, and I must say that I was quite impressed by Part 1 tonight. On this, the 5th anniversary of the September 11th terrorist attacks, it really is frustrating to see all the failures of both the Clinton and Bush administrations between 1993 and 2001 that potentially could've prevented the acts of war perpetrated on that fateful day, but it's also educational to see someone try to lay the events out there, even if they are at times a bit compressed or conflated for the purposes of narration. I would've definitely watched Part 2 tonight, but I was way too tempted by the allure of the Vikings-Redskins game, which I watched over at Ryan's place. It was a good game to watch, though Ryan was a bit sad since he's a 'Skins fan and my Vikes won it late 19-16. It was really cool to see most of the 90,000 fans at FedEx Field in Washington waving American flags before the game though, I thought that was a very nice touch.
We will never forget.
Posted by Jared at 11:50 PM | Comments (3)
September 05, 2006
The Axemann Cometh
What better way is there to celebrate a great American holiday like Labor Day than take part in two great traditions of Americana like playing mini-golf and eating large quantities of fattening food? Well, I certainly couldn't come up with anything to improve upon that. I invited Andrew, one of the new meteo grad students, along to go mini-golfing with me and a few other people from my church (Ryan, Sarah, Ben, Adam, Leslie, Julian & Suzanne), and initially our plan had been to go to a course in Phillipsburg, but through some phone calls they found out that course had been closed for over a year.
So on to plan B, Adam's idea of going to the course in Axemann. Yes, there's a small town just outside of State College called Axemann, and no, I had never heard of it before. So we come across a sign next to the road pointing down a driveway to the mini-golf place, though it's not the most attractive-looking property in the world: a cesspool on the right, tall overgrown grass, a run-down building with an old spraypainted sign pointing to the restroom (another more run-down shack), some silos, and a house just off to the left with a local who couldn't help but stare at our group as we drove in with two cars. Oh yeah, and it'd be a shame not to mention the chicken that darted across the driveway as we drove in. Adam was the brave one to get out of the car to check out if the place was open at all, and as he was looking around the guy staring at us from the neighboring house shouted down with a thick redneck accent, "You lookin for mini-golf?" Adam: "Yeah." Redneck: "It's been closed for over a year." That was actually a major relief, because I was ready to veto this place as soon as we drove in, and Ryan, Sarah & Andrew in our car all agreed that even if it was open, it wasn't a place where you'd even wanna touch the clubs.
So I suggested that we try heading to the course at a campground just north of Bellefonte (which I'd actually suggested initially before Adam led us to the seedy Axemann course), and fortunately it was very much open, and very much not like a scene out of a horror film like Axemann. :-) The owner actually recognized me from the last time a group of us meteo grads went up there, and he started blaming me (jokingly, of course) for Ernesto and agreed to cut us a deal if I'd arrange for good weather on all future home football weekends this year, haha. Everyone had a good time mini-golfing (even Andrew with his horrible luck along the way), and I won a tie-breaker for 1st with Ben & Julian. Not that we were keeping score or anything. ;-)
After mini-golf we hopped in our cars and drove over to Clearfield to go eat at Denny's Beer Barrel Pub, the second time I'd been to that place in just over two weeks. The wait for food took awhile (certainly well over half an hour, even more than 45 minutes I think ... if I were Chris Allen I would've timed precisely how long it took, but oh well), but Denny's is good enough that it's worth it (and worth the hour's drive out there). I didn't feel quite gluttonous enough to get the pounder this time, instead I got a half-pounder, specifically so that I could get a piece of Reese's peanut butter cup pie at the end for dessert. Mmmm, soooo good... The next time we go to Denny's, Andrew said he'd for sure try the 2-pounder, that for the motivation of getting it at half price he's pretty sure he could finish it. I'd have to be feeling a bit adventurous to do the 2-pounder, but I think I could give it the old college try at some point.
Daniel & I discovered today that Sports Cafe no longer has 25-cent wings on Tuesdays -- they're now 30 cents. What a travesty. First they raise their 49-cent cheeseburgers on Wednesdays that Frame is so in love with to 50 cents, and now this? They're penny-and-nickleing us, who do they think they are, the Postal Service? Oh well, despite the modest increase in price and the usually poor quality of service (not to mention the dump it's kinda turned into), getting wings on Tuesdays is firmly entrenched as a tradition for Daniel & me, so we'll keep going every week. It's definitely the high point of most any Tuesday. :-)
Posted by Jared at 11:59 PM | Comments (3)
September 04, 2006
Wet 'n Windy Welcome Weekend
Ernesto most definitely made its presence felt this weekend. The rain started a bit earlier than I had originally forecast on Friday, at about 3pm. The rain didn't stop us from throwing a welcome picnic for the new meteorology grad students at Holmes-Foster Park. Booo Ernesto's rain; hooray Clem's BBQ! 
Since it was a bit damp and chilly we didn't stick around all that long before bringing everyone back to Mt Nittany Apts for the welcome party upstairs at Steph & Shannon's place and Moyer's as well. It was fun getting to know some of the new grad students better, and playing a bit of flip cup was nice too. The party started out a bit slow, but after about half an hour or an hour it really got going and people loosened up a bit and stopped talking about weather. Well, except for when someone pulled up the radar of Ernesto's rain on my laptop around midnight, hehe. :-)
After a brief nap it was time to get going again -- we had a tailgate party to set up at 10am! It was still cold and raining, but the forecast was for it to stop by 11am, so we weren't thinking much of it. We all bought ponchos in the previous week, and they sure came in handy, particularly when we were working on setting up our two tents/shelters. 
Having a couple tarps to hang on the sides to block out the prevailing wind and some of the driving rain would've been nice too, but we managed. Once we got the tents set up and everything we grilled up some tasty breakfast food to warm us up a bit -- 
some scrambled eggs, sausages and bacon, yum! Gradually more and more people rucked up to the tailgate, and despite the crummy weather we were all having a blast! One would've thought that with Ernesto once having been a tropical system and everything, that it wouldn't have been such a cold rain, and that the temp might've been a bit warmer than 53 degrees, but then again it just seemed like Ernesto wanted to make us miserable.
I hadn't originally been planning on going to the game, but Moyer's friend Pat couldn't go so he sold me his ticket, which made me even more glad I'd bought that poncho, since now I was gonna be standing out in the rain for hours in Beaver Stadium. There were quite a few of us meteo grads that had tickets, and we even got reasonably good seats too. Despite the persistent heavy drizzle to moderate rain, the 106,000-strong crowd was fired up for the start of the college football season. Penn State's first offensive drive sent everyone into an absolute frenzy, as on Morelli's first pass he threw a laser into the end zone for a 42-yd TD. 
The rest of the game was rather sloppy, but Penn State managed to jump out to a 17-0 lead en route to a 34-16 victory over the pesky Akron Zips. Ernesto was probably the player of the game though, he could certainly be credited with several tackles and a few bad punts and a couple botched field goal attempts. Once the Nittany Lions pushed the score out to a 31-9 lead midway through the 4th quarter we all decided it was time to leave though, we had enough of being soaked to the bone, and there was no end in sight to the rain. After drying out a bit and getting something to eat, I went over to Jacob's with Steph for awhile, as Andrew & Luna were already over there playing some MarioKart. All in all it was a very enjoyable, if wet, day. Ernesto's rain FINALLY stopped around 10 or 11pm, more than 30 hours after it first started. I think it's safe to say we're not in a drought or anything like that. Curse you Ernesto!!
This afternoon a bunch of us congregated up at Jeff, Vic & Bob's place in Houserville for the BASF II -- the Bad American Swill Festival. It's a bad-beer taste-test that they'd organized to find out just what was the worst beer in the land. The price of admission: a 12-pack of the worst beer we'd ever had. We'd been planning this for a few months so when I was home this summer I picked up a 15-pack of La Crosse Lager, on the recommendation of my good friend Mike (those of you who were at the BASF, feel free to email him what you thought about his recommendation, haha). 
Anyway, there were 11 beers that were entered, and they were being ranked on a scale of 0 (atrocious) to 10 (perhaps not toooooo bad), and there were three separate tests that contributed to determining the overall winner: a smell test (10%), cold taste test (65%), and a warm taste test (25%). So that our opinions wouldn't be biased unnecessarily, this was done as a blind taste test, where all 12 of us were given small amounts of beer in a numbered plastic cup, and the numbers were switched up between the smell/cold test and the warm test, further eliminating potential biases. So after tabulating everyone's rankings for both tests and weighting them appropriately, here are the results, with their average score:
11. Schlitz - 5.77
10. Jacob Best Ice - 5.25
9. Gennessee Cream Ale - 5.03
8. Old German - 5.00
7. Stite Lite - 4.48
6. Black Label - 4.35
5. Southpaw Lite - 4.32
4. Utica Club - 4.17
Starting out the medal winners was the inaugural BASF champion from last December:
3. Koch's Golden Anniversary - 4.13
2. Old Vienna - 3.98
And finally, the clear-cut winner was...
1. La Crosse Lager - 3.30
Yes, that's right, I brought the absolute worst beer any of us managed to find. Am I proud? In some sick way, yes, I am, at least a little bit. But seriously, we all thought it tasted like aluminum. In my scoring, it netted a zero in both the cold and smell tests, and a 2 in the warm test. In fact, La Crosse Lager turned out to be the second beer sample I sniffed, and it was so awful that after that moment I really couldn't smell any of the other beers at all. Actually, maybe that was a minor blessing in hindsight.
And in a bit of sad and shocking news, Steve Irwin, The Crocodile Hunter, was killed a few hours ago by a stingray off the Queensland coast near Cairns today. Apparently it was a freak accident, but with all that he's done it's a miracle he didn't have a freak accident with wildlife previous to this. It's still sad that he's dead now, no more of his famous "Croikey" or crazy antics...
Posted by Jared at 12:49 AM | Comments (1)