Jared's One Blog

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March 29, 2007

Changing Priorities

Well, I think I'm mostly recovered from my spring break missions/relief trip to Louisiana. It took most of last week to feel like I could get back in the swing of things, but I finally did. Somehow it still managed to be a bit of a hectic week. This week has been too. I guess it's just that time of year, spring semesters, particularly after spring break, always seem to be insanely busy.

One issue that kind of came to a head was me getting to a breaking point with my math class (Numerical PDEs). On the way back from and shortly after the Katrina trip, I realized that some of my priorities needed to be changed; I couldn't do everything, and some things were far more important, including some things I've been neglecting somewhat of late. So on the way back from New Orleans, renewed thoughts of dropping the class popped back in my head, after me successfully having tamped them down since late January or so. Those thoughts really crystallized during the lecture last Tuesday. I was so lost in a sea of abstract math, and there was a big assignment due on Thursday that I hadn't even started, and everything was starting to pile up so much that I felt more and more sure as the lecture went on that I had to do something about it. So I resolved to drop the class, so that I could, a) devote most of my time to my thesis and finishing up the research for it, and b) have some down time to use in relaxation or any of those other endeavors I'd like to spend a bit more time on. So on Wednesday of last week I went to talk with Qiang Du about my situation, that I couldn't keep spending 20-30 hrs on each assignment, that I desperately needed that time for research. He totally understood, and hoped I'd stick with the class, reiterating the grading policy he stated on the first day, that even if we turn in a blank page with our name on it for some homework or whatever, we get at least an 8/10 on it. So now that he's basically said it's okay, and essentially asked me to stay in the class and just take lecture notes, if that's all I have time for, I figure I may as well, and get out of the class whatever I can pick up. Any work on the assignments that I put in will be limited to no more than 2-5 hours, because I simply don't have the time to do more than that anymore. To make a long story short, removing the math class from my list of worries and anxieties has already been a huge relief, and freed up my mind and attitude tremendously.

As for the research front, I've resumed making some progress again. Most notably, I finally started writing my M.S. thesis on Friday. It's such a huge, daunting task that merely getting started was a huge mental obstacle for me. Considering it basically has to be done by the end of May, though, means that it's sufficiently last-minute for me to feel pressured and actually be more motivated to get stuff done. I'm working on the intro/background/lit review chapter first, as that is really needing to be quite comprehensive and thorough. My original goal was to have a draft of that first chapter to my advisors by Friday afternoon, but it might spill into the weekend or early next week because I have so much to cover. If I can manage to make tomorrow extra-productive I might have it done before trivia, which would be awesome. Then I've got to pause the writing to take some time to figure out how to do the rest of the actual research that I need to do, and get that rolling. So I guess considering I only have two months to have a complete draft of my thesis all together, if there are periods of time that are lacking in bloggish activity, it's a pretty safe bet that my thesis is to blame.

The annual Graduate Exhibition was on Sunday. It's basically a giant research poster session, with over 200 grad students from all departments at Penn State coming together and competing for prizes for the best research posters/presentations. Six of us in Meteo entered, making us almost half of the 16 entrants in the math/physical sciences category (there was also arts/humanities, engineering, and biological/life sciences), yet none of us got one of the top three places. Even though our category was the smallest, it was still fishy that we had only one person at each place, while other categories had as many as eight people in third, four in second and two in first. There's no way that eight people actually tied, although if that did happen then there's a problem in the evaluations/judging. And if they took winners based on percentage of the number of entrants in the category, then it should have been advertised that way, and the awards called something other than "1st Place," "2nd Place," and "3rd Place." To me, that terminology implies one person with each prize, or at most a tie with one or two other people. It's not bothersome to me that none of us won, just that the standards didn't appear to be the same from category to category with regards to awards. At any rate, it was still a good experience to go through the process of boiling my research down to what could fit onto a 3' x 4' poster, and then having to explain it to judges and other interested passers-by that weren't necessarily of a science background. I at least thought my three or four judgings went well. And then at the awards ceremony, they had encore performances from two of the winners from the music exhibition on Friday, including one guy who had an amazing piece on marimba. I've never seen the marimba played like that, I was quite impressed.

I've also been spending some time in the evenings this week practicing piano again. After basically a month off, I'm slotted to play both services (9am & 10:30am) this week for Palm Sunday at church. All five songs that were picked are new to me, and two or three of them I haven't even heard before, so it's been a bit of a challenge to learn them. After this Sunday the next time I'm scheduled is the last Sunday in April.

Spring has definitely sprung around here. On Tuesday it seemed like we completely bypassed spring for summer, in fact, as it was a bit muggy and up around 80 degrees, with a bunch of little intermittent popcorn thunderstorms rolling through. We've been back to more spring-like temps the last few days though, but I'm still stubbornly wearing shorts, even when it's only 32 degrees for my walk into campus.

The meteo department banquet was last night at the Atherton Hotel, and I thought it went really well. The food was excellent, and the speaker, Dr. Roger Wakimoto from NCAR, was quite engaging (he also gave an excellent colloquium talk this afternoon about bow echoes). It was also fun to see everyone all dressed up.

I really should start saving money sometime soon here if I want to go to Australia for 2-3 weeks in summer 2008. I'm really wanting to make that happen, actually. And I might have a travel buddy lined up too. My cousin Jonathan said the other day he'd love to going down there too, that'd be awesome to travel around the Land Down Under with him! We've been talking for a couple years about trying to arrange a family reunion in Australia, so the two of us going would at least be a mini-reunion. And then we could scout the area for parks with suitable picnic/barbie areas for the big reunion in the future, which would entail another trip to Aus! I'm liking this idea more and more already!

Posted by Jared at 07:23 PM | Comments (0)

March 19, 2007

Katrina Disaster Relief, Part I

I'm back from my week of volunteering for clean-up from Hurricane Katrina through Evangelical Free Church of America Crisis Response. It was a really valuable trip and a huge learning experience, despite being exhausting. There was a lot that happened on the trip, and I didn't want to forget any of it if I could help it, so what I've written below I've written so that others can read about and see what we did. But I've written it perhaps more for me so that I can go back and read it down the road to be reminded of what it was like. Hence, I know not everyone will read everything I've written because it's so long, but I hope you all will, because there were so many cool things that happened, and I'd like to try to inspire others to volunteer their time to do clean-up on the Gulf Coast or elsewhere closer to home.

Saturday, 10 March:

I stayed up late the night before to get all my stuff packed for the trip, so I didn't have much left to do when I got up at 5, other than just finish throwing some stuff together. I got to State College Evangelical Free Church just after 6am, where everyone (Jack, Glenn, Mike, Matt, Chris, Sue, her daughter Katie, Kim & her 12-year old son Max) was meeting to pack the vehicles and the u-haul trailer. By the time we got everything stowed away and prayed together in the parking lot, we were ready to hit the road at about 6:45. We stopped fairly frequently and often changed up who was in what vehicle and who was driving, so that there'd be a bit of variety of company. And so that everyone would have to put up with everyone else for at least a few shifts. :-) Though as it turned out I stayed in the jeep, and didn't ride in the van the entire way down to New Orleans, hehe. We really did all start to get to know each other pretty well, which was good for me since I really didn't know anyone before the trip, even though they're all from SCEFC.

At any rate, the drive down was pretty uneventful overall, except for almost getting lost in some random town (Winchester) in the Deep South otherwise known as northern Virginia while we were trying to find I-81, and then for the time I tried to navigate us on some side roads around an accident on Interstate 81 down in southern Virginia. Yeah, that didn't turn out so well. The map showed a road going from one exit to the next, but it wasn't numbered, and then after a few miles of winding through the pretty Virginia countryside, the road abruptly narrowed and turned to gravel. Umm, yeah, that was the sign we needed to turn around from my misguided adventure. But hey, at least it broke up the monotony of the interstate for a little while. :-)

When we were pulling over for supper at a Cracker Barrel just past Knoxville, Tennessee, we saw there was a rainbow over the restaurant. We figured that was a good sign. :-) I thought about getting Katie (huge Alabama fan) a nice UT mug, but then thought better of it when she replied to a text message with "ha ha ha, do it and you die." Oh well, it's the thought that counts. ;-) But it was my first time at Cracker Barrel, and I took full advantage of the southern experience, with some grilled spicy catfish, deep fried okra and (of course) sweet tea. When in Rome...

We finally rolled into Fort Payne, Alabama at around 10pm to stay at our motel. We were all very glad to flop into bed for the night, and enjoy our nicest night of accommodation until Friday night, when we were planning to stop at the same motel on the way back to Pennsylvania.

Sunday, 11 March:

Before we rolled out from Fort Payne, we noticed there were five other vans from Penn State sitting in our motel's parking lot. They had all sorts of paint on the windows, with sayings such as "Fight on State," "New Orleans or Bust," "1200 Miles to Slidell," "Spring Break Habitat for Humanity" and others. Some of them did come out before we left, so we got to shout "WE ARE..." across the parking lot and say hi to some fellow Penn Staters. We also ran into several other people at our various stops on the rest of the way down, including in Birmingham, Alabama, when we met a group from a church in Ohio that was on their way to do cleanup work in New Orleans. It was so encouraging to see so many other people heading down to do the same thing we were.

We pulled into Trinity Church in Covington, Louisiana, at about 4:30 in the afternoon. A few people went down to Wal-Mart to get some lunch supplies for the week, and after that we all went out to eat dinner at the nearby Acme Oyster House for some good cajun cookin'. And yes, I did have some oysters -- three of them, they were good! -- and a BBQ shrimp po-boy. I love cajun cuisine, it's delicious! Most everyone was adventurous enough to try at least one oyster, but some still weren't brave enough. I think Glenn & I were the only ones to have more than one, actually. The restaurant was really full, and I overheard two of the servers talking to each other about how they always get slammed every Sunday night with tons of customers. Hmm, I wonder if that could possibly have anything to do with tons of new people arriving at Trinity Church every Sunday for the Katrina ministry. :-)

Then after we came back it was time for an orientation session, where they told the 225 people (a record for a week, usually they have more like a hundred or so) where they were staying, in Trinity, the neighboring old YMCA that they'd rented out for the month, or the nearby North Shore Church, which is where the guys from our group were sent. We did manage to claim a prime piece of real estate for our air mattresses near the wall and the windows, but that didn't save us from the sonorous sonatas of snoring that might be expected to come from a group of 50 men sleeping on the floor. It took me over two hours to fall asleep at all, and after a night full of fits and starts (mostly waking up to some rather interesting snoring sequences from somewhere in the room), lights-on at 6am came way too soon...

Monday, 12 March:

After breakfast we checked out the tools we needed for the roofing job in Slidell that we'd been assigned the night before. It took awhile to get everything together and whatnot, and our group also grew by two -- Liz from La Crosse, Wisconsin, who had come down for the week and is the daughter of one of the staff workers at Trinity, and Matt from Nebraska, an 18-year old firefighter who was in the midst of a 6-week stretch of volunteering at Trinity Church. Matt was also the foreman for our job, and taught us all how to do just about everything, since none of us really had much of any experience doing work on a roof.

It was a half hour drive from Covington over to Slidell, where we were to fix the roof on the L-shaped ranch house of a lady named Leonita Liu. We all called her Mrs. Lee, and she was the absolute sweetest lady. But more on her later. We took a look around the house and gave the whole roof a once-over, and there was a fair bit of wind and water damage from Hurricane Katrina, so the whole roof needed to be reshingled. Several of us were eager to hop up on the roof, so Matt showed Mike & I how to strip the old shingles and tarpaper with cat's claws, and we just went to town on that, as did several others on one of the other sides. It was hard work, but we had lots of energy and managed to clear off three entire sides of the roof eventually. The downside? By the time we did that it was mid-afternoon, and we had to get new dripedge and tarpaper laid down over all the parts of the roof that we stripped, so that water wouldn't leak through the plywood into the house if it rained overnight. So even though we got half the sides of the roof stripped, that was only about 40% of the roof or so, because among the three remaining sides was the biggest one.

Part of what delayed us was that we discovered some roof-rot, and so we had to wait for someone from Trinity to come with a skil-saw and some OSB (plywood) to replace those sections. So there was awhile where we were kind of just sitting around and waiting until we could resume doing stuff. And we had to wait, because the rot was at the edge and we couldn't put on the dripedge until new OSB was put in, and we couldn't put down the tarpaper until the dripedge was installed. Also, we had to wait for the construction company to deliver the tarpaper and shingles. They were supposed to come at 1pm, but didn't show up till about 3:30, which actually wasn't so bad, because we weren't ready for them until about 3. And then when they got to Mrs. Lee's house, they weren't able to use their boom to unload the shingles on the roof due to all the trees and power lines around, so they just set them on a palette on the driveway and left. That left us all wondering how in the world we were gonna get so many heavy packages of shingles up to the roof by ourselves, but then just after 5, one of the guys from the construction company showed up with his skid loader on his own time to help us get a bunch of the shingles up to the roof. He said he felt bad about leaving us with all that on the ground, and so came straight to our worksite as soon as he clocked out at his job. That was really nice of him, and we were grateful to God that He made that happen.

Early on in the day there wasn't stuff for everyone to be doing up on the roof, so whoever wasn't up there was doing other jobs for Mrs. Lee, like moving a big pile of dirt from her driveway (which had been dug out from under her house after Katrina, I believe) to her backyard, and also got to meet some of Mrs. Lee's neighbors. That's an important part of our work down there, since it's not about the physical work but about the people, and helping and ministering to them.

The weather was also pretty nice, with temps in the 70s. It was sunny in the morning, but then stayed mostly cloudy throughout the afternoon, which mercifully kept the temps manageable up on the roof.

At any rate, we were working on Mrs. Lee's roof until 8pm or so, which meant that we missed 6:30 dinner back at Trinity. When we got back we found out that our group was assigned to clean the showers that day by 10pm, which we weren't too thrilled about since it was already almost 9pm and we hadn't showered or eaten supper. (Every group was assigned to clean the showers, pick up trash, or do some other task at Trinity at least once during the week.) We took showers before going out to eat at Outback, but for whatever reason the showers were ice cold. Not so fun. And then once we got done with dinner, it was well past the 10pm lights-out time, so we had to find our way to our beds in the dark amidst the already-raging snore-fest. What an exhausting day. At least Trinity was understanding about why we didn't clean the showers, when Glenn & Jack explained that we didn't know about our assignment, and that we'd stayed at the worksite really late to get stuff done.

Tuesday, 13 March:

I was a bit more rested when the lights came back on at 6am, because I had been so exhausted by Monday's work that I only woke up a few times during the night. Anyway, we had breakfast and got out to Mrs. Lee's house earlier than the day before, because there wasn't the extra orientation stuff at devotion time in the morning. Matt and Jared, another foreman for EFCA who was kind of supervising several roofing jobs and other projects Trinity was doing in Slidell, showed us how to start shingling and how to do a couple other things, before they went off to another job where the volunteers needed a bit more help. At this point there was enough for just about everyone to be on the roof, with one or two teams of people using the nail gun to put on shingles on one of the sides, while another team (myself included) started stripping all the old stuff off of the front side of the house. That was the largest section of the roof, and took quite awhile to strip, clear the nails, and then tarpaper. But we made a point of not biting off more than we could handle, so that we could be done by 6pm or so, instead of 8pm.

Fortunately the weather again stayed nice, cloudy and in the 70s. There were a lot of scattered showers around, and it even started sprinkling a couple of times, prompting us to get out our *enormous* tarp to cover up the exposed side of the roof that we hadn't papered yet. But God is good and He kept the rain away so that we could keep working. It took about ten of us to fold up the tarp before the day was done, though.

Mrs. Lee really started to show us some of her generosity and appreciation for what we were doing, as she made us all some strong coffee and bought us tasty doughnuts for a mid-morning snack. And that was just the start. :-)

There were also a couple of major God things that happened during the day. Jack & Mike left before lunch for Home Depot to pick up a couple pieces of OSB, because we found some more roof rot on the front face of the roof that we'd just stripped. First of all, that store didn't have any left, they'd just sold out, but they said there was another store across town that still had some. When Jack & Mike got back out to the jeep they discovered that the keys were locked inside, so they prayed they'd be able to find a way to get into the vehicle soon. They called Kim to let us know that they were gonna be at least a couple hours longer, because AAA was on their way in an hour to let them in, and they still had to go find some OSB. Anyway, they were trying unsuccessfully to reach their hands in through the rear window that Jack had forgotten to close completely, and had left open a little bit. Then Jack all of a sudden got an idea, ran back into the store, and came back with a 1x2, which he used to snake through the open window, and hit the power lock button on the driver's door to unlock the vehicle! That enabled them to save almost an hour and get back to Mrs. Lee's sooner. And then on the drive back to Mrs. Lee's, the sheets of OSB got wedged in the u-haul trailer so that the door couldn't be opened. I went over to help Mike & Jack try to lift the door, but it wasn't coming up more than about a foot. We said a little prayer, and then suddenly the wood shifted somehow, and we had to let the door down. Once we did that the wood became unwedged, and we were able to lift the door open no problem! God was definitely at work!

By the end of the day we managed to get part of one of the sides shingled, and the big side tarpapered, which took a lot of work. We got back to Trinity by about 7 or so, a little bit late but still in time for dinner. Everyone else went in to get food, but I ran back over to North Shore Church (our sleeping quarters) to plug in and charge up my computer and phone, which was almost dead. By the time I made it back over to Trinity, Jack was on his way back carrying a plate of food for me, since the cooks were putting everything away. There was a presentation at 7:30 by the Trinity pastor, but I decided instead just to go back over to North Shore and relax and take some quiet time, as did Mike and Jack. I had been wanting to write something about each day as we went throughout the week, but I was always so tired and we were always getting back so late that I didn't have the wherewithal to do that. At least I managed to get stuff written about the first couple days of the trip that evening. Also, we were excited that the no-hot-water problem with the showers had been fixed! Now the temperature dials actually worked, and you could get any temp from freezing to scalding, yay! A real shower for the first time in almost three days felt really good, and I slept soundly, only waking up once during the night.

Wednesday, 14 March:

This day was the hardest, in terms of maintaining a good energy level and focus. We'd already put in two hard days, and we were halfway through the week, but there was still another day of roofing work yet to come on Mrs. Lee's house. I know I was dragging, at least.

The rain didn't stay away completely, as we had a pretty good shower for about 20-30 minutes in mid-morning, just in time for coffee and muffins from Mrs. Lee. It didn't rain the rest of the day, though, which was another blessing from God, so that we didn't have to lose any more time.

After the morning rain stopped we all got back up on the roof to resume work, and Jared stopped by to see how we were progressing. He wound up pulling me off to another roofing job he was supervising in Slidell, because the roof was leaking, the Trinity team wasn't there for some reason, and he needed help to get a tarp laid over it. There were a couple places where we could tell water was getting in, from the baseplate around a pipe that wasn't secured well enough, and from a couple holes in the tarpaper. First we tried Jared's tarp, but it only covered about a quarter of the roof face that was leaking. So then the homeowner ran over to his church nearby and got a larger tarp, but that was only able to cover about half the roof. So Jared called Trinity to have them deliver an even bigger tarp, but during the half hour we were waiting for them the roofing team showed up (which had another person named Jered, so there were three Jared/Jered's at the site at that time, a majority of the Trinity volunteers there, haha), so Jared was helping them get everything patched up. By that point there wasn't anything for me to do, so I kind of felt frustrated, because I knew that I'd be able to be working and helping back at Mrs. Lee's (I hadn't brought work gloves or tools over, since I thought all I was gonna be doing was laying out a tarp over the roof, and that I'd be coming right back). Anyway, during the couple hours I was over there with Jared, I found out that he's a contractor from Grand Marais, Minnesota. I mentioned that I had some relatives up there, and we found out that my cousin Michael does 90% of the sheetrock work for Jared's contracting company in Lutsen. Small world!

After I got back to Mrs. Lee's I was able to help the team get about three-quarters of the big roof face shingled, and the other smaller side that had been started the day before also was nearly finished. We had originally been planning on wrapping up work early, because supper back at Trinity started an hour earlier, at 5:30, because it was one that all the homeowners (and others that the teams met in the neighborhoods) were invited to, followed by a church service. But Mrs. Lee had other plans, and bought some lasagna, salad and french bread for us for supper, and invited some of her neighbors over too! One of her neighbors, Ursula, has a house in Mississippi that's being rebuilt from the ground up by another Christian group, Walls of Hope, and so she's just staying in Slidell until that gets finished. During the meal I was able to talk to Mrs. Lee and get to know her a bit. That was something I'd been getting anxious/frustrated about, because I'd spent virtually all my time up on the roof doing work, and virtually no time getting to know the lady whose roof we were fixing. So I was really glad about that, and really started to feel a bit more connected to her. The others in the team mentioned to her that I play piano, so after we ate she asked me to play something on her piano. It was really out of tune as a result of Katrina's floodwaters, and I tried to play "Magnetic Rag," but couldn't keep focus because the notes I was playing were putting me on edge so much. I asked if she had a hymnal, and she did, although it was in Chinese. Music is a universal language though, and notes are notes, so I shifted the right hand up an octave where it was more in tune, and played through a few familiar hymns for everyone.

It was late again when we got back to Trinity, and the lights had been shut off before I could get back from my shower. That kind of irked me, since the North Shore worship team was having practice in the sanctuary from 7 until almost 10pm, so we couldn't really be in there. I left for the shower at 9:40 and the band was still going, and by the time I was strolling back right at 10:00, the lights were already off. Apparently there was one guy named Roger (who was on his 5th Katrina mission and kinda acted like he owned the place) who was insistent that the lights still go off right at 10pm, even though the band was in there right up till a few minutes before that. So there was awhile after the lights were out when people were coming back, making noise trying to find their stuff with flashlights and blowing up their air mattresses, and everyone was giving Roger a hard time about shutting the lights out at 10 o'clock sharp. I can't say I felt sorry for him though, because given the circumstances lights-out time should've been pushed back at least 15 or 30 minutes, to give people a chance to get situated after the band left. Oh well.

Thursday, 15 March:

Our final day of working on Mrs. Lee's roof didn't start out so well. First of all, the awning on her trailer in her front yard had broken. Also, it had rained a bunch overnight (I was awakened around 2am by some pretty vigorous thunderstorms rolling through), and her roof had leaked in the area of the valley of her roof (in the bend of the "L"). That disappointed all of us, because we thought we'd done a good job, or at least a good enough job with tarpapering that section of the roof, but Mrs. Lee's reaction to it was amazing. Her attitude was so positive, and one of thankfulness to God that it rained when it did, so that we could find the leak and do something about it promptly. Hearing that from her really changed our attitudes.

So while Mike & Chris were working on figuring out how to redo the tarpaper in the valley so that it wouldn't leak, and while a couple other groups were working on finishing shingling a couple faces of the roof and starting on another, and a few other people were fixing the awning, doing cleaning around the yard, or painting her bathroom or doing other little projects Mrs. Lee had for us, I started stripping another face of the roof. We could've been satisfied with just finishing up the projects we'd already started, but we had grown to have such a heart for Lee that we wanted to do as much as we possibly could before we had to leave. Stripping that other side was tough because we couldn't just shove the debris off the edge, due to some tall bushes and the neighbor's yard starting about three feet away from Mrs. Lee's house. Since that whole area would've been a bear to clean up, we shoveled and swept all the debris off either the front side or back side of the house, which took a lot more time and effort. But in the end we were able to finish shingling three sides of the house completely, and have two sides tarpapered. There was only one side of the house, the one on the back with the chimney and all sorts of pipes, that we didn't get to. All in all we thought that was a pretty good four-day accomplishment for 10-12 people that had very little previous roofing experience. And next week there's a team of professional roofers coming down to Trinity, so Mrs. Lee (and some others around Slidell) will have their roofs finished off by pros. Hopefully they don't cringe at some of the surely amateurish ways we did some things.

Mid-afternoon also brought some excitement when the Slidell Fire Department dropped by for a visit. Glenn, Jack & Sue had started a leaf fire in the backyard since FEMA won't pick up leaves or anything in a trash bag (they'll pick up anything else left curbside though), but apparently there's a nosy neighbor nearby who has a reputation for tattling on people for things like having too many cars in their driveway. We didn't get a citation or anything, but the firemen did have to put the fire out. In the evening when we got back Glenn found out that we were the first ever Trinity team to have the fire department show up to a worksite, hehe. Even though it's apparently against Slidell city ordinances to have a leaf fire or anything, nobody's gotten in trouble for it before, so now Trinity will no longer tell people to burn leaves there.

After we were done with the roof and were just doing some clean-up on the ground, a bunch of us got together and duct-taped Max to the side of the u-haul trailer. It was something we'd been threatening for days, pretty much ever since we got down to Louisiana, haha. But he was a good sport about it, he let us do it, hehe.

Mrs. Lee came through with even more food for us. For mid-morning she made coffee yet again, only this time with some Godiva chocolate in it. She also bought two freshly-made King cakes for us, which were fantastic. I got one of the baby Jesus figurines too, hehe. And then for lunch she went out and bought us all "Lee-burgers," which she says are the best burgers in New Orleans. After tasting them I wouldn't doubt it, either! And then on top of all of that she got supper for us too (and the same neighbors from the night before), a bunch of chicken, salad, and spaghetti noodles (not with sauce, but with garlic salt and cajun seasoning -- excellent!), it was delicious! Mrs. Lee really spoiled us with so much excellent food all week long, it was absolutely wonderful.

She had also borrowed four hymnals from her Methodist church so that I could play again and people could sing along. She picked out three hymns she wanted me to play, including "Trust and Obey." I was really glad that I was able to do that for her and for everyone else, it was a really nice time even with the out of tune piano. We also all got together and signed a Bible that we gave to her before we left, she was so appreciative of that. She'd taken a lot of pictures on her digital camera during the week too, so she burned us a disc with all of her pictures. Our plan is for me to compile the pictures from everyone in the group into one or two discs and then send them out to everyone, including Mrs. Lee. Anyway, eventually it got to be after 9 o'clock and was time to go, however, and it was really hard for all of us to leave. We'd all grown quite attached to Mrs. Lee, and were so appreciative of the love and generosity she'd shown to us, and the encouragement and blessing she'd been to us, just as she was so appreciative of everything we did for her.

Mrs. Lee is a 65-year old retired biochemist, who is originally from the Philippines. She has three kids, all of whom are doctors I believe, and the one who lives in New Orleans was able to stop by briefly Thursday afternoon to say hi and thank us before he had to go to work. She's a strong Christian, and managed to stay positive even through the hurricane. Because of the damage to her house that required a lot of renovation, she's been living in an RV in her front yard since May, and she set herself a deadline of a year for living in the trailer. A Reformed Church group had recently been in there to do a lot of work on the inside of the house, and it was starting to look really nice. So with her roof being finished next week, and the sink, counter and cabinets being put in by the Reformed Church in a month or so, she should be able to meet her deadline of being out of her trailer by May! We're all praying that that happens.

(The blog entry was originally too long to be contained in a single post, so please scroll down to continue reading below. If Part II is not located immediately below, then click here to get to the post.)

Posted by Jared at 10:57 PM | Comments (2)

Katrina Disaster Relief, Part II

(This is Part II of a lengthy blog entry. Click here to see Part I of this post if it is not immediately above.)

Friday, 16 March:

Several of us had been getting anxious that we'd been down in Louisiana working for four days and that we hadn't yet seen New Orleans itself, though our wonderful time with Mrs. Lee had alleviated some of those feelings. "Super Friday" took care of all of that though, with scheduled activities in the heart of the Crescent City. We packed up all of our stuff so that we wouldn't have to return to Trinity Church when we were done, and headed across the 24-mile Lake Ponchartrain Causeway to Castle Rock Community Church, an inner-city church near the Garden District that has teamed up with Trinity Church for the EFCA Disaster Relief ministries (in addition to teams of people being based out of Trinity for a week of volunteering, other teams stay at Castle Rock).

What Super Friday consists of is all the teams from both Castle Rock and Trinity getting together to do street cleaning in the neighborhoods around Castle Rock, which translated this particular week into nearly 300 volunteers. Each group of about ten people is given a 5-block stretch to clean. We're not allowed to pick up trash from private property, so we're only able to clean up from sidewalk to street, and then on the street itself as well. All the volunteers are also given white "I (heart) N.O." t-shirts to wear, so that they're easily visible and identifiable in the community. Since this ministry has been going on for over a year, everyone from around there knows that we're from Castle Rock and that we're there to pick up trash. We were assigned to clean a stretch of Washington Ave starting at Martin Luther King Jr Blvd, and ironically it was the same stretch of street that Glenn had cleaned on his trip down there on one of his previous two trips. As we were cleaning quite a few of the cars that drove by honked and waved at us, so it was nice to know that we were appreciated by the residents. Because of a bunch of extra cheering/motivation-type stuff at Castle Rock after we arrived there, we didn't actually get to our street cleaning site until about 11am, which was slightly frustrating.

The street really wasn't too bad, for the most part it was just litter that we were picking up. There were some houses that still hadn't been touched since the hurricane, but there were some that were clearly being lived in and at least kind of taken care of. We were all ready to be intentional and get out and meet some of the residents while we were cleaning, and hopefully share the Gospel too, so I was disappointed when we really didn't see anybody out walking or sitting on their porches for the first hour. By the time noon rolled around, I was cleaning a section of street with Mike, and then we saw a lady across the street, sitting on her porch and smoking a cigarette. Mike walked right over there as soon as we saw her, and I just finished collecting a couple handfuls of trash before I walked over.

Beatrice is a 62-year old retired tutor/teacher, and is a really cool lady. She started telling us her story about when Hurricane Katrina hit. Once the water started rising the morning after the hurricane, they were able to gather some food from the first floor before they had to retreat to the second floor. She said the fact they had an upstairs floor is what saved them, because at its highest point the water was nearly up to the ceiling on their first floor, before settling at a depth of about six feet above the sidewalk. She and her husband, who is a minister, and a few other people eventually managed to get up onto the roof, where they had to wait for three days to be rescued by National Guard helicopter. Fortunately they had enough food with them that they didn't run out until the night before their rescue, and the rescue would've come sooner if it weren't for a mess of power lines in their area. Also, when she was grabbing some food she managed to stuff a little pouch with her ID and house key into her pocket, which really came in handy when they were evacuated to Texarkana and when they eventually came back.

She and her husband had managed to purchase a used car in Texarkana, and came back to New Orleans in December 2005, if I recall correctly. They didn't have much, but she said that this was home, and that God is good and would provide. Right now they're only subsisting on her husband's social security checks, so they don't really have money to save up to fix the house. She did have a retirement fund, but used most of that up to take care of her ailing mother some time before the hurricane struck. Beatrice also had the amazing perspective that they really didn't have it quite so bad, because they at least had a roof over their heads (albeit leaky), and some food to eat (although nothing spectacular). They had to get rid of everything on the first floor, though it's still only partially gutted. One side of their roof had suffered a tremendous amount of damage, and all the water had weakened the structural integrity of the upstairs rooms on that side that it's still not safe to go into those rooms. Now the other side of the roof is really starting to leak though, and that's a problem. They'd been told they were approved for some sort of loan, but then never heard from that agency again. They've tried calling the Army Corps of Engineers repeatedly to have them put a tarp over the roof, at least as a stopgap measure until they can find a more permanent fix for the roof, but they've never come, despite saying several times that they would. At that time Mary (Liz's mother, and a staff worker at Trinity Church) walked up when she saw Mike & I were talking with Beatrice. That was really good, because Mary had a much better idea of what other resources were available, and was in a much better position to get her contact information later for an organization that might be able to help, whether it's Trinity/Castle Rock/EFCA, a Presbyterian aid group, or some other organization. We all prayed with her, and she thanked us for being such an encouragement to her. She said she had been just restless earlier in the morning, and felt like God was wanting her to go sit outside for a bit. And then we all came by and had a chat with her. That was totally a God thing, on both sides, for her to come out to her porch and for us to be assigned that street and then to go talk to her.

That wasn't all though. Right after that she showed us into her house (by this point Glenn and Matt had also come up and joined in our conversation with her), and it was reasonably large for that part of the city. The whole first floor had been opened up, and actually was the home of a Baptist church that her husband pastored. The church was founded way back in 1927, and at one point had 150 members before Wal-Mart came in, forcing the church and a whole bunch of residents off their property. Then the church moved to their house after that, but got significantly smaller, and gradually got smaller yet because people grew weary of taking the bus there, until Katrina came and scattered all who were left. What we saw of the first floor was in bad shape, but it apparently was better than it was when they first came back. The hurricane destroyed their organ, all the pews, the tile floor, the ceiling, walls, the kitchen sink & appliances, basically everything.

Then we went back outside and she had us meet a couple of her neighbors, including one man who recognized Glenn from the previous time he was cleaning that street a few months ago, which was cool. By this time her husband had also come back from wherever he was, so we got to meet him. Beatrice was excitedly telling him about us and that we might be able to get them some help for their roof. He didn't say much for awhile, but I did see a couple of tears well up in his eyes as she was telling him. So we all continued talking to all of them for awhile, when the Castle Rock hot dog truck rolled up with free lunch for all of us volunteers and whoever from the community was around. A couple other Trinity staff workers were on the truck, and Mary told them about Beatrice and the reverend's home and church, and they were walking around taking some pictures, and trying to figure out what could be done to help. Since it's also a church, Mary thinks that it might be able to be made a priority, since that would be an even greater benefit to the community around there to have that church back. We're praying that that can happen, that their house and church can be fixed.

After the hot dog truck (and then an ice cream truck!) left we stayed around for a little bit longer, until close to 2pm, when those of us from our group prayed with Beatrice, her husband and her neighbors. After a couple minutes the man who Glenn knew saw us praying and came running up to join us too. :-) I was once again moved to tears as everyone was praying, especially the reverend. I'd talked a little bit with him earlier, but nobody else had really heard him speak until this marvelous prayer flowed from his lips. It was quiet and somewhat muffled by a passing truck, but it was powerful, passionate and eloquent. We were all amazed and moved by it, and we all found ourselves saying "Amen!" throughout it.

So as a team we'd only gotten about two blocks cleaned out of the five we were assigned, but that was more than okay because of the connections we made (Jack and some others had made connections with some people around the corner from Beatrice). After all, everything about this ministry is about the people and not the actual work. And even though we had just met these people, and had talked with Beatrice for two hours (and the others for less time than that), we felt a tremendous connection with them, and found it hard to leave.

Our whole team decided it was time to wrap up street cleaning, so we went back to Castle Rock to return our tools, and then headed out for the Ninth Ward before starting our drive back home. The destruction in the Ninth Ward is still immense. House after broken house is still uninhabited, with spraypaint on the walls indicating the dates the house was searched (when the water was high, and then after the waters receded), what organization searched it, and how many dead people and animals were found inside. And even though there were still a very large number of dilapidated houses that were most likely due to be bulldozed, those were the good ones. The *really* badly damaged houses had already been bulldozed, and so there were large open fields in the middle of the Ninth Ward. All that was left of these houses were the cement steps leading up to what was once the porch, with the address spraypainted onto the steps. It was very powerful and poignant to see this motif repeated over and over again, to know that every one of those stoops used to be a house where people lived. There were occasional piles of stuff next to these home sites, piles of old chairs, bicycles, toys and other items that were symbols of the life that was once in that place, and a memory to it. I took a ton of pictures there in the Ninth Ward, but none of them can possibly do it justice. Seeing really is believing, and no amount of pictures in newspapers or on the TV can really prepare you for seeing it in person, and seeing the desolation and destruction all around you in every direction as far as you can see, except for the stark cement wall of the levee that broke (and will break again someday, no doubt), which stretches in a straight line as far as you can see. Only God knows where all those people are, whether they died in their homes with the flood or whether they managed to survive, only to be scattered to some other place, but I don't foresee that anyone will be moving back to the Ninth Ward ever again.

As we were leaving New Orleans we were noticing that even though there still is a lot of destruction around, there are signs of hope. Glenn noticed that there are far more newly built or renovated houses and structures throughout the city, and that there are far more people around now. New Orleans still has a long way to go, but after 18 months there are growing signs of hope.

We got stuck in traffic on I-10 between New Orleans and Slidell, due to road construction and a car accident. Double whammy. So when it took us an hour to travel two miles (which gave us a feel for how it must have been like when everyone was trying to evacuate before Katrina made landfall), we decided we were all way too tired (both physically and emotionally) to make it to Fort Payne, Alabama, where we had reservations. So we called and cancelled our resos, and managed to make it to Tuscaloosa by 10:30, when we had all decided we'd had enough, and just wanted a warm shower and a real bed.

Saturday, 17 March:

We hit the road on Saint Patrick's Day bright and early at 7am (ugh), and managed to get back to State College right at midnight (ugh). There was plenty to make time fly though, including a fireworks stop in Tennessee, a rousing game of "My Cow" played over the walkie-talkies between vehicles in Virginia (Mike & I in the jeep, Chris & Max in the van), and then a good long stretch of listening to "Prairie Home Companion" on Virginia Public Radio. Again we all took our turns driving so we could take turns sleeping throughout the day, but we also had plenty of good conversation. That's another thing I really enjoyed about this trip, in addition to connecting with people in Louisiana, we really connected with and learned a lot about each other. Before the trip I really didn't know anyone. By the end I got to know everyone pretty well, though, but I felt like I especially got to know Mike really well, so that was cool.

We were really tired by the end, though. It was also quite cold and windy in the when we were unloading stuff from the u-haul, jeep and van to our own vehicles. Talk about a rude "welcome home" after experiencing temps in the 70s all week down in Louisiana! Fortunately Mike's mom and sister were kind enough to scrape the snow off of all our cars earlier in the day so that we wouldn't have to dig out late at night too. I was quite glad about that since I only had a light spring jacket to go over my t-shirt, and no hat or gloves. I didn't exactly anticipate old man winter awaking from a coma when I was packing for the trip. Anyway, Matt wound up staying at my place overnight, since his wife was still down in Philly with their van because of the snowstorm, and so he had no way to get home or to get to work on campus in the morning. And as tired as we all were, several of us still made it to church in the morning. Not the 9am service though. ;-)

Overall impressions/other reflections:

I'm really glad that I chose to go down to Louisiana during spring break for Katrina cleanup. I've been thinking about a few words to describe the week. Eye-opening. Stretching. Challenging. Tiring. Fellowshipping. Valuable. Encouraging.

My expectations were different in many ways from what actually happened, partly because we were roofing and building instead of gutting and tearing down. And then because we really only met other Christians down there, we didn't have the chance to spread the Gospel to non-believers that we thought we would. But God showed us that He's sovereign over everything, with all the little things that He took care of and showed us during the week. He also taught us that whatever our expectations might be, He has a better plan, because each of the people that we ran into, including Mrs. Lee and her neighbors, & Beatrice, the Reverend and their neighbors, needed to be edified and encouraged, and God chose us to be the instruments to accomplish that. I expected that we'd get to meet several people down there, but I didn't expect to become so emotionally attached and invested in their situations so quickly. We may not have understood why we were sent to Mrs. Lee's house right away, since it didn't seem as devastated as what we were expecting, but as the week wore on it became clear that God wanted us to be there. And then after an hour it became clear why we were assigned to clean that particular street in the central city.

This is the first disaster that the EFCA has responded to. When they started out, they had no materials, no tools, no infrastructure, no organizers, no volunteers. But all the tools, supplies, and people that are there now were provided by God, He has moved people to donate everything, their money, tools and time. So now that they have an organizational infrastructure in place, I'm optimistic that they'll be able to respond more quickly, nimbly and efficiently to other disasters that will inevitably strike our nation. Hopefully the next major hurricane or natural disaster won't siphon everyone away from all the work that remains in and around New Orleans, but will instead inspire even more people to volunteer wherever it's needed. It's easy to volunteer money, but volunteering your time is far more valuable, if there's an organization in place where you can plug in and help.

God is definitely at work down on the Gulf Coast. Regardless of whether God sent the hurricane as some sort of judgment on the city of New Orleans (though, to be fair, any place with humanity there deserves His judgment), or whether He simply allowed it to happen, He is turning it to His perfect will. Church organizations, across a wide swath of denominations, are pretty much the only groups down there still doing volunteer work (Habitat for Humanity is a notable exception of a secular group still doing lots of good work down there), long after Katrina has left the front pages and top stories of the news. By working through His Church and volunteers down there, believers and non-believers alike are being encouraged, both the volunteers like us that go down there and the residents that are slowly coming back to the area, and the Gospel is being spread. The people who are moving back are exactly the type of people whom you'd want to build a community around. The people we met are tough as nails and have a strong Christian faith. The fact that they can still praise God even after everything that's happened to them is a powerful testimony, and really makes me think about how much I've been blessed, even when I'm going through what I perceive to be difficulties. I would definitely love to go back at some point on another volunteer trip to help the people of New Orleans (or to do something similar closer to home), and I would really encourage everyone to consider doing the same. You won't regret it.

Posted by Jared at 10:55 PM | Comments (2)

March 17, 2007

Finally, a Real Bed!

[On location in Tuscaloosa, Alabama]

I know I said I'd post a blog entry or two from New Orleans this week during my Katrina trip, but as it turns out, we didn't have internet access while we were down there. And even if we did, I would've been too tired to post much of anything. So look for a longer post sometime in the next few days giving some more detail (and a few pictures) about our *amazing* week doing Katrina disaster relief. I mostly just wanted to put a post up here from Alabama. :-) We stopped here on our way back from New Orleans, and we've got a nice 17-18 hour drive ahead of us to get back to State College tomorrow. But it was about 75 when we left New Orleans this afternoon, and there's been a snowstorm hitting State College today, so when we get back really late we'll have to dig our cars out from almost a foot of snow. Lovely. Just lovely. Anyway, time for a real bed for the first time since last Saturday night! Wahoo!

Posted by Jared at 01:11 AM | Comments (0)

March 08, 2007

Spring Break Service

Have we seen our last accumulating snowfall of the season in State College? That very well may be the case. All the snow around here had melted, except for a few stray patches, before we got around 4 inches of very fluffy, powdery snow overnight Tuesday into Wednesday morning, thanks to a surprisingly moist Alberta clipper that rolled through here. All the schools around here were cancelled yesterday because of the snow too, and I'm still amazed at how little it takes for schools to shut down. Maybe it's because they know the Borough of State College and PennDOT don't know how to plow streets. Or maybe State College doesn't plow anymore because they know the schools are going to close anyway. Oh well. At least plowing snow is going to be probably irrelevant for the next 8+ months, as a giant springtime warmup is on the way starting this weekend for most of the country.

I won't be around to experience the warmer weather in State College next week during spring break though, because I'll be someplace even warmer -- New Orleans! In fewer than 48 hours I'll be leaving with about ten other people from my church to drive down to the Big Easy and help with Katrina cleanup for a few days. This will be the fourth Katrina relief team that my church has sent down to New Orleans since last summer, but it'll be the first time I've gone. We'll stay overnight in Fort Payne, Alabama on Saturday night, and then make the rest of the trip to Louisiana on Sunday.

We'll be staying at Trinity Evangelical Free Church in Covington, Louisiana, which is across Lake Ponchartrain from the city of New Orleans, along with 200-250 other people from around the country who are going down there for next week. They say that the devastation down there from is still absolutely mind-boggling, even though Hurricane Katrina hit way back in August 2005. Because cleaning all that up is still the primary need, and not building (though they do have teams doing that too, just not as many), from Monday-Thursday we'll probably be gutting houses. That way the inspectors can come in and make a good judgement on whether the house can be fixed up, or whether it needs to be torn down completely before being rebuilt. And then on Friday we'll be teaming up with an inner city church to do some street cleaning and other ministries in the city, before we head out mid-afternoon back to Fort Payne, Alabama for Friday night, which will put us back in State College on Saturday night.

Once meals and gas and everything else are factored in, the trip costs approximately $350/person. If any of you would like to donate anything to help offset the cost of the Katrina trip (even $5 or $10 would be a help), feel free to drop by my office in Walker, or mail a check (payable to "State College Evangelical Free Church"). My mailing address is on my Contact page. If you do decide to offer some financial support, it'd be best if I could have it by early April sometime, I don't need to have it before I go down there. And if you can't offer any financial support, your prayer support would be appreciated too, that we would be able to be a blessing to the people down there, that we would be flexible to whatever God sends our way, and that we would be willing to learn what God wants to teach us while we're down there. Thank you in advance for your support, in whatever form(s) it comes in!

It's not exactly going to be a relaxing spring break, and I'm not really looking forward to the physical labor itself (especially with how dirty it's likely to be), but I am looking forward to being able to help people. I've picked up most of the supplies I'll need, including an air mattress (we'll be sleeping on the sanctuary floor at Trinity Church), work boots, work gloves, goggles (the church is taking care of getting masks), and about the only thing I still have to maybe get are some cheap clothes that I wouldn't be afraid to throw away after a work day or two if they get particularly grungy.

Trinity Church does have wi-fi, and I am planning on bringing my laptop computer and camera down there, so I should hopefully be able to put a couple of updates on my blog during some of the evenings at the church. I also hope to spend at least a little time working on the intro chapter to my thesis when I'm down there, but we'll see if that happens. I may very well be too exhausted to be thinking properly about that when I'm down there.

Time to get to work and get to class.

Posted by Jared at 09:29 AM | Comments (1)

March 03, 2007

Crazy Carl's Birthday in Baltimore

[On location in Baltimore, Maryland]

So apparently yesterday was "State" Patrick's Day in State College, since the real Saint Patrick's Day falls at the end of spring break for Penn State (March 10-18). I discovered that the undergrads were gonna be celebrating St Patty's Day yesterday when I walked past the frat house next to Walker Building, and there was loud, fast Celtic/Irish music playing at 10:30 in the morning with all the frat boys trying (and failing, I might add) to dance to it. And some of them had full green body paint on. Kinda ridiculous. And then when I was leaving Walker for the day, they were shouting "a**hole" at me as I was walking by just because I wasn't wearing green. Whatever. It's not even the right day, for crying out loud! If I'd known it was Fake Patrick's Day I would've worn an orange shirt anyway.

Yesterday evening I made the 3-hour drive from State College down to Baltimore. Carl threw a birthday party for himself at his apartment, and there were probably 30 people here at the height of it, it was packed. Most of the people were other Teach for America people here in Baltimore, but the other Gusties besides me that showed up were Betsy (who had driven up North Carolina for an interview at George Washington University earlier yesterday), Jolene (who flew out here from Minnesota for a biophysics conference), Chantal & Erin (who both live here in Baltimore currently). We had been planning on going out somewhere for karaoke last night, but everyone was so tired we just stayed in and had a mellow evening catching up and talking and whatnot, it was still lots of fun. We were gettin kinda tired by 3am though, haha. Then this morning Carl, Jolene, Betsy, Chantal & I got some brunch at this really cool greasy-spoon type diner just a few blocks away called Pete's Grille. Mmmm, blueberry waffles and eggs... So good...

So yeah, this afternoon the plan was for Carl & I to get lots of work done (grading/reading/research/whatever). Before I came down, Carl pleaded with me to bring down stuff to work on because he desperately needed to do stuff this afternoon, because otherwise he knew he'd just procrastinate like usual. I don't know why we make plans for doing work when we hang out, because it just doesn't ever work, we always get talkin about tons of stuff, haha. Especially about cool tech toys and computers (when it's not politics or philosophy). So now I'm ogling over maybe a digital photo frame like Carl has, or starting to consider getting a new Mac desktop computer at some point this year. Though when I pimped out the computer like I wanted, the sticker shock really set in, because I almost certainly wouldn't be able to both get a sweet new computer *and* take a 2-3 week trip to Australia next year. I just know my budget wouldn't be able to handle that, not on a grad student salary, even with the slight pay bump I'd get for finishing my Master's Degree this summer (and even with the Apple student discount). So anyway, now I have to take some time thinking about what to do, what to choose, or if I should choose either. They're both so tempting...

Hmm, maybe I should start workin on making my research poster for the upcoming Penn State Graduate Exhibition like I had planned to, at least until whatever fun stuff we end up deciding to do tonight. :-)

Posted by Jared at 04:32 PM | Comments (6)

March 01, 2007

Yea or Neigh?

Wyld Stallyn basketball... Are you in? It's the intramural basketball sensation that's been sweeping Walker Building! We meteo grads hadn't practiced together at all before the start of the season, and it showed in our first game, when it took us over 5 turnover-filled minutes to score (incidentally, I somehow got our team's first points of the year). We trailed 13-6 at half, but played much better in the 2nd half, closing the gap to 28-25, and we even had a few three-point attempts to tie in the last 30 seconds. Our second game was much the same, falling behind 24-10 at the half, before cutting the final deficit to 40-35 (I even had a couple 3s!). Unfortunately our trend of crappy 1st halves continued the next week, when we trailed 20-5 before eventually losing 33-18 (we played *very* poorly as a team that game). And this week our switch from zone to man defense had no effect; we trailed again 20-5 at the half. But we were playing clearly the best team in the division, and they pulled away to cruise to a 51-21 victory. Heck, their point guard outscored our entire team, mostly by draining deep 3 after deep 3. And then their 2-guard started knocking down 3s as well, there really wasn't anything we could do. This coming Tuesday in Rec Hall we'll put our .000 winning percentage on the line one final time. It'd be nice if we could win a game, but we're still having fun.

Cootie Brown is down to just two more concerts before they're done with regular performances, this Friday in Bar Bleu and next Tuesday in Zeno's. I really enjoy listening to them play (and watching Jacob go crazy on the congas, haha), and I had some time this week, so I went with Stephanie to hear them play at Zeno's. She seemed to really like them too, and we stuck around for the whole show so we could get our money's worth. :-) Hopefully their album comes out soon, since after spring break I won't be able to get my Cootie Brown fix for awhile, hehe.

After 30+ hours of work, I finally finished my math assignment this morning. Ugh. It was due Tuesday, but we were all granted an extension because the professor was gone last week and not really available for questions. I almost would've preferred just turning it in Tuesday with less done, but oh well. Now I've got a bunch of research stuff to do before spring break, but on the plus side, we're finally getting some of the results we were aiming to get! Hooray for being unstuck and being able to make progress at long last!

Man, how come we can't be as lucky here in central PA as the Upper Midwest, getting nailed by two major winter storms in the span of a week? Le sigh...

For the third week in a row I'm not gonna be at Friday night team trivia, this time because I'm heading to Baltimore! Carl's throwing a birthday party for himself, and Jolene (& Sara too?) is flying in from Minneapolis for a physics conference, and Betsy is driving up from North Carolina as well. Should be a fun time!

Posted by Jared at 11:48 PM | Comments (0)