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September 26, 2007

Brimley Birthday

Well, our softball season is done. Our regular season finale of two 4-0 teams ended in a mercy rule, except this time we were the ones getting mercied. The onslaught started in the top of the 1st, and by the middle of the 2nd, we were trailing 16-2 to the Jager Bombs. They were a far better team than we were, and didn't have really have any holes in their masher-filled lineup. We made a bunch of defensive miscues too, which didn't help matters. I almost had two running catches only to have the ball just tip off my glove both times, and on a third ball I lost it in the lights on its way up (and then it went above the plane of the lights, so it was completely dark and hidden up there, almost impossible to see). Moyer and I were standing around in the outfield looking up, asking each other where the ball was -- and then it landed about six feet to my right. Doh! The final score was 23-8 after 4 innings, and even if we'd played a perfect game in the field, they still would've won, probably 14-8 or so. I only had two at-bats on the evening, going 1-for-2 with a fielder's choice and a patented "swinging bunt" infield single. Oh well, it was a nice run again. Now it's time to turn our attention to IM flag football! We've got a scrimmage tomorrow evening with some of the guys from geoscience to tune up for the season, which starts the first week of October. Currently I'm slated to be the starting right wide receiver and the starting weak defensive end. Hopefully we can get a couple people from geosci to join our team so that we don't need as many of us pulling double duty on both sides of the ball.

And who knew that I shared a birthday with the one and only "diabeetus" spokesman himself, Wilford Brimley? Apparently Bob did, thanks for pointing that out! I don't think my life will ever be the same, haha.

And happy "-1 year anniversary" to Chris & Amber tomorrow! I might very well be spending my 25th birthday next year somewhere in the state of Ohio. :-)

And while I'm at it with the YouTube stuff, here's a 10-min condensed game from the Geelong-Collingwood preliminary final last weekend. Plenty of great goals to see!

Only a couple more days until the Grand Final! Car'n the Cats! Pummel the Power!

Posted by Jared at 09:07 PM | Comments (0)

September 23, 2007

Post-Mortem of Another Loss to scUM

I cannot stand University of Michigan athletics (football, especially). I really can't. You might be able to say that I hate Michigan. I despise Michigan more than Ohio State, and usually more than Notre Dame (which is really saying something). Now Penn State has lost *nine* consecutive games to Michigan, this one by a score of 14-9. And the reason why this game in particular is so frustrating (as opposed to, say, last year's game when Michigan's defense absolutely dominated the entire game and they were without a doubt the better team), is that this game was utterly winnable. Some people blame the very conservative game-plan/play-caling that Joe Paterno and the other PSU coaches had as the primary reason we lost. While I think that certainly was a factor that led to us losing the game, I'm of the opinion that the main reason we lost was a lack of execution. First, our offensive line played very poorly almost the entire game. There just wasn't any push off the line. Only rarely did they create holes for our running backs to go through, or provide enough protection for Morelli not to have to scramble for his life or make a hurried decision. It seemed like just about every single play the Michigan defensive line was beating them into the backfield, either stopping the runner for no gain or forcing a bad throw/decision from Morelli. The most aggressive game plan in the world can't work if your offensive line can't block. Second, we had two absolutely killer turnovers, both fumbles. The first of these, a fumble by Morelli when he was forced to scramble due to our porous offensive line, was deep in Penn State territory in the 1st quarter and essentially gave Michigan their first touchdown. The second fumble came in the 3rd quarter, when Penn State had finally put together a decent drive deep into Michigan territory, essentially preventing a Penn State touchdown. It was Austin Scott's fifth lost fumble in 40-some carries this season, which is absolutely inexcusable (he should be benched for Rodney Kinlaw, who has shown better burst and better vision anyway, and actually holds onto the ball). So if you take away that Michigan touchdown and give Penn State a touchdown instead of having those two fumbles, suddenly Penn State wins 16-7, fans are praising JoePa and the coaching staff for finding a way to grind out a win against a very good Michigan team on the road, and the Nittany Lions are still in the hunt for a berth in the (Mythical) National Championship game. But Penn State just didn't execute when it counted, and Michigan did, and so Penn State lost the game. It's frustrating. It's disappointing. It makes me really upset that we lost to Michigan *again* when we were just one play away from winning the entire game. No matter what happens the rest of the season, there will always be a very bitter taste in my mouth because we lost this eminently winnable game to Michigan.

While Penn State's shot at being crowned national champions is all but gone (barring some really strange happenings), all is not lost. If the Nittany Lions run the table and win the rest of the games in the regular season, they still have a good shot at winning the Big Ten title or getting into another BcS bowl game. Basically, I'll be cheering for Wisconsin and Ohio State both to roll into Beaver Stadium in October with undefeated records, so that they can both leave with a loss. That's what Penn State needs to regain respect and salvage its season. And I'll be cheering for Wisconsin and one other team to take down Michigan in the Big Ten portion of the schedule. But first things first, Penn State has to regroup and avoid the upset at Illinois next weekend. If they don't do that, who knows how far down this season could start to spiral.

In one of my posts last week I mentioned how I'd finally gotten my car back from the shop, after being without it for over a couple weeks. Well, I very nearly wound up without a car (for all intents and purposes) again this weekend. I was coming back from worship band practice at church on Saturday night, and was only half a block from my apartment when suddenly police lights started flashing right behind me. So I turned onto Pugh and then into my apartment's driveway, when the officer informed me that my license plate tabs were expired as of the end of August. [DOH!!] I was completely unaware that they had, and hadn't noticed that my tabs expired in August. In my defense, I don't recall ever getting a registration renewal notice postcard from the Wisconsin DMV, but I still should've noticed. So the cop wrote me a $107 ticket (ouch...) and told me I had to park my car and not drive it again until I had proof of renewing my registration. After calling home and seeing if anything from the DMV had been sent there (nothing had, to my parents' knowledge), I was resigned to the fact that I'd be unable to drive my car for a few days or a couple weeks at least, while playing out the whole process by mail with getting my tabs renewed. I did some checking online though, and saw that I could renew my registration online, provided I had a particular number from my certificate of registration. I dug around in my room a bit, and somehow managed to find my old (August expiry) certificate of registration that I'd been sent when I got my new license plates back in May (after my old ones got stolen on April Fools Day). Success!! So that enabled me to renew it online, and to print out a receipt/proof of registration page that will suffice until my new tabs are mailed to me. If I get pulled over again in the time being, at least I'll have that to show the cop and it'll hopefully be all fine. And I'll make doubly sure that I always have my proof of registration on me at all times from now on!

We won our softball game on Thursday night, 19-3 in 4 innings. The team we played was pretty bad, and was just there to have fun. After scoring 9 in the top of the 1st, we just kinda cruised the next three innings. They just gave us so many extra outs, and you can't do that in IM softball and have a prayer of winning. I went 2-for-2 with an infield single, a walk, a single up the middle and two runs scored, so my season average is up to 7-for-11 (.636), and I also caught both fly balls that came my way in right-center (I didn't make either of them as adventurous as I traditionally do, either!). Our final game of the regular season is this Tuesday night at 7pm, against another team that's also 4-0. A trip to the playoffs is on the line, we've gotta bring our A-game!

Posted by Jared at 11:53 PM | Comments (1)

September 21, 2007

Cats are Clear!

Geelong is clear through to the 2007 AFL Grand Final!! I woke up at 7am this morning to listen to the 2nd half of the Cats preliminary final against the Collingwood Magpies (think of them as the Yankees of Aussie rules football) on the radio over the internet, and it was a heckuva match at the MCG with a raucous crowd of over 98,000. The Cats were up 48-43 at halftime and also kicked a goal right before three-quarter time to pull back ahead of the Pies 67-62. Collingwood kicked the first goal of the 4th quarter to take a 68-67 lead, but then Geelong charged back to kick four goals and a behind to pull ahead 86-68 for what looked like the dagger, but Collingwood wasn't done yet. The Pies showed some real pluck and pulled to within 5 points of the Cats with 1 minute left (meaning a goal would've won it for Collingwood). Fortunately the Cats defense held in the final seconds, securing a thrilling 92-87 victory!! Wow!

This'll be the first Grand Final appearance for the Cats since 1995, if I recall correctly, and they haven't won the Premiership since the late 1960s, so this is a big deal for Geelong. Next weekend for the Grand Final the Cats will play the winner of tomorrow's match between the Port Adelaide Power and the North Melbourne Kangaroos. Whichever team wins, the Cats should be the favourite, as the Cats were far and away the best team in the regular season. Both teams have beaten the Cats this season though, the Kangaroos a week 5 upset in Geelong to put the Cats record at 2-3, and then the Cats reeled off 15 consecutive wins before losing at home to the Power on a last-second goal in week 21. The Cats won their final regular season match, and then destroyed the Kangaroos in the first round of the finals 156-50 (the short YouTube clip below is from that match), before edging perennial power Collingwood 92-87 today. Go Cats! We are Geelong!

[UPDATE 22 Sep 2007 at 10:10am: Port Adelaide annihilated the Kangaroos 133-46 overnight in Adelaide, so the Grand Final is all set: Cats v Power. Should be a dandy!]

Alright, off to campus for me. Only 30 hours or so until the Penn State-Michigan game... WE ARE... PENN STATE!! BEAT MICHIGAN!!

Posted by Jared at 08:42 AM | Comments (0)

September 20, 2007

Hate Week Haiku

The Audibles message boards at FightOnState.com have a thread for Michigan week haikus right now. Most of them are pretty clever, and even follow the 5-7-5 syllable rule, though none of them were true haikus, because they failed to make a seasonal/nature reference (unless mentioning Nittany Lions and/or Wolverines ("Skunkbears") counts). So here's my haiku that I just posted a few minutes ago:

Chill of autumn comes
Revenge is dish best served cold
Lions eat Skunkbears

Only two more days till Penn State plays Michigan. Getting more and more nervous...

Posted by Jared at 09:01 AM | Comments (0)

3-0 Starts

I have my car back! Ripka's finally got it done yesterday, so now after two and a half weeks of being without it, I now have a car again! And the best part of it all is that it only cost $146 for the part and labor all together, which was less than I was expecting. Let me tell ya, you don't really realize how convenient it is to have a car until you go without one for awhile.

The fall IM softball season started up last week. In the first game we jumped out to a 10-3 lead, and then hung on to a 12-11 win. I went 2-for-3 in that game, with two "swinging bunt" singles that died about ten feet down the third base line, a fielder's choice line drive that the pitcher knocked down, and two runs scored.

In the second game we were behind 5-2 starting the 4th, scored two in the 4th (Frame fouled out behind third, but I tagged up to go home, drawing a wild throw which also brought in another run), and four in the 5th (I had an RBI double and a run), to sweat out the 8-5 win. I think I was also 2-for-3 with a groundout to short and two solid hits to left-center, with two runs and an RBI. In that game I also recorded the first out for us on defense off a single to short center. I was the right-fielder and came over to cut it off, and saw the runner trying to advance to 2nd. The middle infielders had also come out to the short outfield to try to catch the ball, so I managed to beat him to the bag and tag him out, right before taking a tumble. It's probably not everyday you see a 10-unassisted (with four outfielders in softball, I presume RF=10 and not 9 like it does in baseball) put-out on a runner advancing to 2nd base!

And then our third game was this Tuesday, and after falling being 3-0 after the top of the 1st, we finally had the offensive show we'd been waiting for, slugging our way to a solo, 2-run and 3-run home run in succession in the bottom half of the 1st, en route to a 19-7 four-inning mercy rule win. I didn't contribute much though, going 1-for-3 with a strikeout, foulout to the catcher and a single to left-center. So after these three games, Mid-Life Crisis is sporting a cool 3-0 record with two more games in the regular season. Looks like we're in good shape to make the playoffs as long as we keep playing smart defense and don't throw the ball away, because we've got a very good offense.

Hate Week 2007 (as Moyer calls it, haha) is here! Yes, that's right, Penn State's clash with Michigan is coming up this Saturday. Here's why Penn State fans are nervous about the game. Even though the Nittany Lions beat the Buffalo Bulls 45-24 last week (they led 31-3 after 3 quarters before putting their second string in) to push their record to 3-0, Penn State has made a habit this year of starting slow in every game (they trailed 3-0 to Buffalo after the 1st quarter). You can get away doing that against bad teams (Florida International, Notre Dame and Buffalo would all easily qualify this year), but against decent or good teams, that's playing with fire. So there's that. And that JoePa traditionally keeps the shackles on the offensive play-calling, even though this year we have amazing talent at wide receiver. And that the game is at Ann Arbor in the Big House, and our first road game of the year. And there's the fact that Penn State has lost their last eight games to Michigan (the 2002 and 2005 games essentially decided by the refs on the last drive, both times failing to notice that a Michigan receiver came down OUT OF BOUNDS on "catches" for key first downs that extended the game-winning drives for the Skunkbears). And then there's the fact that Michigan, who had two EMBARRASSING losses to start the year (34-32 to I-AA Appalachian State (hahahaha! that'll never get old!) and 39-7 to Oregon, both at home), finally won a game last week, 38-0 over Notre Dame. But Michigan fans should have no reason to feel cocky after that, since beating the Fighting Irish this year is about as meaningful as beating Temple (sorry Ben). Notre Dame is absolutely atrocious this year, with negative yards rushing and no offensive touchdowns after three games. Utterly. Pathetic. But I'll take it since I hate Notre Dame in football (perhaps even more than Michigan, though that's a tough proposition)! :-) At any rate, if there's any year for Penn State to break their hex against Meeee-cheat-'em, it's this year. The Wolverines (Skunkbears) are still talented and dangerous, but Penn State has the better team on paper. And should the Nittany Lions win, not only would Happy Valley be ecstatic on Saturday evening, but Penn State would have a very good chance to run the table and go 12-0 in the regular season (our games against Ohio $tate and Wisconsin, the other two top Big (11) Ten contenders, are both at home at Beaver Stadium). Man, I hope we win... I'm definitely not wearing any yellow this week, that's for sure! Let's Go State!

Posted by Jared at 12:19 AM | Comments (1)

September 13, 2007

Cars and Counties

As many of you know, I've been car-less for nigh two weeks now. The clutch pedal was all of a sudden starting to stick with rapidly increasing frequency, thus not allowing me to shift, which on a car with a manual transmission is kind of a big deal. So last Thursday I had it towed by Graham's Exxon (there's no way I would give Walk's my money if I could help it, just on principle) over to Ripka's, a very good repair shop that's done work on my car before. I still don't know yet when they estimate they'll have it fixed because they're waiting on a part, but they said on Tuesday they're going to be replacing my clutch master cylinder (whatever that is). Hopefully that doesn't cost too much, and hopefully that actually fixes the problem. And hopefully it happens soon, I'd like to have my 221,000-mile car back. Walking to Ghetto Weis to get a few groceries is far inferior and less desirable than driving across town to Wegmans, for instance. And being able to drive to church so I could practice piano before this weekend would be nice too.

At any rate, all this car talk got me to thinking of where I've been this year. Last year I know that Chris posted at least one entry with a map of the counties nationwide that he's visited, so I filled in my own map (as did Jeff [Frame], at least, and maybe Jacob?), but didn't post it here. I've decided that it's high time that I post my own map though, so here it is:

The counties in teal are ones that I had been in prior to 2007 (airports don't count (otherwise I'd be able to add Atlanta and Los Angeles); I must have physically left airport property for it to count). The counties in red are counties that I was in for the first time ever this year. You can definitely make out the path that several interstate highways take, and interstates are how I've been able to color in a large percentage of those counties (maybe someday I'll actually figure out what the statistics really are, but I'm not Chris so I don't have them handy for all y'all). And most of the red counties came from just two trips -- my Katrina relief/missions trip to New Orleans back in March, and my trip to New York City to see the Twins-Yankees game in the Bronx at Yankee Stadium right before July 4th. And then there was also the Grad Resources leaders retreat in Dallas last month that I went too, which explains the island of red in Texas.

I know it's rather tedious, but if anyone out there wants to fill in their own map, you can get a blank county map here. Then if you want to post a link to your own in a comment, or if you'd like me to post yours here on my blog, send it to me! Seriously, it's a fun little task to do in your downtime if you have access either to a national road atlas or Mapquest (zoomed in to a proper level, it shows county boundaries). Nerdy, but fun. Trust me. :-)

Posted by Jared at 12:04 AM | Comments (3)

September 10, 2007

Welcome to The White House

Oh man, what a weekend! It's been so fun and exhausting that I think I need to have another day or two to recover from it!

On Friday afternoon, right after Caren's thesis defense (congrats on passing!), Frame, Bob, Vic & I drove over to Pittsburgh to see the Pirates-Cubs baseball game. We missed the first part of the game though, partly because of PennDOT's incompetence; large stretches of Hwy 22 between Altoona and Pittsburgh were "under construction," yet most of the time the lane(s) that were coned off looked perfectly good, with nary a unionized PennDOT worker to be seen. There were a couple very short stretches that were a little torn up, but there was no reason to have six or seven 3-5-mile stretches of lane reductions. After a couple wrong turns by Frame in the city (we somehow wound up on Mount Washington), we finally made it to the stadium (taking the gorgeous walkway over the Roberto Clemente Bridge over the Allegheny River), only to find out that Ticketmaster had printed out the wrong tickets for Bob, for a game three weeks ago. Argh! So after being shuttled from ticket window to ticket window in search of a more senior person to make a decision, in the end the Pirates personnel said that it wasn't their screwup, so they couldn't do anything about it, meaning we had to buy new tickets. Bob's gonna complain mightily to Ticketmaster and try to recoup his money, that's for sure. What does a $5/ticket "convenience fee" get you from Ticketmaster? The wrong tickets. So once we got into the stadium and got some food, it was the end of the 3rd before we got to our seats. It was a beautiful night for a baseball game in the beautiful PNC Park, and the hometown Pirates beat the visiting Cubs 6-1, which gave Bob plenty of opportunity to exhibit his patented Cubs-fan pessimism, haha.

Part of why we went to the baseball game in Pittsburgh on Friday night is that we knew that State College was going to be an absolute zoo the night before the Notre Dame game. And sure enough it still was when we rolled back into town shortly before 2am. While we were sitting at the light on Atherton St at College Ave, it was amazing to see the swarms of people all over. And then we glanced down College, and noticed, somewhat in awe and surprise, that there was a rather long line of people waiting to get in to the Golden Wok (for those of you not from State College, it's a Chinese restaurant with a very small bar inside). We all started laughing, thinking that it's both sad and amazing that the town was so full and that people are so desperate to get a drink that they're waiting in line outside the Golden Wok at 1:50 in the morning.

As for gameday on Saturday, we met up with some geoscience grad students again, and got to the parking lot/field around 10:30. Shawn and the geosci guys brought along a deep fryer and a griddle, and we in meteo brought along Walter's grill, so we had just about any sort of way of preparing tailgate-quality food covered! I'm probably leaving out a few things, but I know for sure that Shawn deep fried tater tots, onion rings, jalapeno poppers, Milky Way candy bars, two entire turkeys -- it was awesome! Let me tell ya, the deep fried turkey was probably the juiciest, tastiest turkey I've ever had, or at least certainly right up there. And the deep fried candy bar pieces were great too, just missing maybe some powdered sugar and being on a stick (a la the Minnesota State Fair). The weather was pretty good too, though a bit on the humid side.

As for the game, it was pretty amazing in several respects. First of all, the fact that all the alumni and other fans actually heeded the declaration of the "Penn State White Out" (wouldn't wanna get sued, so apparently I can't call it just a "White Out," argh). The atmosphere was pretty electric, even before the game started. I don't think I've ever been to a game before when *everybody* in the whole stadium was in their seat before kickoff. I was, however, rather disappointed with the Penn State student section in their treatment of the Notre Dame marching band when they performed before the game. So much for the line from the Penn State Alma Mater song, "May no act of ours bring shame..." At any rate, it was *very* impressive to see 110,078 fans (the second largest crowd in Beaver Stadium history, second only to the Nebraska game back in 2002) in "The White House," as it was dubbed for the evening. And it was extremely loud, especially for the first series of the game when the Fighting Irish were on offense, starting down at the end of the field with the Penn State student section. My friend Mike was watching the game on TV back in Wisconsin, and sent me a text message during those opening plays that said, "Good God is it loud there!" If you thought it was loud on TV, that's only a fraction of how loud it was actually being in the stadium! Notre Dame's 72-yard interception return for a touchdown in the 1st quarter quieted the crowd a little bit, until the Nittany Lions' Derrick Williams had an electrifying 78-yard punt return for a touchdown ("breaking the ankles" of the Irish's punk defensive back Tom Zbikowski *twice* on the play!) to tie the score at 7-7, sending "The White House" crowd into an absolute frenzy! The only other game in which the crowd might've been louder was back in 2005 when Ohio State paid a visit at night. Seriously, Beaver Stadium was absolutely rockin' and rollin'! The Nittany Lions defense was smothering all night (Notre Dame had *zero* total yards rushing in the game), and once the offense got going (it took a little while...), it was a slow and steady beatdown, with Penn State rolling to a 31-10 victory! My voice was spent (still not entirely back to normal today), and I was completely exhausted from standing the whole game and all the walking and standing at the tailgate, but it was very worth it!

So with Penn State beating Notre Dame convincingly, and Michigan getting blown out at home by Oregon (everyone was cheerfully giving score updates to Frame, haha), both the Wolverines and the Fighting Irish, my two most-hated college football teams, both have now started out the year 0-2. I love it! Ironically, they play each other next week. I guess somebody's gotta win...

The first round of the AFL (Aussie rules football) playoffs were this weekend, and the Geelong Cats destroyed the Kangaroos 156-50. So now the Cats have a bye for the next round, before playing in the preliminary final in two weeks. They've definitely sent a message to the rest of the league though, reminding them why they're the #1 seed and why they had a 15-game winning streak and an 18-4 record during the season.

Posted by Jared at 12:17 AM | Comments (4)

September 08, 2007

White Out Notre Dame!

The day we've all been waiting for is here, the clash on the gridiron between the Notre Dame Fighting Irish and the Penn State Nittany Lions! Here's my game-time forecast:

74 degrees, a bit humid
Cloudy skies but dry
Calm-light winds
WHITEOUT conditions

Even though Notre Dame got crushed last week, it hasn't dampened the enthusiasm for this game amongst Penn State fans. As one ESPN.com writer put it, PSU fans are like sharks in a tank that smell blood in the water. We want revenge for last year's 41-17 humiliation in South Bend. And Notre Dame's starting the true freshman golden boy, Jimmy Clausen, at quarterback. It's his first ever start. In Beaver Stadium. In front of 110,000 screaming, white-clad "enemy" fans. It's gonna be fun to watch him get rattled.

Be sure to tune in to the game this evening on ESPN, kickoff is at 6pm Eastern. The full-stadium White Out will certainly be a sight to behold! Now it's time to pack stuff up in the coolers and go tailgating!!

WE ARE... PENN STATE!!
BEAT NOTRE DAME!!

LET'S GO STATE!

Posted by Jared at 09:14 AM | Comments (0)

September 03, 2007

Welcome Week '07

The first week of the Fall 2007 semester is in the books. It's gonna be a bit of a tough one for me. I'm only taking one class this semester, but it's Atmospheric Turbulence, quite possibly the toughest grad-level course in the meteorology department. Quite a few people are taking it, around 25 or so, largely because it's almost certainly the last time that Dr. Wyngaard will be teaching it before he retires, and he wrote the book on turbulence (well, technically he's nearly done writing it)! He's already given us one assignment, and that's due tomorrow, so I spent all afternoon in Walker today working on the final problem. Ugh.

The weekend before the semester started we hosted a welcome picnic and party for all the new meteo grad slav--, I mean, students. :-) There are about 10-12 new grad students I think, and it's a pretty diverse group, including four from China, one from Puerto Rico, one from Scotland, and then a few others from all across the US, including from Florida State to Purdue to Idaho. It was pretty hot and humid outside (and even inside with everyone in Gall's basement), but it was still a pretty fun evening. I always look forward to the meteo welcome party, it's a good time every time!

The band Guster is gonna be coming to the Bryce Jordan Center here at Penn State next month on October 4th! They're one of my favorite bands, and with tickets with a student ID being just $20, they're at the right price too. So we'll have a group of us from meteo going to that, Aviva, Justin, David, Lindsey, Ethan & me. That should be a fun concert. I really should also get tickets to the Phil Keaggy guitar concert down at the State Theatre on Sep 29th.

I've been essentially without a car since Friday evening. Walter & I were driving around to start some errands to pick up stuff for the tailgate this weekend, when my car's clutch pedal started sticking occasionally, and thus not letting me shift at all. Most of the time I had to shut off the car so I could safely pull the pedal back out, and then turn it back on and get it back into gear. At first it was an annoyance that had me kinda concerned because it hadn't ever happened before, but when it started happening with increasing frequency I got really concerned, and just drove back to my place. Fortunately Frame was able to come by and take us on all our errands, including picking up the flagpole from the UPS distribution center (woohoo!). Hopefully it's just a clutch bearing/plate issue and not something serious with the transmission. I'd be really sad to have to say goodbye to my car right now. Hopefully when I give Ripka's a call tomorrow they'll have an open slot sometime soon.

College football season is underway! Jon, Walter & I kinda organized the meteo grad tailgate this week, and for this one we had a joint tailgate with the geoscience grad students too. We left in a caravan from our place before 8am, and got all set up at the tailgate field by 8:30. There's nothin quite like a Molson at 8:30 in the morning to kick off the tailgating season, haha. It was an absolutely gorgeous morning too, not a cloud in the sky. We got the hurricane flags all set up too, and once there got to be a breeze toward mid-morning they stood out and were pretty easy to spot. :-) The only downside to the tailgate, aside from us forgetting some key stuff (hey, it's a tune-up for next week, just like the football game), was that it had to end rather early due to the noon kickoff. And the football game wasn't much of a contest either, with Penn State destroying hapless Florida International by a score of 59-0 (I left at the end of the 3rd quarter when PSU was up 52-0). FIU was absolutely terrible, probably the worst team I've ever seen. Even with that big score, the Nittany Lions simply couldn't run the ball in the first half, their offensive line blocking was quite poor. So that's a bit of a concern, but apart from that we saw what we needed to see from the team as they prepare for the big game against Notre Dame. "Notre Lame" just got crushed at home by Georgia Tech 33-3 though, so some of the luster of the game has been lost, but Lions fans are still out for blood after last year's embarrassing loss in South Bend. The first-ever stadium-wide whiteout has been declared for the game too, so make sure to watch ESPN at 6pm ET on Saturday, seeing 110,000 fans in a sea of white will be quite a sight in person and on TV!

The big story from the weekend though happened over in Ann Arbor, where the mighty Michigan Wolverines, ranked #5 in the country, lost at home to tiny Appalachian State 34-32. It was the first time ever in the history of college football that a Division I-AA team beat a team that was ranked in the Division I-A poll. Fans of the underdog and Michigan haters (myself included) all across the country shouted for joy when Appalachian State kicked the go-ahead field goal with 26 seconds left, and then blocked the potential game-winning field goal try by Michigan on the game's final play! As fans were filing out of the Penn State game on Saturday, the TVs in the Beaver Stadium concourse were showing the end of the Wolverines-Mountaineers game, and last night I watched a bunch of YouTube videos of the unbridled jubilation of the fans when that field goal was blocked. You would've thought that Penn State had just won the national championship judging from the fans' reaction, but no, no, it was just hated Michigan suffering the most embarrassing loss in the annals of college football history! :-D Hail to the Victors! ;-) It still warms my heart every time I see that replay, hahahaha!!!

Yesterday afternoon was also the Fall Picnic for Penn State Christian Grads. It was yet another fabulous day weather-wise, a fantastic afternoon for a picnic. It was great to see several new faces too. It should be a good year for PSCG, hopefully we can continue to grow. And now that Ashley & Heather (our new staff workers from Campus Crusade for Christ) are here (they just moved in from Ann Arbor a week and a half ago), we should be able to do even more things.

Alright, well I should get back to watching the 4th quarter of the Florida State-Clemson game. If Clemson hangs on to win I'll have a perfect week in Dirty-Dawg, 15-for-15 on my picks! Go Tigers!

Posted by Jared at 10:57 PM | Comments (0)