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June 24, 2010

Thoughts on World Cup 2010 So Far

As busy-busy-busy as I've been lately with research and making a huge push to get everything done that I need to in advance of the GMU conference & my trip to NCAR in mid-July, and my trip to Australia in August, I have taken some time out of my schedule to watch some of the World Cup. For the USA's games I've deliberately avoided doing work, but during most of the other games I've either also been working or doing other things while watching on the TV or having it on in the background at work on ESPN3.

For the USA-England game, I watched the game by myself at my apartment. I stuck around because I'd sent an email to the meteo grad social list inviting people over to watch it, only to find out that some other people had also planned (but not announced) World Cup parties. Anyway, I figured I should stick around in case anyone showed up. And then England scored that goal in the 5th minute, and I decided I didn't want to miss any of the game by driving or walking somewhere else. When the English goalkeeper let Dempsey's shot dribble in, I jumped up and screamed "YEAAAAAHHHH!!" even though I was alone in my apartment. :-)

For the USA-Slovenia game a bunch of us meteo grads took the Friday morning off and watched the game at 797 Lounge (former Sports Cafe) on their outdoor patio, where they'd set up a couple nice big-screen HDTVs. We pretty much had the run of the place, but gradually a small crowd of passersby built up on the sidewalk watching too, as the USA dug themselves out from a 2-0 halftime deficit. It was pure elation from all of us when Michael Bradley scored the equalizer, and then pure irritation and bewilderment four minutes later when what should've been the winning goal by Michael Edu was disallowed on a phantom foul call by the referee from Mali.

On Wednesday morning we went back to 797 to watch the heart-stopping USA-Algeria match. We were on the edge of our seats the whole time, and once again frustrated and irritated that another good USA goal was disallowed on a bad call by the referee. They were on the attack the whole game and getting so many great chances and near misses, it just felt like we'd score one. But then time was getting short, and we were all wondering if it'd be heartbreak city with a goalless draw and elimination from the tournament. Then came Landon Donovan's rebound goal in the 91st minute! Elation and joy! Kinda like this:

Walking around downtown State College after the game was a blast. People were walking around in all sorts of red, white and blue garb, there were a couple people blaring on their vuvuzelas, cars were honking their horns in celebration, people were chanting "USA! USA!" and high-fiving each other. It was quite a fun scene! Hopefully that can be replicated on Saturday afternoon following our Round of 16 elimination match with Ghana!

But seriously, win or lose, can we please not have a referee make an atrocious call against us that takes away a goal? It sure seems like a trend, with it happening in two straight games. Is a fairly called game too much to ask for? The FIFA referees have overall been pretty bad this year, I think. Failing to notice an infraction is one thing (especially when there are only three officials on such a huge field with 22 players out there), but making the completely wrong call is another thing entirely. They've also been rewarding play-acting way too much, such as giving Brazil's Kaka a red card after an Ivory Coast player walked into him and then disgracefully writhed on the ground for several minutes clutching his head in mock pain. Kaka maybe sort of stuck his elbow out behind him, and whatever contact there was was in the guy's chest, not anywhere close to his head. Italy was also awarded a penalty kick against New Zealand by being overly dramatic. Soccer has a terribly engrained culture of complaining, and it really detracts from the game when players are pathetically writhing around on the ground in "pain" when they were barely touched or not touched at all, just to try to get a call in their favor from the referee. That'll only stop when FIFA officials stop granting fouls and cards for plays they didn't see.

Some thoughts on a few other teams:

France: Good riddance. What an on-field and off-field catastrophe. A bunch of complainers too, as they blamed their 0-0 draw vs Uruguay on the crowd and vuvuzelas. Umm, everyone else has to play with them too. Clearly France's problem was more than just vuvuzelas.
Italy: Good riddance. I'm glad I don't have to endure watching any more of the Azzurri. With their continued earned reputation for embarrassing and pathetic diving and acting, they're an embarrassment to sport.
New Zealand: First-ever World Cup points, and undefeated in group play. Unfortunately they were also winless, but they can go home with their heads held high for achieving so much when the world thought they'd get trounced in every game. And they finished ahead of Italy in the group [snicker]. Following their thrilling game vs Italy, an ESPN announcer put it best when he said the headlines should read, "New Zealand defeats Italy 1-1!" Well done, All Whites!
Australia: A good side that was done in by two catastrophic red cards in the first two games. Tim Cahill's red card vs Germany was extremely harsh from the referee (announcers thought it should've only been a yellow at most), and led to the Germans scoring another 2 goals. Then Harry Kewell's red card vs Ghana was a bit harsh as well, I thought, since the handball was completely unintentional. A yellow card and a penalty kick, sure, but a red? A bit harsh. With the pressure they managed to apply with a man disadvantage, I have no doubt they would've beaten Ghana with a full 11 men. And then it would be USA-Australia on Saturday instead of USA-Ghana. Oh well.
Brazil: Wow. They look very good. The beautiful game indeed.
All other South American teams (Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay): Also looking quite good. Impressive showings for our neighbors to the south, as none of them have lost a match yet!
North Korea: That 7-0 disaster vs Portugal was aired live in North Korea. Kim Jong Il must be kicking himself. Now maybe the North Korean people will know that, despite their dear leader's best propaganda efforts, their nation is not invincible in everything it does. Maybe a soccer match can help tumble a cruel, insane dictator?

I'm really looking forward to Saturday afternoon, and hopefully additional games beyond that (vs winner of Uruguay-South Korea for a berth in the semifinals if we beat Ghana)! I'm definitely planning to watch it downtown somewhere again with a group of people. Let's keep it going, USA! Just please don't let in another early goal, mmkay?

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

June 20, 2010

Start of Summer '10 Road Trip, Part 3: First Funnel Clouds

And now for the conclusion of my three-part blog post about my recent trip back to Wisconsin and Minnesota. I had been toying with the idea of trying to do the entire 17-hour drive back to State College in one day on Sat 5 June, because various friends who live along the way weren't around, and I didn't want to spend money on a motel if I didn't have to. But with the game of Settlers: Cities and Knights going to almost 1am on Friday night at Nathan & Laura's, I gave up on that, because if I were to go for it, I'd have to leave at 6am in order to finish the drive by midnight. Doing such a drive on 4-5 hours of sleep was simply not an option.

So as a result I set my alarm for sometime after 7am, met up with my younger brother Jake for breakfast around 9am, and didn't leave Rice Lake until 10am. I was still really tired on the drive, and made it to Osseo before I absolutely had to pull off and get caffeine in my system. I pulled off for lunch at a place called the Mousehouse Cheesehaus in Windsor, just northwest of Madison. It was a nice little place, and plenty kitschy. A perfect farewell to Wisconsin for this visit, or so I thought. :-)

By the time I was leaving about 2pm, it had just started to rain pretty hard, with a storm moving in. I drove through the line of storms and got ahead of them as I skirted the north side of Madison. Then as I was driving along I-94 toward Milwaukee, just past the split where I-39 and I-90 head south toward Rockford, I looked out my window at the storm clouds to my north, and saw a little bit of cloud hanging down from the line. I kept checking it out over the next half minute, and it kept becoming better and better defined: it was a funnel cloud! I grabbed my camera, pointed it out my driver's side window without looking, and managed to catch this in the field of view: I wanted to get some better photos, and after 2 or 3 miles there was finally an exit, just northeast of Madison, between Sun Prairie and Cottage Grove. I drove north about three quarters of a mile along County Road N to an area surrounded by fields, parked on the side of the road and snapped these photos of the first funnel cloud, which was roping out and dying by that point: After a few minutes, several more cars had pulled over in the vicinity with people watching the funnel. Then I looked a bit to the east of that funnel cloud, basically straight north of my location, and noticed the clouds rotating. So I started taking video, and took a couple photos during it: When I stopped the video I ran back to my car and drove forward about a tenth of a mile so that the grove of trees wouldn't block my view, but by that point the second funnel cloud was dying: When I called a couple friends to ask them what the radar was showing, they were very surprised to hear that I saw two funnel clouds, because the line was dying and the radar showed no rotation. But I clearly saw two rotating funnel clouds. I'd never seen a funnel cloud before (I still haven't seen a tornado), so this was pretty cool for me! I hung around for a bit longer, but nothing more developed. In any case, after I got back on the road, and started thinking of the timing of everything that happened that led to me being in the right place at the right time to notice the funnel cloud -- I just smiled to myself and said, "Thanks God, that was pretty cool."

Believe it or not, that wasn't my only run-in with funnel clouds and tornadoes on the day. I stopped for the night in Toledo, Ohio (technically in Maumee), and went to a cheap motel for which I had a coupon. First, it was a bit of an ordeal at the motel. There was one person in front of me, but the clerk was taking forever because the guy didn't have an address either on his Netherlands driver's license or his passport (apparently an address is needed in order to secure a room there). Eventually that got sorted out, and then I got my room key. By this point it had started pouring rain. The motel was a confusing complex of buildings, so I eventually drove around and found the right one. My key card didn't work though. I tried it every which way, but no dice. So I put my stuff back in my car (still pouring), and drove back to the office, waiting for the guy in front of me to get done. The clerk re-keyed the card, and I went back. Still didn't work. It was still pouring. I drove back to the office again, and this time he put me in a different room, the last room available at the cheap rate (it was also a smoking room, but all I wanted was a bed, I didn't care). This time the key worked, thankfully, so I got my stuff from my car and put it in the room. By now it was just after 11pm, and I hadn't had supper yet, so I decided I'd drive down to Wendy's to get some fast food. It was still pouring. I stepped outside my room, but in addition to all the rain and thunder, I heard a new sound: a tornado siren. So I went back in the room and flipped on The Weather Channel, and sure enough, there was a tornado warning for Lucas County, Ohio, with a tornado reported to be on the ground near Toledo. When the radar loop came on, it looked like the most dangerous part of the storm was just east of Maumee, so I decided I'd head out to Wendy's. It finally stopped raining while I was in the drive-thru, at least until the second line came through around 2am, with a lightning strike that I think hit the motel's sign next to the freeway. It was that close. I had turned on the A/C when I went to bed in the hopes that I wouldn't be awakened by the approaching line, but with how close that lightning strike was, no amount of white noise would've helped drown it out! Oh, and the motel also got a thumbs down from me for the wireless internet not working at all while I was there, and for them running out of breakfast half an hour early. But hey, it was cheap, and I was well-rested to finish the drive back to State College on Sun 6 June.

Overall I drove around 2900 miles on the trip, and didn't spend more than two nights in any one place the entire trip, not even at home. A fun and eventful but somewhat exhausting trip!

Posted by Jared at 12:19 AM | Comments (0)

June 16, 2010

Start of Summer '10 Road Trip, Part 2: Touring Minnesota

While my previous post about part 1 of my recent road trip was more words than pictures, I'm pretty sure this one will be more pictures than words, or at least closer to 50/50. I'll pick up where I left off.

On Sun 30 May, I left Green Bay about mid-morning to drive to Two Harbors, Minnesota. On WI-29 a few miles west of Wausau, I spotted a sign pointing the way to a geographical marker four miles north of the highway (near Edgar, Wisconsin). I've passed by that sign several times over the years, but never took the time to go check it out. This time I decided I'd go take a look though. I'm a sucker for geography and maps and such things, after all (and let's face it, I'd gotten in a picture-taking and road-tripping mode!). So I finally visited the marker at 45ºN latitude, 90ºW longitude, only to find out that it's not exactly at the crossing of those lines. The real crossing is about 1100 feet away from the marker, somewhere in a field (shown below). That part was somewhat disappointing, actually, especially since it was on "Meridian Road."

Up in Two Harbors almost my entire family was at the Lake Superior house for the weekend. My parents were there, my brother Nathan & Laura and their kids were there, and my sister-in-law Eve and her kids were there too. It was a very efficient way to visit family. :-) It was a nice evening, though, so we got a small campfire going on the ledgerock on the lakeshore. Mmmmm, snacking on s'mores while listening to a serene Superior surf... And then Memorial Day itself was so gorgeous, about 70 and sunny, that after Nathan & Laura left for home, I just sat outside on a bench and a hammock, looking out over the lake, and reading a book for a couple hours. Now that is a relaxing holiday! After staying at Two Harbors until afternoon, I drove a couple hours over to Grand Rapids, Minnesota, where my Penn State friends Vic & Lindsay live, to hang out with them and see their new house there. The house itself (which is technically in Coleraine, just north of Grand Rapids) is so new that the lawn is still gravel, and the road the house is on doesn't yet exist on Google Maps or Mapquest! They both absolutely love the culture of Minnesota (Lindsay especially), being in the northwoods surrounded by incredibly friendly people (Minnesota Nice is for real!). They're appreciating the food too -- at dinner we got an appetizer called Minnesota Sushi, which was walleye and wild rice wrapped in lefse. Pure awesomeness. After dinner they also took me for a tour of their office. They both work at WindLogics, a company that focuses on wind forecasting and wind energy. Incidentally, back in college I interviewed for a summer internship with WindLogics in their Saint Paul office once (but I didn't get it because they'd just hired three full-time people who they needed to train), and it's a company I'd certainly be interested in applying to once I'm done with my PhD and looking for a "real" job. It really was fun to see Vic & Lindsay again, and to see where they live and work and everything. Since they live only a couple hours from my parents new house in Two Harbors, I anticipate I'll be usually seeing them when I go home for visits. In the morning (Tue 1 June), Vic & Lindsay had to go to work, and I initially had planned to go straight home to Cumberland. While we were having breakfast though, I got the idea to drive over to Itasca State Park to see the Headwaters of the Mississippi River, and to Bemidji to see the status of Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox. I deliberated over it for about 15-20 minutes, but as they were leaving Vic & Lindsay said to me, "You know you want to go, just do it." I mean, I'd never been to those places before, they're places I've wanted to visit for quite some time, and I'd never been as close as I was (Bemidji is only about 80 miles west of Grand Rapids). So at 8:30 in the morning, instead of heading east on US 2, I headed west to Bemidji. Here are some photos from Paul Bunyan Park, on the shores of Lake Bemidji on the Mississippi River: From there I grabbed a Subway sandwich to go and drove a half hour south to Itasca State Park. I took the scenic Great River Road to the park, which crossed the fledgling Mississippi several times along the way. I managed to pick the park entrance that was closest to the headwaters, and had lunch on a park bench at the headwaters. And I walked/waded across the Mississippi River four times. Pretty cool. I had always wanted to do that. :-) Then I took a walk down Schoolcraft Trail, which went a mile along the North Arm of Lake Itasca from the Headwaters to Hill Point, which looks out at Schoolcraft Island. It was quite a pleasant walk, except for the dozens of mosquitoes that I killed (or, more specifically, the myriads that I didn't). Out at Hill Point I climbed out onto a tree that was growing horizontally out of the bank out over the water. And I have my camera with me too. That gave me extra incentive not to lose my balance and fall into the drink. :-) It was cool to read about the history of the expeditions searching for the source of the Mississippi, and of the early history of the park. I also learned how the lake came to be named Lake Itasca: explorer Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, upon being brought to the lake by an Ojibwe guide in 1832, combined the Latin words for "true" (ver-ITAS) and "head" (CA-put). Very interesting. I bought some stuff at the gift shop too (including a painting that I gave to my parents as a gift), and then on my way out of the park I went to one more scenic view, Peace Pipe Vista on the East Arm of Lake Itasca.

Then on the way back from Itasca State Park to Cumberland, WI, I went through the town of Walker, MN, a nice little resort town on Leech Lake. With my office being in Walker Building back at PSU, I just couldn't stay away from Walker, lol. I even took pictures of downtown Walker as I was driving through! Then I continued to play tourist and snapped some photos of a few other random things on the rest of my drive back to Wisconsin. I'll say though, there's a whole lot of nothing in northern Minnesota, unless tamarack swamps and pine forests count as something. It's really hard to have a cell phone conversation while driving across northern Minnesota and northern Wisconsin!

I got back to Cumberland in time for a late dinner, and then spent the whole next day hanging out at my parents' house. Well, okay, so I went to Rice Lake to renew my Wisconsin driver's license Hooray no more awful chin goatee pic from 2002! I actually didn't have to wait interminably long at the DMV (10 minutes), but I did have to argue with the clerk that it didn't matter whether I put my residency address or my apartment address here in PA for my mailing address. She tried to say that because I wouldn't be there for the full 8 years of the license, that I wouldn't get my renewal notices and whatnot after I moved unless I changed my address. Umm, okay? I'll have tons of other mail to change addresses for when I finish my degree and move somewhere else too, and it's not like I'll be moving back to my parents house when I get my PhD (the lady was trying hard to convince me to use their address as my mailing address, basically insinuating that since I'm a full-time student, I must not be responsible enough to change my address when I move). I still insisted that it be my PA address, and eventually the clerk relented hesitantly and said, "Well, I'll do what you want, but..." Sigh... Anyway, I was tired from all the driving over the past several days, and I needed to spend at least some time with my parents while I was home, so it was good to take a day off and chill (except for the argument at the DMV, haha). I tried to go for a run that morning too, but after 2-2.5 miles or so, my left foot started hurting pretty bad again (it started hurting after the previous time I ran, which was a week earlier). I had wanted to go about 5.5 miles that day, but my foot put the kibosh on that. Now that it's been a couple weeks since that run, I'm itching to go on a run again and test it out. We'll see how it goes. On the afternoon of Thu 3 June I drove down to White Bear Lake, MN, to hang out with my friends Scott & Katie. Especially since he finished his time in the Navy and came back to the Twin Cities to work on his bachelor's degree, Scott's become a very good friend of mine. He's one of only two people that I keep in regular contact with from high school anymore (the other being Mike, the groom in the Lambeau wedding in my previous post), and someone I make a point of seeing when I come home. Anyway, Scott just graduated this spring from the University of Minnesota with a degree in international affairs, so I of course wanted to celebrate with him! We all went out to Buffalo Wild Wings to pig out and then Dairy Queen to top it all off. So full, but so good! After dinner Scott had a bonfire in his backyard and all the neighbors came over (apparently a typical night for them, which is pretty cool). They have some cool neighbors, including the former long-time Vikings mascot, and a cop for Maplewood, MN (who told us about the two recent police killings, one of whom was his immediate supervisor who died in a shootout...). It sprinkled a couple times very briefly, but overall was quite a nice night for a bonfire. I spent the night there, and then hung out and talked with Scott the next morning, then heading back to Cumberland after lunch. It was great to see him again. And maybe I'll get to see him more frequently in the future, if he gets one of the jobs in New York or Washington that he's applying for. Scott's done a lot of cool stuff already so far with his time in the Navy as a Rescue Swimmer and then his study abroad recently in China, and no doubt he'll get to do a lot more cool stuff with whatever job he gets, wherever in the world it is. He just not always at liberty to say a ton about it. ;-) I didn't stay at home in Cumberland that night because my parents went back up to Two Harbors again for the weekend. Instead I went over to my brother Nathan & Laura's house for dinner and a game night, but not before loading up some old clothes from my closet and books from my bookcase into my car. Since my parents are planning on moving at some point in the next year or so, and since I had the room in my car to transport them this time, I figured I may as well. Now I've just gotta figure out what to do with all of it back here in my apartment! Anyway, that night we played a 6-player game of Settlers: Cities and Knights (me, Nathan, Laura, and three of their four kids, Miriam, Rebecca and Andrew). The game started at 8pm, but was a marathon event that didn't finish until quarter to 1am! Scarcity of wood for everyone will grind progress to a halt in that game, for sure. It was good to spend some time with all of them too. But with my parents gone, and with me starting the drive back to PA the next day, I chose to spend the night there.

I hope you all enjoyed the preponderance of photos in this post! I'll leave it there for now, and soon I'll put up Part 3 about my fun with funnel clouds on the way back to PA! That deserves a post all its own, after all. :-)

Posted by Jared at 10:38 PM | Comments (1)

June 10, 2010

Start of Summer '10 Road Trip, Part 1: Lambeau Wedding

I just got back to State College on Sunday from a fairly short but fun-filled trip to Wisconsin and Minnesota. I did a lot of solo driving too: around 2900 miles in 10 days! I didn't spend more than two nights in any one place, either. I'd best get started with a recap.

On Thu 27 May I packed up my car with Alex's keyboard and some of my stuff and hit the road. I didn't get pulled over in Ohio on the Turnpike this time, but I did hit a board and a semi tire. The board seemed to be a jagged end of a 2x2 or something like that. It flew off a truck, hit the road in front of me, bounced off my right fender, and then I caught sight of it again in my rear-view mirror bouncing around on the road. And then the semi tire was the outer tread, rolled out and laying completely across my lane. To my left was the shoulder, and to my right was a semi, so I said to myself, "Well, here goes nothin'." [KAH-THUNK, KAH-THUNK] For a few miles I kept an eye out for a trail of liquid behind me, but my car wasn't the worse for wear, fortunately.

I got to Chicago (Carol Stream, technically) in time to go to dinner with Ryan & Sarah. They took me out to a place called Portillo's, which features Chicago-style hot dogs and Italian beef (last time I visited them they took me to a place that had Chicago-style pizza). So I dutifully got a Polish sausage and a Chicago hot dog. The hot dog had all sorts of fixins on it, including a full pickle spear and a hot pepper of some sort. I'm kicking myself that I didn't take a picture of it.

After dinner we went to a nearby mall so that I could buy a Brett Favre jersey. I had called the four sports apparel stores in that mall the evening before, and found one that had a Favre jersey in stock. The one jersey they had was a white Vikings jersey (I had envisioned a purple jersey), but it was embroidered (instead of screen-printed), and a great fit on me. $80 is kind of pricey, but it was a well-made jersey. The guys at the store said the purple Favre jerseys just didn't sell very well down there, but the white ones sold quite well. Interesting. I wonder if it's because a white jersey goes better with lots of things, whereas a purple jersey is, well, an awful lot of purple. :-) In any case, it was a Vikings Favre jersey, which meant it'd do the trick at the wedding rehearsal at Lambeau! I was also much more willing to buy a Favre jersey after he had the ankle surgery, which indicated he's a virtual lock to come back for another season. I didn't want to get a jersey of him if he was just going to retire.

That night we had planned on playing a game of "Settlers" (of some variety), but instead they introduced me to the first four episodes of "Arrested Development" (they own season 1 on DVD). I'd never seen the show before, but heard a lot of friends rave about it. I loved it, it was so funny! Even though it's a comedy, it's definitely a show that you need to watch in order, otherwise you won't know what in the world is going on. I haven't seen anything beyond those first four episodes, and I'm already sad that there are only three seasons of the show.

On Fri 28 May I drove up from Chicago to Green Bay. Before I left Chicago though, I went to a Jewel to buy an I-Pass. I've been meaning to buy an I-Pass or EZ-Pass for years now, but I never would remember until the week of my trip, which wasn't enough time to mail in an application for one. So when Ryan & Sarah told me I could buy one at a grocery store near them, I decided to take care of it and finally buy one. They're essentially free ($10 deposit), aside from the money you put into your I-Pass/EZ-Pass account (which I activated immediately), but then tolls are usually half price, the discounts are good across all the Eastern states that have electronic tolling, and you can save a lot of time at toll booths by not having to stop to pay cash. It's a no-brainer. I'm disappointed in myself for not having done it earlier. It's totally worth it even though I only go on toll roads a few times a year, either when I go to Ann Arbor or when I go home to Wisconsin.

Ryan & Sarah also suggested a place for me to stop for lunch on my way to Green Bay: Kopp's Frozen Custard off of I-43 in Glendale, a northern suburb of Milwaukee. I did, and I wasn't disappointed. I ordered a double cheeseburger and a banana cream pie custard sundae, which was enormous. It was a "large" (3 scoops), but since it was less than a dollar more expensive than a "small" (1 scoop), I decided I may as well go for the full experience. And I was not disappointed! I had no idea the large was that large, but I still dug in and ate it all, after driving to a nearby park overlooking Lake Michigan (Atwater Beach in Shorewood). It was a beautiful spot for lunch, and a very cliché, fattening Wisconsin meal, with the cheeseburger and sundae. It was good to be in my home state again. :-)

I got to Lambeau Field in Green Bay about 45 minutes before the rehearsal was set to start, so that I could work with the event staff to get the keyboard up to the right place and all set up before the rehearsal began. When I was unloading the keyboard from my car, I was wearing just a plain yellow shirt, and had my new Favre jersey tucked away in a bag with my music that I was going to haul up to the stadium. Anyway, Ashley (the bride, who I'd never met before), was standing nearby, and recognized me (probably because of the keyboard), and came running over and jumped into my arms, excited to see me. (I later found out through the grapevine that Mike had told Ashley how conservative/straight-laced I was, so she may have been trying to have some fun with that. I was fine with it though, hehe.) She was happy that I was just wearing a yellow shirt, because she'd seen my facebook poll of what I should wear, and was pleading with me to compromise with a plain green or gold shirt. But then after I got the keyboard set up in the stadium, I put on my Favre jersey. Pretty soon everyone else came up, at which point Mike & Ashley saw me. Mike said, "You didn't." Ashley said, "I bought you something as part of our gift to you, but because you're wearing that I'm going to have to take it back!!" And they really did withhold part of the gift, lol. During the rehearsal dinner (which was just in front of a concession stand in one of the concourses around Lambeau), Mike gave me my gift bag, and then asked if there was a third thing in it. I said no, and then he laughed and said Ashley really did take it out. A few minutes later Mike made Ashley give it to me: a Vikings cousy. For the members of the wedding party who weren't Packer fans, they gave a cousy of their favorite football team. There was another Vikings fan and a Bears fan, but they both "played nice" -- the Vikings fan was forced by his girlfriend to leave his Vikings jerseys in the hotel, so he was kind of upset at her when he saw me with my Favre jersey, and the Bears fan just wore his Bears stuff underneath, I think. But yep, I was "that guy." Mike, who's a very good friend of mine from high school, said he knew I was going to pull something, but he just didn't know what. They were all fine with it, though. :-)

Anyway, it was interesting to see the event staff and the officiant butting heads in a power struggle during the rehearsal. I mean, there were disagreements over exactly where people should stand, where people were coming in, that sort of thing. Apparently that happens for almost every wedding at Lambeau (that officiant, Gloria, does most Lambeau weddings because her uncle is in the Packers Hall of Fame), and has been going on for years. You'd think they'd have it worked out to a science by now, but apparently not. Anyway, the Lambeau event staff aren't always the greatest communicators either. Initially they told me a few weeks ago that I'd be hooked into the house sound system, before retracting that and saying I needed to bring my own amp/speaker. Then they said they'd have a couple speakers if mine weren't big or loud enough, but when I got to the stadium they said they didn't have any other speakers available (fortunately Alex's little amp was sufficient). They also told Mike & Ashley a few months ago that there wouldn't need to be a recessional, because beer hawkers would come in right at the conclusion of the ceremony and hand out Miller Lite, pop or water to the whole wedding party and then everyone in the crowd. So I didn't practice a recessional, because that's what Mike told me would happen. But apparently they told Gloria that the beer hawkers would come in after the wedding party exited during the recessional. So when Gloria said, "Okay, now play the recessional, Jared," I stood and blinked, basically. When neither Mike nor Ashley corrected her that there wasn't a recessional, I assumed that meant there really was one. So I quick started digging through my other music binder, and eventually found the recessional I played at Dan & Kerrie's wedding. Mike later told me that he was just as surprised as I was when Gloria asked me to play the recessional, and knew exactly what was going on when he looked over and saw me madly flipping through a binder. So while it looked like I wasn't prepared, it wasn't my fault! It was all cool though, and fortunately I had something ready enough to use for a recessional, that I had played only four weeks earlier!

Playing a recessional wasn't the only unexpected thing I did for the wedding, either. On Sat 29 May, the morning of the wedding, Mike told me that one of Gloria's friends had passed away the night before, and so Gloria wouldn't be able to stay for the reception, as she needed to head straight to Appleton for the wake after the wedding ceremony was done. Mike asked if I'd be willing to do the unity candle ceremony and the dinner prayer at the beginning of dinner, since Gloria could no longer do it, and I said I'd be willing to do that. Gotta be willing to be flexible and step up and help out if needed! The unity candle ceremony was indoors at the beginning of dinner (after everyone was seated but before being dismissed to the buffet), because it just wouldn't work to do it outdoors in the stadium bowl during the ceremony because of the wind. Gloria had given me a sheet with a blurb to read for the unity candle ceremony and the prayer; I went with what she wrote for the unity candle ceremony, but I went with my own prayer on the fly.

The wedding ceremony itself was short and went well. It was also really hot, with sunny skies and temps in the 80s, plus the added effect of all the cement and metal seats in the stadium bowl re-radiating heat. We were all sweating bullets! Did the Miller Lite right after the wedding ever taste good! I also played nice and wore a green shirt for the wedding. I'm not that big a jerk to wear something Vikings or purple during their actual wedding ceremony. :-) The wedding wasn't distraction-free, however. First there was a tour group that visited the opposite end zone, and when they all got down to the bottom of the stands they shouted "Go, Pack, Go!" And then there was another wedding party that entered the bowl below us and got to go down onto the field itself (apparently because one of them was an employee). They were being rather loud though, and saying things like, "Oh, look! Another wedding!" And then while they were all on the field, that whole wedding party did a Lambeau Leap, going [THUD-THUD-THUD-THUD] against the padded wall. Very distracting and disrespectful of the wedding actually taking place. But maybe all that is par for the course for a wedding booked in a stadium?? I don't know, because this was the first time I've been to a stadium wedding before.

The reception was also in Lambeau Field, up in the Legends Room. The wedding party all had identifiable glasses that entitled them to free drinks at the bar all night, which was nice. I didn't get carried away though, because I needed to drive my car back to the hotel (I had to load my keyboard back into my car after the wedding, so I didn't take a hotel shuttle to the stadium). :-) In order to get Mike & Ashley to kiss during the reception, clinking glasses wouldn't work. Instead, they had a Wii set up with a home run derby. If you hit 6/10 pitches for home runs, then they kissed. If you failed, then you had to kiss at least two people on the way back to your seat. Many tried, but the only person who I recall successfully hitting 6 home runs was a little kid. :-) That was kind of a neat way of handling the glass clinking. It was a fun evening, but there actually weren't that many people there that I knew, really only a couple people I knew from high school were there at the reception. I called it a night at about midnight and went back to the hotel. Some people invited me out to the bars, but I declined because I was tired and I knew I needed sleep before a seven-hour drive the next day. I knew I made the right decision in the morning too, when some people showed up to Mike & Ashley's gift opening kind of bleary-eyed, having been up partying until 6am. I definitely would not have done well being up that late, I'm way too old for that!

Anyway, I never in my wildest dreams thought I'd ever spend ten hours in Lambeau Field in any single day as a Vikings fan. It was pretty cool, even though I was in enemy territory! I'm grateful to Mike & Ashley for inviting me to have the opportunity to play at their wedding and experience that. And then of course before I left Green Bay I had to get a photo in my Vikings Favre jersey in front of Brett Favre Steakhouse. :-)

So this Part 1 post of my trip was mostly in Wisconsin, but Part 2 coming up next will be about my time in Minnesota. Stay tuned!

Posted by Jared at 09:03 PM | Comments (0)

June 08, 2010

Best Overall Presentation

This news is about a month old by now, but I figured I'd mention it on here anyway. About a month ago I was sitting in my office in the Water Tunnel Bldg, when Trina came in and gave me an envelope that had arrived in the mail for me. It was from the American Meteorological Society. I was immediately curious, because I don't normally receive mail at ARL. Then I remembered that the only other time I ever got mail at ARL was a year ago, when AMS sent me my Third Place Student Oral Presentation award. That got me even more curious.

So I opened the envelope, and I was honestly blown away: it was an award for Best Overall Presentation at the 16th Conference on Air Pollution Meteorology at the 90th AMS Annual Meeting in Atlanta this past January!! And a check for $250!! After I gave my presentation in Atlanta I was really happy with it, and while I thought there was a chance I might be in the running for a student award, I didn't really expect to win anything. And last year when I won the 3rd place award, AMS notified me in late March. So this year when April came and went I just assumed that I didn't win anything.

I was really excited that I won, though! I told a few people about it right away, and then the Department of Meteorology wrote up a blurb about it for their website. The cash award will really come in handy (or maybe already has) for my traveling this summer (Wisconsin/Minnesota last week, Colorado next month, or Australia in August). When I told Alex that I might put it toward rent/lodging while I'm in Boulder in July, he told me, "Don't you dare put it towards rent. Award money is supposed to go toward something FUN." :-) Fair enough, although once it's in my bank account it's all the same to me, whether it's for airfare, rent, fixing my car, a Brett Favre jersey, a Muse concert, or whatever, hehe. In any case, it's a really nice award, and I'm honored to have won it!

Posted by Jared at 09:24 PM | Comments (0)