And even my research I was glad to return to. Yes, even that. Although it was maybe for reasons of deadlines that are approaching. While I was back in Wisconsin, I was notified that I won a scholarship to give a 15-minute talk at a conference in New Orleans on the week preceding Thanksgiving. The conference has a long title: the Defense Threat Reduction Agency - Joint Science Technology Office Chemical & Biological Defense Physical Science & Technology Conference (DTRA-JSTO CBD PS&T Conference). What a mouthful! So we just call it CBD for short.

Anyway, I was, quite frankly, a bit disappointed at the time that I won the scholarship, because I didn't particularly want to go to the conference, and the only way I'd be sent was if I was awarded a scholarship from the conference organizers. Sigh. It's mainly because I was (and still am) nervous about whether I'll get the work I'd promised in the abstract done on time, but I'm pretty sure that's the first time in my life that I haven't been happy that I won a scholarship. Kind of a weird feeling.

At any rate, the 3-pg manuscript on what we're presenting is due 5 September, which is fast approaching (the due date was moved back from 15 August, thankfully), especially since I don't yet have any of the research done. I've been delayed and delayed and delayed with various problems in trying to get WRF (the Weather Research & Forecasting model) working on the cluster at ARL, more or less by myself. It's been pretty frustrating that I've continually been met with hurdle after hurdle and problem after problem, because with each new problem that crops up, it costs me time to try to get something done before the manuscript is due. But even if I don't have everything done by the time I write the manuscript (and I won't), in reality I'll basically have until late October to get done with everything, as our powerpoint slides are due on 28 October, a full three weeks before the start of the conference. So until then, research is definitely gonna be keeping me very, very busy. I'm sure when it comes to November that I'll be very glad that I won the scholarship to spend a week in New Orleans (especially if Daniel & Katie are able to come down from Shreveport one evening for a visit!), but right now I'm just nervous about being able to get everything done on time.

Earlier this month I also submitted an abstract for the Atmospheric Chemistry Conference at the American Meteorological Society Annual Meeting (we just call it AMS), which will be held in mid-January in Phoenix. If my abstract gets accepted there, I'll give a pretty similar talk to what I'll give at CBD. I really hope I can go to AMS though, because I have family down there in Phoenix, and it'd be cool to see all them again.

But I've been far more glad to get back to all my friends here in State College, both from PSCG and from meteo. For the first three weeks after I got back to PA though, I hung out a ton with Alex. From introducing him & David to the fun that is Megachess, to a Spikes game and bowling on Caren's birthday weekend visit, to church softball games, to team trivia at G-Man, to playing some Wii at Tracy & Amanda's, to Bible study and church, to taking Alex to Otto's for his birthday, to going to Pittsburgh for an evening session at a conference (more on that later, in a different post maybe), to watching some Olympics, to going around town putting up posters for "Elijah" together (and introducing him to Waffle Shop!), to driving to Altoona to get Mexican food at El Campesino, to plenty of late-night hanging out and a whole bunch more, we really had a lot of fun spending time with each other getting to know each other. We also spent quite a bit of time at the church playing music together, taking turns on the piano, playing both praise songs (teaching each other some new songs) and secular songs. That was so fun to jam out with him, he's such a fantastic musician! And that was in addition to serving together on the music team at church on the first two weekends in August (one of which I led, but Alex had a good deal of input on the songs I chose), which was great. After we got back from getting Mexican food in Altoona with Isaac, Dan & Neal from PSCG, I helped Alex get all moved out of his apartment that he sub-let for the summer, and I even took some stuff off his hands that he had to get rid of (the people he sub-let from left much of their stuff and told him to throw or give it all away), including a pretty nice couch & recliner, plus a few other random things. Then the next morning, on Wednesday the 13th, I drove him to the airport, so that he could fly back home to Minnesota and then drive to Valparaiso for his senior year. I sure hope he gets admitted to Penn State Meteorology for grad school next year, that'd be so awesome! But since he lives in Minnesota, I'll at least see him over Christmas break (and I'll probably drive back for Christmas too, and pick him up along the way since Valpo's halfway between PSU and the Twin Cities! :-).

It's really amazing how quickly Alex & I became such good friends -- basically, two months after meeting each other (four weeks of which Alex was in Canada, another week of which I was in Wisconsin/Minnesota), we've become each other's best friend! We just think so much alike (we even independently got the same style of sandals, haha) and have so much in common, we connect on so many levels. It's been such a blessing from God to get to know each other and become a part of each other's lives. We're even starting a 52-week read-through-the-Bible program together on Monday, since it's the start of the new academic year for both of us. That's something neither of us have done before, and we're both really looking forward to it. I've never had a friend as close as Alex is, and I hadn't realized just how much I needed someone like that. And for that I'm so thankful to God, He is so good!

Digging way back into the memory archives, back when I was still in Wisconsin a month ago (has it really been that long?), on Saturday the 19th of July I went to the Science Museum of Minnesota with my younger brother Jake to see the Star Wars exhibit they had there. They had a bunch of the original costumes and props from the Star Wars movies, including the Millenium Falcon, TIE Fighters, Luke's Tatooine land speeder, the three primary wookies from the storyline (Chewbacca, of course, plus Tarfful and Salporin), Darth Vader, C-3PO, R2-D2, a bunch of light sabers, and much more. It was really cool to see everything in person.


There was also an omnitheater show about special effects, but it was obviously pretty old, because all the movies they talked about were made prior to 2000, and also fairly limited in scope because they were only movies that George Lucas or his company had a hand in. So as far as it went it was pretty interesting, but it would've been really cool to see how they've advanced in engineering special effects in the last decade, as well as what other movie studios have done. I mean, do we really need 5 minutes showing how they did the effects in "Kazaam," that awful Shaquille O'Neal movie? I think not.

After the Science Museum, Jake & I went over to Aaron & Eve's place for dinner, and then a boat ride to watch some fireworks at the Spirit of the Lake Festival at Mound. While I have been spoiled somewhat by the State College fireworks, it was still cool to watch fireworks over the lake while on a boat. I haven't done that since 1991 in Cumberland. It was definitely a lot tougher to take good pictures of the fireworks while on the boat, that's for sure!

I wasn't at all sure if I'd be able to go to the Science Museum or to my brother Aaron's place that day though, because the day before I started to come down with a headache and a sore throat. I was glad to feel okay -- not good, but well enough I guess -- so that I could hang out with Jake and do that stuff, because I knew he had really been looking forward to it. I was pretty miserable the next couple days though, as my sore throat morphed into a humdinger of a cold. How did I come down with a cold in July? I really don't know. After being so crazy-busy the first few days of my trip home (after being at a conference), and then really relaxing and not doing much when I got back to Cumberland in mid-week, maybe my immune system decided to relax and take a break too. That's actually happened to me before, as I've gotten sick more than once right after final exams finish up. Anyway, I was pretty out of it at church down in Taylors Falls on Sunday, and then the day after that (Monday the 21st) when Carl & I drove the 17 hrs from Cumberland to State College (we left a little after 5am -- UGH). A one-day 17-hr drive isn't the most pleasant thing in the world anyway, but it's pretty miserable when you have a bad cold in addition, making you tired, light-sensitive and just out of it in general. At least I was able to spell Carl a couple times though, for a couple hundred miles in Indiana and Ohio, and then the last stretch from Clarion to State College. We were both ridiculously tired the whole time we were in PA, but we were determined to make it back to PSU, even if it meant having to switch every 15-30 minutes. But we made it back safe and sound, so that was good.

Well, it'll probably take another couple blog entries to catch up for the rest of the time in which I've been derelict in my blogging, but at least this is a start. Time to cheer on the American women in the gold-medal beach volleyball match, as Misty May-Treanor and Kerrie Walsh go for their 108th consecutive victory. 108!! No matter what sort of competition you're in, that's utter and complete dominance! Just one more reason why the Olympics are awesome!

But in any case, tomorrow night I'll be resting my head in a new apartment. It'll be nice not to have loud people gathering right outside my window throughout the night anymore, or have loud cars honking their horns in the middle of the night to try to get the attention of whoever they're waiting to pick up. That's why I got very little sleep last night, and that's one of the things I definitely won't miss about Mt Nittany Apts (my bedroom being literally right next to the driveway and main door to the building).

Oh, and in case anyone's interested in what my new address will be starting tomorrow, here it is:

425 Waupelani Dr, Apt #301
State College, PA 16801

Anyway, either to packing or to bed I go!

First, an Appleton woman was charged with felony extortion for placing a microwaved rat in her food at a restaurant, and then demanding $500,000. Too bad (for her) the restaurant doesn't own a microwave. Or white lab rats.

Second, participants in the annual Wisconsin State Cow Chip Throw in Prairie Du Sac on Labor Day weekend are already hard at work picking out the perfect cow chips. What a crappy job. (h/t Jeff [Frame])

And finally, if your lawn mower wouldn't start, what would you do? Look at the starter, the spark plugs, or something like that? No, that's far too logical. How about shooting the lawn mower with your sawed-off shotgun? Why yes, that sounds like a great idea! And that's exactly what a Milwaukee man did. And his defense? "I can do that. It's my lawn mower and my yard, so I can shoot it if I want." Disorderly conduct charge aside (he fired a weapon within city limits), you might not wanna try that defense when you used a sawed-off shotgun, a weapon that's illegal to possess to begin with (even in Wisconsin). (h/t Kent)

On Wisconsin!

Is my vacation seriously nearly over already? Didn't it just start? Well, I've been pretty busy driving all over the place the last few days visiting friends and family and whatnot, so here's some of what I've been up to.

Last Friday morning Carl, his friend Seth & I pulled out of State College at about 6:30am. It's not particularly fun to be starting a long drive on just 5 hours of sleep, but then again that's why Carl drove the first leg. And by the first leg, I mean from State College, PA, all the way to Tomah, WI (where Seth's parents met us so they could go back to Rochester, MN). I drove the rest of the way to Cumberland, and we went through a nice squall line along the way on US 53 from New Auburn to Rice Lake. I'm sure I would've enjoyed the lightning show and gusty winds a lot more if I wasn't driving! But we got to my parents' house in Cumberland a bit before 11pm, meaning we were on the road for just over 17 hours. Ugh. I was very glad to be out of the van finally.

On Saturday Carl & I drove down to the Twin Cities to go to the wedding of our friends Zach & Jolene. Zach's a former roommate of mine from Gustavus, and Jolene was in my physics graduating class at GAC. Their wedding was at Central Lutheran in downtown Minneapolis, and because the church is so huge, it seemed like it was a pretty small wedding because the guests didn't take up too much space. It was a nice wedding though, and pretty short too. Zach got a little choked up while reciting the vows too. Afterwards, Carl said that if he was told beforehand that only one of the two would cry during the ceremony, his money would've been on Zach. Right on Carl, right on. ;-)


The reception was at the Minnesota Zoo down in Apple Valley, on the Tropics Trail. It's a pretty cool place for a reception, actually, if a bit humid. It was also funny when the lemurs would go crazy and be yelling for a minute or two at a time. There was a bit of an adventure in the receiving line at the zoo too. I was getting ready to take a picture of Zach & Jolene when somebody (not me, seriously) accidentally dumped their beer on the front of Jolene's wedding dress. Oops. I wasn't sure if they'd appreciate me taking pictures of the stained wedding dress right after it happened, so I put my camera away just in case. But they were able to get it out quickly, so you couldn't even notice it.

During the dinner Zach & Jolene wouldn't kiss in response to glass-clinking. Instead, they had a whole series of questions written out about them (such as where they got engaged, where they had their first date, what's the only sports team they follow, etc), and if a glass-clinker wanted them to kiss, they had to answer a question correctly. Since our table had four physics alums (me, Carl, Seth, and John, who flew in from Switzerland for the wedding!), we decided to be a bit obnoxious and answer a bunch of questions. I mean, we knew most of them, after all. :-) If we had gotten through all the questions, we decided that we'd start asking them questions. [evil laugh] After dinner was a bunch of dancing, which was fun. Jolene had even picked out some rap song for all us physics majors to dance to, haha. All that we were missing was a coffee table on which to dance! At the start of the dollar dance, a bunch of people lined up right away to dance with Jolene, but people were a bit slow to get in line for Zach, so Carl & I got the first two dances with him, haha. We closed the reception down too, it went till almost midnight.


It was fun to see everyone who made it back for the wedding. Seth, Carl & I stayed in a hotel that night, and in the morning went to Zach & Jolene's house in Minneapolis for a brunch, and stayed there until they had to head out to the airport to catch their flight to Paris. France, Italy, Switzerland & Austria sure isn't a bad honeymoon trip. :-)

After the brunch on Sunday, Seth went back home to Madison, but Carl & I drove down to Saint Peter for the Gustavus Physics Alumni Picnic. We got there a bit early, so I spent an hour walking around the campus taking a bunch of pictures:


There weren't too many people at the picnic, because they only announced it a month ago (only John, Carl & I showed up from our class, and we only made it because we were in Minnesota for the wedding). Next year's will be far more organized and announced way further in advance, Chuck said, because DC Henry will be retiring and it'll be the 10th anniversary of Dick Fuller's retirement. But it was really good to get a chance to see most of my former physics profs, with DC, Chuck, Paul & Mellema all there. Huber didn't make it though.

I spent Sunday & Monday nights at my brother Aaron & Eve's house in Minnetrista, Sunday night playing in a poker game with Aaron & his neighbors. Yes, I played poker. And I might've won had I not mistakenly thought I had a 6 on one crucial hand instead of an 8. I could've knocked out two people, but instead reduced myself to pretty much nothing. I bet the wrong hand and called two people's all-ins, argh! Wait, why am I telling a bad beat story? Bad Jared.

On Monday I drove into downtown Minneapolis (well, Saint Anthony, technically) to have lunch with my friend Dan, a fellow PK (pastor's kid) who I've known for probably 15 years. I got a little turned around in downtown trying to find where we were meeting, making me a bit late, which was unfortunate because he only had his lunch break and had to get back to work. I wish we could've hung out a bit more, but oh well. Maybe there'll be more time when I come back for Christmas.

After lunch, since I was already right near downtown, I decided to pay for another couple hours of parking so I could walk around and take some pictures. I didn't have really any pictures of Minneapolis, after all. ;-) I was just gonna go down to one of the parks along the Mississippi River to try to get some good views of the Minneapolis skyline, and then maybe walk around there for a bit. When I stumbled onto the Saint Anthony Heritage Trail, I figured what the heck, I may as well, and this seemed like something I'd do if I were visiting a new city. It was a nice little walk too, going along historic Main Street in St Anthony, by the old Pillsbury flour mills (some of which are actually still in use), over the Stone Arch Bridge (with good views of Saint Anthony Falls), and then along the southwest bank of the Mississippi, crossing back over at the Father Louis Hennepin Bridge. Even though I'd lived two hours or less from Minneapolis for most of my life, I'd never seen St Anthony Falls, except for fleeting glimpses from the 35W bridge (the one that collapsed last August), and I'd never been on the Stone Arch Bridge before. It was an absolutely gorgeous day for a walk too, sunny skies, low humidity and temps in the mid-upper 80s. Little did I know before I went on the walking tour that Saint Anthony Falls is the only legitimate waterfall on the entire length of the Mississippi River. Another fun fact I learned is that Pillsbury, with its flour mills in Minneapolis, was one of the first companies in America to offer its employees profit-sharing, way back around 1900 if I recall correctly. Monday was a good reminder to me that there are lots of fun and interesting places to explore, even close to home, wherever home happens to be.

On Tuesday I basically hung around Aaron & Eve's place until mid-afternoon, just relaxing and reading a book and whatnot, then I left to go have dinner with my friends Scott & Katie up in White Bear Lake. I had hoped to swing by either Fort Snelling State Park or Minnehaha Falls Park on my way there, but traffic was bad enough that I didn't have time. Oh well, maybe one of these visits home. Anyway, it was great to see Scott & Katie (and their 4-month old baby girl, Georgia!) again and hear what they're up to. It would've been fun to stay longer, but I had to let Scott study for his insane Chinese class he's taking this summer (class 3 hrs/day, 5 days/wk, for 10 weeks).

So I've been back in Cumberland since Tuesday night, trying to relax and basically not do much. Other than organize photos and blog, of course. ;-) Wednesday night I went over to my oldest brother Nathan & Laura's house for dinner and a game night. Five of us played Settlers: Cities & Knights of Catan, and I finally won a Catan game! I think it was the first time I've ever won a Catan game of any sort. But hey, I still typically have fun even if I'm finishing in last or next-to-last like is usually the case. It's just nice to win one at least once in awhile. :-)

Just for kicks, here's a panoramic of some cool wavy clouds from an approaching storm system I snapped on Wednesday morning right after I woke up:

I think my younger brother Jake's gonna come over tonight for dinner, and then I'll have seen all three of my brothers on this trip home. We're also planning to hit up the Science Museum of Minnesota on Saturday to check out the Star Wars special exhibit that's there. I've heard it's pretty cool. And then Sunday will be here, the last day of vacation, Carl & Seth will get here, and then at 5am Monday we'll set off for Pennsylvania. Another 17-hr drive, I can't wait.

To celebrate the 4th of July last week, I mostly just lounged around and did nothing. It was a vacation day, after all, and I was frustrated enough with work that I didn't want to do anything work-related, so mostly I just piddled around with stuff on my computer, read a bit, took a nap. Yeah, it was a lazy day. In the late afternoon I went over to Scott & Yvette's place for a fun meteo cookout. Can you get more American than having a beer while eating meat off a grill before blowing stuff up? I think not. But even though they have a decent view of the fireworks from their front lawn, I decided I wanted to get closer than 2 miles away. A lot closer.

Tracy, Amanda & Dan were all working at the bug fair tent all afternoon at the Central PA 4th Fest, and in return they were given several VIP tickets for free. As it turned out, they had a couple extra passes, so they asked if I'd like one. (Thank you, thank you, thank you!!) At first I wasn't sure how much better a view I could get in the VIP lot than I got last year behind the right-center field wall of Medlar Field. Oh how naïve I was for thinking that!

The VIP are for viewing fireworks here in State College is in a grassy field behind Beaver Stadium and next to Medlar Field that's used for tailgating for football games. The main advantage of it is that it gives you an unobstructed view of the entire fireworks display, including all the close-to-the-ground pyrotechnics that they set off (and those are *only* visible to those in the VIP area). So yes, while it costs $25/person to get in, and might seem a bit steep, after having sat there to watch the fireworks once, I don't think I'll ever watch the fireworks anywhere else if I have any say about it. Even if I have to pay for my ticket next year, I think I'd splurge. It's totally worth it.

Of course, it wouldn't be worth it if the fireworks display was any ordinary fireworks show. But State College has far from an ordinary display. According to FireworksGuide.com, here are the top ten July 4th fireworks displays in the United States:

1. New York City
2. Boston
3. State College
4. Philadelphia
5. Washington DC
6. Seattle
7. New Orleans
8. Buffalo
9. Lake Tahoe
10. Houston

That's right, State College has the #3-rated fireworks display in the country for July 4th shows (and #5-rated overall fireworks display anytime during the year). The show is 45 minutes long, and choreographed to a whole series of songs. Prior to the grand finale, they shoot off an average of 4 shells per second. And then during the grand finale, they shoot off an average of 49 shells per second. That's a lot of fireworks!!

I managed to get quite a few good photos of the fireworks with my new camera, using its preset fireworks setting (2 sec. exposure, F8.0), and my handy-dandy flexible tripod. And the flexible LCD screen allowed me to be able to keep my eye primarily on the sky, only needing to glance down occasionally at the LCD to make sure the fireworks were in the frame.

I also took seven videos, which I've uploaded to YouTube (I have much better versions on my computer):

As you can see from the videos and photos above, it was quite an awesome fireworks display! I'm already looking forward to next year's show! In fact, I'm considering volunteering with the 4th Fest pyrotechnics crew next year, because it'd be really cool to be a part of setting all this up. And it'd be another way to get a free VIP ticket again. ;-) But part of what makes the Central PA 4th Fest fireworks show amazing is that the whole thing is 100% volunteer. From the planning to the choreographing to the setup, it's all done by volunteers. And they start working in September to put together the following year's show. At least they get a couple months off, haha.

Today's the last day of the conference, woohoo! My talk on Tuesday afternoon went well. Walter gave his talk immediately after me, and our presentations weren't without some drama. The session chair, who for historical and political reasons has an axe to grind with our group at Penn State, asked kind of a snide question of Walter, but then during his talk (which he arranged to be immediately after Walter's & mine), the session chair launched into a rant in which he was basically slamming the entire basis of both of our talks. That didn't make our sponsors (who were also his former sponsors -- that's part of why he's so bitter toward PSU) very happy. I also heard via the grapevine that some other conference attendees likened the session chair's behavior to "academic child abuse," which I found to be a rather amusing term. Anyway, some people came up to both Walter & I at the end of the day to tell us how good they thought our talks were, and how out of line they thought the session chair was. Apparently we must've done something right. :-)

We have eleven Penn Staters down here in total, eight of whom have already given their presentations (Kerrie, me, Walter, Luna, Joel, Brian G., Brian R., Sue), and only Andrew has yet to give his presentation. There have been some interesting talks, and some really bad talks. I'm always amazed at how many people have now idea how to put together or give a decent presentation. At least today it seems like they have the microphone working fairly consistently. Prior to today it'd work intermittently, and so many people were talking so quietly that it was very hard to hear them.

The conference ends at 5pm today, and I'll get back to State College around 11pm tonight, meeting up with Carl and his friend Seth from Cornell. And then *early* tomorrow morning we'll start the 17-hr drive to Cumberland, Wisconsin. It'll probably be a few days before I get a chance to blog again though, because I'll be so busy on my "vacation." Busy in a good way though.

Well, this talk seems potentially interesting, so I should probably pay attention to it. :-)

The 12th Annual George Mason University Conference on Atmospheric Transport & Dispersion Modeling begins tomorrow morning, and for the third year in a row, I'm here in Fairfax for it. I give my talk, "Using NWP Ensembles and Meteorological Ensemble-Uncertainty Information to Improve SCIPUFF Dispersion Forecasts," at 2:15pm tomorrow, and I just finished up making some last-minute tweaks to it. Hopefully it goes well, because for various reasons I've been frustrated and not terribly confident with some of my material for the past week. I won't bother getting into that here right now though.

At any rate, hopefully one of the evenings while I'm here I'll get a post up with some pictures and videos from the awesome fireworks show back on Friday. I'm so eager for this talk to be over, so I can relax and essentially start vacation. Four days from now I'll be in Wisconsin!

Upon getting our bargain night $8 upper deck tickets (and our George Sherrill Orioles t-shirt jerseys, free to the first 10,000 fans), it was of course time for some Boog's Bar-B-Q. Mmmm, seasoned pit beef, slathered in BBQ sauce, onions and horseradish. If there's better ballpark food anywhere, I'd like to know. Boog's is definitely a highlight of any trip to Camden Yards.

As for the game itself, the Royals hit a solo home run in the top of the 1st, which bounced on the Eutaw Street plaza in right field, and hit a warehouse window on one bounce. Very impressive. It had to have been hit longer than 410 feet, a bomb. The O's came back and took a 6-1 lead with a 5-run 3rd inning. After the Royals got a couple back to make it 6-3, Ben & I decided to be photo geeks, and wandered around the stadium to take tons of pictures.

After the game the four of us drove up to a park on Federal Hill, which has a beautiful view of the Baltimore skyline and Inner Harbor.

By the time we got back to State College it was a bit after 2am, but it was a really fun evening. I'm especially glad I went, because as it turns out it's the last time I'll get to see Paul or Ryan before they move away to Atlanta and Louisville, respectively, since I'm gonna be out of town for two weeks starting on Monday.

Saying goodbye to friends is never fun, and this is definitely the time of year for that. Anke & Dave moved out to Fort Collins, Colorado a month or two ago, Stephanie left on Friday to move to Monterey, California, Vic is moving to Grand Forks, North Dakota on Monday, Meaghan's moving back to Dallas on Tuesday, and Lindsay's moving to Grand Rapids, Minnesota soon thereafter too. And then in August Daniel van N. will be moving back to South Africa. I guess that's the nature of academia though, with friends coming and going every year. On the plus side, with having friends moving all over the country, there's a greater chance of seeing at least some of them, almost no matter where I travel. :-)

To get all of you in the mood for the 4th of July, here's a video I took during the Grand Finale at last year's Central PA 4th Fest here in State College.

I'm definitely gonna be taking a bunch of pictures and videos at tonight's fireworks with my new camera and gorillapod! Hopefully the rain holds off until after the show is done. Happy Independence Day!

Happy Independence Day everyone!

I knew that the sermon text was going to be Psalm 4, and I wanted to pick some songs that would fit with it, but Psalm 4 proved to be a tough customer as far as that was concerned. (As it turned out, the songs I picked happened to fit with the sermon better than I could've ever planned!) So I just tried to go with a couple self-contained themes within the worship set, and here are the songs that I picked out for this week:

Your Grace Is Enough
Wonderful Grace of Jesus (an AWESOME hymn for piano)
Mission's Flame
Shine, Jesus, Shine
The Love of God (a great old hymn that I was only recently introduced to)
Trust and Obey

Both Mission's Flame and The Love of God were new to just about everyone, so I was hoping that wouldn't be too many new songs to introduce at once. I've really been hoping to introduce Mission's Flame at church for some time now, so I took advantage once I had control over what songs got picked. :-)

I especially wanted to do this song after last week, when Pastor Tober's old roommate from Bob Jones gave a message at church. He's been a missionary to the Tatar people in Kazakhstan since 1997, and he and his wife decided to go there because the Gospel really hadn't ever reached the Tatar people before. As a gifted musician, he learned all about traditional Tatar instruments and music (he's working on his PhD at a conservatory there, and his dissertation will be the first one ever written about Tatar instruments), and began to compose Christian songs using those instruments and melodies. He even shared some of those songs at church, playing on violin and on the squeezebox (kind of like an accordion, except with old typewriter-style keys instead of piano-style keys). It was really cool. In any case, he also told stories of all the people who've come to know Christ as a result of those songs, and people realizing that they actually can worship God in their own language. That's a sharp contrast to the Islamic culture of the Tatar people, in which true "worship" can only be conducted in Arabic, and the Koran is only in Arabic. As part of their ministry though, the Psalms, the New Testament, and the Pentateuch are now published in the Tatar language, with the rest of the Old Testament currently being translated. But everything about what that missionary has done really fits the words of Mission's Flame by Matt Redman:

But when we sing "Send us out!" that isn't limited to asking to be sent out to some faraway land where the Gospel hasn't ever been preached. There are plenty of places for us to be sent out that are closer to home, including our neighborhoods, our workplaces, our communities. We always need to be mindful of opportunities to share the Gospel with our friends and other people we meet in our daily lives. In that sense, all Christians should be missionaries and evangelists, spreading the Gospel wherever we live. Send us out!

On Friday evening we celebrated Ruth H.'s 27th birthday, and for that she wanted to go rollerskating, so we went to Penn Skates. Now, I had no idea where this place was or that it even existed prior to last week, but I wasn't exactly impressed when I heard that it was in a warehouse across the road from the airport. Didn't exactly sound high-class, but then again, it's a rollerskating rink, what should I expect? :-) To be completely honest, I wasn't totally sold on the idea of rollerskating because, well, it seemed like a very middle school-type activity, and the last time I'd skated was, well, in middle school. Over a decade ago. [Wow, I guess it has been that long!] But I went, and rented some rollerblades. Now this was the first time I'd ever put on a pair of rollerblades, so needless to say I was pretty awkward for the first, oh, at least 30 minutes or so before I finally started getting a little bit of a feel for it, and began finally to be gliding and pushing off a bit like you're supposed to. But I only fell once on the evening, so I consider that a minor victory! I rollerbladed for about an hour and a half before I decided to call it quits, because my feet and legs were hurting me (the skates were cutting into my legs too, pretty uncomfortable -- next time I'll wear taller socks). At least I didn't completely suck at it by the time I quit though, and that was one of my goals, just not to suck by the end. I set high goals for myself, what can I say? The whole experience was still kinda weird though. First off, the rink totally smelled like middle school when we first got there, before they opened up the doors at the ends of the rink to let in a bit of a breeze. They had black lights on in the place, there was an arcade and a pool table, and pretty much all the things you'd expect at a middle school hangout (including a bunch of middle schoolers, who were probably wondering what all of us basically-adults were doing there taking over their hangout). Including flat, round pod-like tables scattered amongst the arcade games, on which middle schoolers were frequently making out, haha. Did they think they were being discreet?? But all in all, I'd say I had more fun than I was expecting. I guess I should maybe be willing to be a bit more open to new things in the future, even if I don't *think* I'll enjoy them beforehand.

Saturday was moving day for the Hollemans, the advisors for PSCG. Something like 15 of us showed up in the morning to help them load all their stuff from their old house near Suburban Park into the U-Haul (two trips), and then unload it into their new house in the Park Forest neighborhood. Helping with a full house move made me glad that I currently have just books, clothing, a TV, a small bookcase and a bed (plus some odds and ends) that I'll have to pack up and move in August to my new apartment. If it weren't for the bed, I could probably squeeze everything into my car still, haha. But anyway, after helping Ash & Heather get everything into their awesome new house, in the evening we helped get their big projection screen and sound system hooked up in the basement, and then had a Wii party down there, rocking out to plenty of Guitar Hero.

The insulation in their house is pretty amazing, in that even when we have Guitar Hero cranked up pretty good, you can't hear a thing on the main floor. So when we heard some claps of thunder over Guitar Hero after awhile, we knew those had to be some pretty close lightning strikes. I went upstairs to check it out, and was treated to the most spectacular lightning show I've seen in my time in State College, and maybe the most spectacular show I've ever seen in my life. There was barely a second that went without some flash of lightning in the sky, and the rain was coming down in torrents to boot. There were several strikes that were within half a mile, it was awesome. After a bit, Ash realized that his garage door was still open, and that rain was blowing inside. I helped him to close it, by holding the door up while he undid the ropes and bungee cords that were holding the door open (the spring on the garage door had broken). While I was grabbing the metal part of the door, lightning struck maybe 1,000 feet in front of me, and at that moment I felt a little shock in my hands, and Ash smelled ozone (which lightning produces). A second later came the big boom. Now that was close! I figure what must've happened is that the lightning stroke probably induced a current in all metal in at least a 1,000-foot radius, to give me the shock. That's pretty impressive in and of itself, if you ask me, and I never knew lightning could do that. But then again, you know you're dealing with something pretty powerful electricity when it can travel several kilometers through *air*, which isn't exactly a good conductor. That's really all the closer I ever care to get to being struck by lightning, though I will admit it's pretty cool to say that I was almost struck by lightning. :-) It felt a lot like I had just grabbed an electric fence; it wasn't a big shock, but it was definitely enough to get my attention!

Oddly enough, lightning's been on my mind more than that lately. A couple weeks ago my mom called me on her cell phone to say that our house had just been struck by lightning. Everything wound up being okay (after getting some circuits back online and having the phone company repair the phone line), and what probably happened there is that the garage likely got struck, and that the current followed the phone line to the house, where it blew the cover off the phone box on the exterior of the house several feet away. Close call!

And then tonight in church softball, we called the game after 3 innings due to approaching lightning. With the approaching storm, I just didn't feel comfortable saying that I thought it was okay to have everyone go back out in the field to try to get in another inning. That turned out to be the right decision, because 5 minutes later there was a rumble of thunder that would've made me tell everyone to vacate the field right away anyway. Even though this game didn't officially count, we "lost" 12-3. But if you discount the 1st inning, we were winning 3-0. :-) Faith Baptist scored 12 in the 1st inning, 10 of which came before we could record an out (ugh). Ben had me playing 3rd base, and I at least didn't commit an error while getting two putouts. I was 1-for-2 batting, with a single down the 3rd base line (and a run scored), and a fielder's choice to the shortstop.

Last week I played probably my best game ever in church softball. We lost to Penns Valley Community Church 18-10 after 7 innings (technically it was 13-1 after 5), but I was 4-for-5 on fielding chances in left-center and left field, including a couple "go-go gadget arm!" running catches, haha. I was 3-for-4 at the plate too, with a single past the shortstop up the middle and another single into short center. Then in the 6th inning I got to bat twice, I don't know if that's ever happened to me in church league before. And they were my two best swings I've had! My first at-bat that inning was a towering fly ball to deep right-center -- if I'd hit it just a little more square, it would've been way gone, sigh. But then I made up for it later in the inning, with a 2-out 3-RBI double off the top of the wall in left-center. That one really felt good, although I was very glad to see it hit the fence. I was worried about it clearing the fence and hitting a house at first, but on second thought if it would've cleared the fence it probably would've gone bounding down the street between the houses and been okay. Better safe than sorry though.

One last item for this evening: it's going to get harder to fly into and out of State College soon. Starting on 1 Sep 2008, Delta Airlines is discontinuing its Cincinnati-State College flights, meaning that Delta will no longer be servicing State College (the Atlanta-State College flights were already discontinued by Delta back on 1 May 2008). Argh. Now that means there are only three ways in or out of SCE: on US Airways through Philadelphia, on United Airlines through Washington Dulles, and on Northwest Airlines through Detroit. Further limiting our flying options will definitely hurt consumers even more here in central PA, as it was already hard enough to fly in and out of here. This will probably make trips to Harrisburg, Pittsburgh or Baltimore a bit more common when I need to fly somewhere. The State College airport doesn't seem to have any choice in the matter though, and this'll be devastating for them too. Hopefully they'll be able to arrange some flights to other cities at some point to make up for it. Makes me all the more glad that Minneapolis is still going to be a Northwest hub (even after the Delta merger), so if I need to fly home I can do it with just one layover. If Northwest kills the flight from Detroit-State College though, that'll really be annoying.

The ticket sale as a whole has gone much more smoothly this year than last year's total free-for-all. How they did it this year was allot a certain number of tickets to each class, thus divvying up the 21,500 student tickets, and having each class buy their tickets online on a different day. They also had everyone who wanted to get tickets pre-register back at the end of May. For grad students, they allotted however many tickets that grad students bought last year (around a thousand?). Then the remaining tickets were allocated according to what percentage of the Penn State-University Park undergraduate enrollment is in what class. As a result, the juniors got the biggest allotment (28%, or 5,880 tickets) since they're the biggest class (the biggest in Penn State history, too), then came the seniors, and so on. I haven't heard how the freshman and sophomore ticket sales went the last two days, but the senior ticket sale on Monday took about nine hours to sell out. In contrast, the junior ticket sale on Tuesday sold out their entire allotment in a mere 90 seconds!! So I definitely wasn't gonna take any chances, and made sure I was ready to go with all the stuff I needed right at 7:00:00am this morning! I didn't wanna risk getting shut out, that's for sure!

So far I haven't heard of any grad student not being able to get tickets who tried to get them. I haven't bothered to check yet if they've sold out by now either. But I know for sure, in addition to me and Petters, that Jeff [Frame], Kent, Walter & Ethan all got tickets in meteo, and Dan, Tracy & Amanda in PSCG got them too. Post a comment here if you got them too, so we can keep a tally!

Alright, time to head in to campus. Advisor meeting at 9 to talk more about my paper. I'm really looking forward to getting this pushed out the door finally. Maybe next week??

I've been going on like this for a long time, quite happily usually. Last week I began to feel like I was stretched a bit too thinly though, that I was maybe a bit overcommitted. I enjoy everything I do and all the people I hang out with, but trying to juggle all these things has been running me down a bit. I guess I started to notice it at the PSCG leadership meeting last Tuesday night, since I hosted it, made dinner for everyone, and then was amazed (and really excited!) during the 3-4 hour meeting at just how much stuff we're planning for the coming year (and we still didn't get around to talking about everything we'd planned to). Thoughts started to percolate that if I maintained the status quo in everything else, that I'd be hard-pressed to devote as much time to PSCG as I felt I should. The feeling of being overwhelmed really started becoming acute on Thursday and Friday, and I knew that I had to make a decision to pull back from some area. I eventually decided that I probably had to pull back from my life group at church, to make that more of an occasional than a regular thing. It was a tough decision and one I didn't want to make, and I really didn't want to give up anything. But I'm obligated to PSCG since I'm the president again (and I love that group, it's not just an obligation), I don't want to give up spending time with my friends in my department, and playing piano at church is a really fun outlet, and something completely different from all the analytical stuff I do. I'm grateful to God for the wonderful situation He's placed me in and all the opportunities that I've been given, and I just want to make wise use of my time. I can't do everything. I need to be shown that every now and then, I guess.

All that being said, I've been really encouraged by making a couple new friends in the department, David & Alex. When a group of us were going out to lunch a couple Fridays ago, I went down and invited them along (and then introduced myself, haha). David's a new grad student just starting out here, and Alex is an undergrad at Valpo (originally from the Twin Cities too) doing research here for the summer, and hoping to come here for grad school in another year. Anyway, in the course of conversation I found out that they're both Christians too, and since they came to lunch with us they've both gotten involved in PSCG, coming to Bible study and other stuff. Alex even wants to get involved with the worship team at my church later this summer as well (he plays piano and a couple other instruments), even though he's just gonna be here for a month after he gets back from his month-long research field campaign up in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, Canada! So I've been hanging out with them a fair bit in the last week-plus (including driving Alex to the airport at 4:30am this morning so he could catch his three-stopover flight to Yellowknife!), and it's been fun to get to know them. It's exciting to find new friends, and a huge encouragement to meet new Christians in my department. So I've been grateful to God for that too.

This evening we had a couple storms coming through, and it was enough to rain out our church softball game tonight. It's the third rainout so far this year, compared to no rainouts all of last year. Bummer. But the rainout has had a couple plus sides, including a down evening where I've had a chance to work on some entries for the new wiki we're developing for Christian Grads, to blog (of course, haha), and to enjoy listening to the thunder as the storms rolled through. I even got a treat of seeing some mammatus clouds (thanks for the heads-up, Frame!). They're not quite as cool as mammatus I've seen at other times, but hey, it's central PA, so I don't think we can be too choosy. It's been good to be not busy for an evening.