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December 30, 2005
Friends and Fun
You know, I think I could really get used to this whole sleeping in till 10am thing...
Like I mentioned in my last post, on Tuesday evening I went over to Nathan & Laura's to play a game of "Settlers of Catan: Cities and Knights" with them, Mark & Wayne. After last weekend's quick one and a half hour stomping by Laura, this one was certainly a much better game. It was fairly even throughout, and everyone was fighting tooth and nail for every bit of board position. It just kept going and going and going, with nobody able to get quite enough to finish it off and win, until Nathan managed to pull it out, five and a half hours after we'd started. It was by far the longest game of any version of "Catan" that I'd played, but it was also by far the most fun game I've ever played, even though I came in 3rd or 4th.
Wednesday afternoon I was outside replacing a couple of light bulbs outside the garage, and a truck came up the driveway with four teenage guys (probably college freshmen, I'm guessing) from Bloomer, asking if they could go ice fishing on our lake. They'd only heard of our lake before, because on of the kids claimed his uncle had been fishing the day before on the lake and caught a bunch of northerns and other fish. We didn't recall seeing anyone on the lake, but that doesn't mean nobody was out there. But we let them all go out on our land down by our dock and onto the lake. They were only out there on the lake for about half an hour wandering around, drilling a bunch of holes, testing depths, and suddenly they packed everything up and left. I guess they didn't find the fishing that good.
On Wednesday evening Mike, Kevin, Shaun & John all came over for a few hours. We just hung out, played some pool, watched a couple funny videos on my computer, and just generally goofed off for a bit, it was fun. I also gave Mike & Kevin a couple small Penn State glasses, and though Mike forgot it that night, in return they got me a UW-Green Bay t-shirt in "Pfizer Viagra" wrapping paper for Christmas, haha.
Last night a few more old friends came over here, Abby, Janelle, Martin, Sarah, Sarah's new husband Ezra (they just got married on the 23rd), Sarah's older sister Jess, her husband and their infant, and then we all went out to eat at Applebee's in Rice Lake. It was so good to see all of them again, and catch up over a good meal. After dinner Janelle and Martin hung out for a bit longer at my house, I showed them a few pictures from Oz/NZ, mostly the awesome road signs and various LOTR sites, which they got a kick out of.
Overnight and all day today to this point we've gotten probably a good 3-4 inches or so of fresh new snow, making everything look bright, fresh and clean outside. The snow had definitely started to look a bit dingy, and there were large areas where the grass was arrogantly poking through the snowpack. That shouldn't happen in late December, but now everything's back to how it should be. Now I've gotta go out and shovel sometime this afternoon, that's the only downside. And it's still snowing too, which could make driving a bit interesting this afternoon and evening.
Speaking of weather-related events that shouldn't be happening in late December, there is ANOTHER tropical storm out in the Atlantic -- Tropical Storm Zeta. Absolutely unbelievable. You can check out the discussions and forecast tracks by the National Hurricane Center here. The Atlantic hurricane season "officially" ended on December 1st, but in reality this season just doesn't want to end.
Well, I'm excited for tonight too, because I'm gonna be heading down to the Twin Cities for a bit of a phun physics reunion at Dick's Bar in Osseo, which Cory's dad owns. I'll be staying overnight at someone's place down there tonight, and probably comin back on Saturday. Though there's still a chance I might stick around into Sunday, I'll just play it all by ear. It should be a really fun time! I'll be heading out in an hour or so, I just hope the roads aren't too bad on my drive down there...
For those of you planning on flying anywhere soon, just make sure you don't have a case of air rage while flying on Monarch Airlines, they'll leave you on a small desert island in the middle of the ocean!
The other day I also updated my Links page by adding a ton of useful weather links, such as satellite loops, model runs, observations and the like. Check em out, there's some cool stuff in there.
Happy New Year everyone! 33 hours and counting until 2006!
Posted by Jared at December 30, 2005 02:47 PM