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February 06, 2006
Tasty Turducken
First of all, thanks to everyone who reminded me on Friday about my TA meeting at 2pm. From Nathan's email shortly after I woke up, to Kerrie, Amber, Walter & Daniel reminding me about every 5 minutes in the TA office, I did indeed remember to go to my meeting on time this week. Couldn't have done it without ya! :-P
Friday afternoon I finally got a chance to talk with Dr Stauffer about potential research. He does a lot of mesoscale modeling, and in addition to having created MM5, one of the premiere meteorology models in existence which is used by forecasters the world over, he's also one of the main forecasters for the upcoming Winter Olympics in Torino, Italy. And he's got other cool stuff going on with developing "nowcasting" tools for the military as well, so I figured he'd be a good guy to work for. I might still end up working for him, but it doesn't look like he'll have funding coming in until October... I wonder when I'll get my summer research/funding situation figured out...
Trivia on Friday evening was fun, although the new owners of the Sports Cafe pushed it back to 8pm, which is a bit late in our opinion (it was at 6pm last semester, and 7pm last month, both of which were much better times). After a few mediocre team names the last few weeks, we had a pretty good one this time: "Wilford Brimley Has Diabetes." Not quite sure where that one came from, but it got a lot of laughs from everyone else in the bar when the standings were being read aloud at halftime. (Last week's best team name at Sports Cafe was "The Steelers Ride the Short Bus," absolutely hilarious!) Too bad it didn't help us bring home the top prize though, but again, second ain't too bad.
Saturday afternoon I went into Walker to work on some grading for awhile, and at least I wasn't the only one calling Walker home on a Saturday, Daniel & Caren both were up there too for at least part of the afternoon. Oh, and I got a couple humorous (or sad, depending on your point of view) answers on some of the Meteo 003 labs I was grading. For instance, did you know that Minneapolis's winters are cold because it's way up in the mountains? (More than one person wrote that, that midwestern states like MN, IA, IL & NE were in the Rockies.) Or that the southern hemisphere (SH) has cooler summers than those in the northern hemisphere (NH) because "the cold air falls from the NH to the SH"? Or that Maine stays warm in winter (ignore for now that Maine's in reality of course very cold in the winter) because of "subtropical winds"? I don't know whether to cry or laugh sometimes.
Saturday evening I had a few people (Daniel, David, Amber, Mario, Kerrie & Caren) over to my apartment to watch the classic movie "Groundhog Day." Considering that it was just Groundhog Day back on Thursday, and because David, Amber, Kerrie & Caren all actually went to Punxsutawney on the 2nd to see the world's most famous groundhog/weatherman, we all thought we needed to catch the movie again. Man I love that movie! We all just hung out for awhile longer afterward, mostly being amused by a couple History Channel specials on giants and circus sideshows/freakshows, before a few amusing Steve Martin skits on SNL. Gotta love the random amusement cable provides.
Daniel & I went to church again this morning, though neither of us were amongst the many who were wearing black & gold in a not-so-subtle show of support for the Pittsburgh Steelers; even Pastor Tober was wearing black & gold. :-) I managed to get a bit more grading done this afternoon before heading over to Shannon & Steph's place for the big game. It was a big meteo grads party with more than 20 of us over there to partake in the Super Bowl XL festivities. But as good as a traditional Wisconsin Super Bowl party is with Packer brats, cheese, sausage & beer, it's hard to top a good old-fashioned turducken and beer. 
That's right, we all chipped in to have a real genuine turducken shipped up here straight from the bayou in Louisiana, and it was delicious! For those of you who are unfamiliar with the gluttony otherwise known as a turducken, a turducken is a chicken stuffed inside of a duck stuffed inside of a turkey. I'd never had one before, so this was a new experience for me. And I must say, it was a mighty tasty turducken! And of course there was heaps of other food there too, including the obligatory abundance of artery-clogging junk food. I ate so much... 
And Steph made a bunch of Steelers cookies just for the occasion too, since she's a HUGE Steelers fan. There were several fairly entertaining Super Bowl commercials this year, but overall they weren't as memorable as some years past. I think we all agreed there were too many car commercials, any time one would come on we'd all boo. That and the Diet Pepsi ads were horrible. I think the favorite was the FedEx one with the cavemen though, that one was great! But as for the game, which I thought was decent -- definitely not great, but at least far better than a blowout -- one might've thought that the room would've been full of Steelers fans. I mean, we are in central PA after all. 
But by my count, there were 3 Steelers supporters and a total of 20 Seahawks/indifferent fans (including myself), which I thought was quite impressive. I kinda like both teams, and even though I was kinda cheering for the Seahawks (largely to return the favor from when my cousin Jonathan from Spokane cheered for Penn State in the fall and the Orange Bowl, hehe), I was mostly just hoping for a good game, which it was for the most part. But by the time it was all said and done, the Steelers came out on top 21-10, which made Steph so happy she was dancing on the table. :-) It was too bad the Seahawks couldn't have made it a bit closer, but I'm still not at all unhappy that the Steelers won, because like I said, I do kinda like them, and it's also kinda cool to be living in an area where the "home team" wins the Super Bowl for once.
But man alive, all that food, fun and football's made me a bit tired. Hopefully it won't be so chilly and ferociously windy out tomorrow. Today was kinda ridiculous in that respect, especially after not having had much real winter since December.
Posted by Jared at February 6, 2006 01:15 AM