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August 22, 2006
Denny's Pounder
Saturday was a pretty lazy day, I can't even really remember what I did until evening came and I made dinner (the main dish, at least) for Jon, Steph, Shannon and her friend Colby who was visiting for the weekend, returning the favor from Wednesday when Jon & Steph cooked dinner. I made one of the few dishes I know how to make, 
my chicken/mushrooms/broccoli dish on rice, this time with General Tso's sauce instead of spicy orange sauce. The others got some corn on the cob and some wine, and it was delicious! A bit after dinner we all went downtown to Bar Bleu where we joined up with several of the other meteo grads that weren't out of town for a few hours of fun while listening to some nice jazz by the Andrew Jackson Band. And I have no idea what Steph is doing in this picture on the left, but I just had to post it!
After church on Sunday, Jeff, Vic, Daniel, Katie & I all piled into a car and took a road trip over to Clearfield for a (really) late lunch at Denny's Beer Barrel Pub in Clearfield, almost an hour northwest of State College. Jeff & Vic had been talking up this place for quite awhile, building it up to legendary status just about, so we just had to go make the pilgrimage when the opportunity arose. 
You see, Denny's is famous for having Pennsylvania's, and possibly the world's, largest hamburgers, including 2, 3, 6, 15 and 50-lb burgers. (!!) As a mini-test to see how things would go if we got one of those bigger burgers, we all got 1-lb burgers, except for Katie, who got "only" a 1/3-pounder. Jeff only finished about half of his, Daniel got over 3/4 done, while Vic & I both polished off the pounder. Vic must've been absolutely ravenous though, as he finished his burger and fries in about 8 minutes. 8 minutes for a pound of beef and an order of fries!! Vic's definitely game to try the 2-lb challenge next time we go, but I don't think I'd be able to do it, I was really running out of steam toward the end of the 1-pounder. We were all pretty much in a food coma on the way back to State College though, and I don't think any of us ate really anything for supper!
Sunday evening I hosted the PSCG Bible study at my place. We had been thinking of canceling it this week because we didn't think very many people were gonna be in town, but it's a good thing we had it because ten people showed up!
Yesterday evening was the final regular season game of the year for church softball, as we hosted Berean Bible Fellowship from Unionville. Their pitcher was pretty good, and we lost by a score of 16-4. But hey, at least that's better than last week when we lost to First Baptist of Bellefonte 36-7. There's still kind of a game next week, an end-of-the-season party and intrasquad game.
Then last night around 9:30 I went down to the church and let myself in (since I now have a loaner key) to practice piano for a couple hours. It'd been a year since I'd played any piano at all, and I was a bit rusty for sure. I split time between playing a few hymns just to warm up a bit, trying to start to work through Julian & Suzanne's wedding music (which I just got on Sunday), and messing around a little bit with some pieces I used to be able to play, like "Raindrop" Prelude by Chopin, one of my favourite (but pretty technically-difficult) pieces I've ever learned. Even though I was stumbling on a lot of notes, I was honestly rather surprised at how well I could still play some of this stuff, especially after not having practiced or played them at all in at least a year. It sure gives me a little more hope and confidence that I can learn the wedding music over the next four and a half weeks. In any case, it sure felt good to play piano again, I've missed it.
It's only been two months since I last got the oil changed on my car, but I did kinda have that little 3200-mile road trip to Alabama and Minnesota/Wisconsin earlier this summer, so it's high time I get that done. So that's where I'm headed now, and once I'm done with that I'm gonna be picking up Jacob and we'll be heading down to Baltimore to watch the Twins-Orioles game at Camden Yards! We'll be meeting up with Carl and staying at his place tonight, it should be a blast! We'll be coming back tomorrow morning, and I definitely need to be back since I'm going on-air for CNET again tomorrow afternoon (and Thursday). Watch for me on TV, I'm gonna have my "PSU Meteorology...Twins Win!" sign with me! Go Twins!!
Posted by Jared at August 22, 2006 01:40 PM
Comments
do you want me to send any of your music?
Posted by: MERAmanuensis at August 23, 2006 10:40 AM