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October 21, 2006
Scary Moment
I've always dreaded the time of the semester when midterms roll around, but this semester is really the least stressed-out I've ever been about midterms. Hmm, maybe that has something to do with only taking one class, but I could be wrong. At any rate, our midterm for Grad Synoptic was this past Wednesday evening, and boy oh boy was it a blast. It was so fun I even decided to stay for three and a half hours. Now what better way could you imagine to spend an entire evening? I can't think of anything... In all seriousness though, the test was horrendously long, like two-plus homework assignments, yet Dr Markowski somehow expected us to finish it all in an hour and a half or two hours. Well, pretty much everybody was there past the three-hour mark, so his estimate was just a little off... I was panicking during the first hour of the test that I wouldn't even get 20 points on it, but I calmed down and kept pecking away at it, so that now I don't think I failed at least. But that's really all you've gotta try to do in a grad-level elective, just not embarrass yourself, because the grades really and truly don't matter. We've been told that in our other grad classes, but now that I'm past the core classes I really feel like I can accept that mindset, it's really relaxing!
We had our third IM football game of the year on Thursday evening, and the weather was much nicer (calm and 70 degrees) than last week (very windy and 40 degrees). (That nice weather ended mere minutes after the conclusion of our game, with a heavy rain that lasted till morning; we sure finished just in time!) Yet before the game even started our team had quite a scare. We were running a couple warmup plays before the game, and Glenn jumped up to try to tip the pass on the defensive line, but wound up falling and hitting his head on the ground. When I'd turned around from running my route, it only took about a second to realize something was very wrong, because Glenn was laying on the ground and not moving. So I quick called 911 on my cell phone while others were trying to find an IM trainer (and the IM refs didn't have a clue what the phone number for the trainers was, argh!). During the call he finally regained consciousness (he was out cold for probably a minute or two), but the paramedics still came and took him to the hospital in an ambulance. Long story short, he suffered a concussion but is otherwise okay; he was released from the hospital after only an hour. So he's definitely listed as "doubtful" for next week's game on our injury list...
As for the game, we played much better than we did last week, battling to an 8-8 tie at halftime, and I had two catches for first downs in the first half. Late in the second half we were tied at 14, but were in line for the win because we had 6 first downs to 3 for the other team (first downs are the first tiebreaker). They got the ball back with under a minute left and drove down the field, scoring a touchdown on a controversial play with 10 seconds left. Their team should've been called for several downfield blocking penalties on their scoring play, but the refs didn't throw a flag because their linemen were simply "running downfield" into our defenders. I'm sorry, but that's the definition of blocking downfield. Argh. I wish the intramural organizers would take a little time to train the IM referees and introduce them to the rules, it might be nice. Anyway, it was a tough way to lose 22-14, but we still played quite well the whole game I thought.
On Friday I was finally able to pick up at the post office a package that Josh had sent me for my birthday from Japan. Its contents: not a stuffed animal but a stuffed tea-drinking daikon (a giant Japanese radish), some daikon stickers, some odd stationery, and a plastic sushi toy set, haha. The Japanese have issues. Major ones. But I did manage to find a good spot for the daikon, on my office computer. Thanks Josh!
Katie & I tried to teach a few more people how to play Hand & Foot last night over at Jacob's place, but it didn't go so well. I think we've now established that eight players is a bit too much unless everyone is already really familiar with the game, because otherwise it just goes a bit too slowly to keep everyone's interest. Oh well. But while we were playing Hand & Foot there were a bunch of other people over there playing Risk and LOTR Risk, so it was quite a busy game night! We also fit in a few fun games of Fluxx, a really fun card game for mindless fun, because the rules/goals constantly change, rendering strategy essentially irrelevant, hehe.
I bought Jon's ticket for the homecoming football game today vs Illinois. I'd only been to one other game this year (Akron), and that one was kind of tainted by Ernesto's soaking rains. But it was a wonderful day for a football game today, and it turned into a much closer game than anyone would've liked. The Fighting Illini really are a pretty bad team, but they were dominating the Nittany Lions through the first half, en route to a 9-3 lead. Penn State's defense finally began to stiffen in the 2nd half, setting up a short field for the offense to pull ahead 10-9, and then right after that they returned a fumble 6 yards for another TD to go up 17-9. 
Late in the 4th (under 1:30 left) after Illinois had cut the lead to 17-12 we sacked their QB in the end zone for a safety, sending the Beaver Stadium crowd into a frenzy. Then the ensuing onsides kick was run back 29 yards for a touchdown, giving Penn State 9 points in a 10-second span, spurring them on to their 26-12 victory. So despite the margin and the exciting finish (my voice is pretty hoarse from all that cheering), I'm pretty worried about Penn State's lousy offense, which seems to be in hibernation mode. If they don't start playing with at least a little bit of a pulse on offense they're gonna get throttled at Wisconsin in two weeks...
And Happy Birthday to Josh and Mike! I hope you both had a great day!
Posted by Jared at October 21, 2006 11:10 PM
Comments
Hey now, I expect you to be sending me mail with that funky stationary some time soon! You should mail your parents as well. Its fun stuff. Now be nice to your daikon. He traveled a long ways to get to your office. You can use him to pick up girls as well. "Hey good looking, I have a 12 inch drinking green tea and doing senza sitting in my office. Now that you know I'm a winner, we should do dinner. And by dinner, I mean play tonsil hockey." Or something like that. Enjoy.
Posted by: Joshua at October 22, 2006 11:00 AM
Hey Jared! I just met a man in my building who almost played football for Penn AND worked on the Hill as a Republican, and he made me think of you. Hope you're having a good fall!
Posted by: Kate at October 23, 2006 10:54 PM