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January 18, 2007

Jack is Back!

I am soooooo excited that Season 6 of "24" has finally gotten underway!! The first couple of episodes started out a little slowly (except when Jack Bauer killed that terrorist by biting him in the neck, haha), but they were definitely building towards the fourth episode, when the plot *really* started to get going. I watched the first two episodes after Bible study at my place on Sunday night, and John & Ruth decided to stick around to watch. They hadn't seen "24" ever before, but they're hooked now! (And Daniel finally relented and started watching "24" with the season premiere as well (Katie's love for the show might've had something to do with it, haha), and now he's hooked too!) And then on Monday night, for the last half of the 4-hour season premiere "event," I went up to Houserville to watch episodes 3 & 4 with Jeff, Bob, Vic & Lindsay. I think it was in episode 3 when Karen Hayes from DHS was explaining to the president what the kill zone would be from a suitcase nuke in an urban area, and then where the radiological agents would spread and disperse (to "a much wider range, depending on the wind"), at which point everyone turned and looked at me, haha. You know, "24" might really be on to something here, the government really should start researching some of this dispersion stuff. Yeah, and maybe pay a couple of grad students to work on it too...

LindsayVic-Koch's-011507In an incident mostly unrelated, during "24" Vic brought down a can of Koch's Golden Anniversary ("Golden Adversary") and made Lindsay try some of it (Vic can sure be cruel sometimes, haha), which elicited the famous Koch's face from her that everyone gets when they try it. This picture showing her displeasure with his choice of beer was too good not to put up here. :-) But as bad as Koch's is, it's not as bad as La Crosse Lager, which will be back to defend its crown at the BASF 3 around Memorial Day weekend!

EssenceOfJoy-011707Last night I went with Caren to go see Aviva "sing about Jesus" (as Caren puts it) in concert with the gospel choir she's in, Essence of Joy. I hadn't heard her before and this one was free, so I figured it was a good enough reason to go. :-) It was actually just a part of a larger evening Martin Luther King, Jr. Day celebration. It was good though, they had Carlotta Lanier speak; she was one of the members of the Little Rock Nine, the first black students in the country to desegregate a public high school in the country back in 1957. A brief history lesson about the situation: the Arkansas governor ordered the National Guard in to defy the Supreme Court's ruling in Brown v. Board of Education and only let the white students into Little Rock Central High School, but President Eisenhower responded by ordering a thousand troops from the the elite 101st Airborne Division to escort the Little Rock Nine into the school. Anyway, it was fascinating hearing her speak, and hearing her perspective on all those events. After Ms. Lanier spoke, then Aviva's choir performed three songs. They were really good, I thought. (And I know the picture's blurry, but it's the best I could get with the necessary long exposure time.) And then after them there was a dance troupe performing some African dances that were quite, uh, what's the word, frenetic? and very fun to watch (hearing the drums was awesome too). The only downside about the evening was that I got a parking ticket four minutes before I got back out to my car. Grrr.

Classes started up for the new semester on Tuesday (here we go again...). My classes are only Tue/Thu and back-to-back, Atmospheric Dispersion taught by Dr Wyngaard (which I'm currently just sitting in on, though likely will end up taking for credit), and the Numerical Solutions to Partial Differential Equations class (hereafter "Numerical PDEs" for short) that Andrew somehow convinced me to take with him. Numerical PDEs is definitely gonna be a very, very challenging course for me (for Andrew too, but he's had a bit more math than me), but the instructor is cool (and with a name like Qiang Du, we were unsure how understandable he'd be, but he speaks English pretty well, much to our relief), and since it's a grad-level course, he's decided to take all worry about grades out of the equation -- I'm a big fan of his grading scheme, that's for sure. :-)

I've also been keeping up with the workout routine this week with Vic & Andrew. By Monday I thankfully wasn't sore anymore from last Friday's reintroduction to the gym, but now after going on Tuesday, Wednesday and today, I'm quite sore again (though not in the same muscles as last weekend). Who knew all these different muscles even existed?... I'll try to make it tomorrow, and then it'll definitely be time to enjoy a break over the weekend. I'm determined to stick with this at least for awhile yet, I don't want just to give up or anything (oh, the temptation to split that infinitive was *so* there) before I give it a good go. One more trip to the gym and I'll finally be under the $10/visit range for the cost of the semester pass, wahoo!

Posted by Jared at January 18, 2007 11:37 PM

Comments

24 rules

Posted by: MERAmanuensis at January 19, 2007 09:13 AM

I just got a random idea...you need a quote of the week archive!

Posted by: Jeff at January 19, 2007 03:19 PM

Hmm, well I kind of have an archive in that every quote of the week is an away message on my AIM account, but that's a good idea, I should make that a little more public perhaps, that'd be fun.

Posted by: Jared at January 21, 2007 11:23 PM

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