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February 13, 2007
Early Spring? NOT!
I know I'm way behind, so I just thought I'd start to get at least a little caught up and try to hit some of the highlights. Cootie Brown has played a couple of Fridays recently at Bar Bleu, and several of us have gone out to hear Jacob on the congas and have fun and a couple drinks. Oh, and I'm mainly mentioning this because certain people really, really wanted me to put this picture on my blog (including Katie, who took the picture). Ever since I made the mistake of letting my PSU friends know that I took a jazz dance class at Gustavus, they've been trying to get me to dance at every turn. So this particular night Aviva dragged me and Luna pushed me up to the dance floor. I decided to oblige them, but not with jazz dancing, haha. But anyway, back to Cootie Brown. Apparently their bass player is moving to Vermont, so they're gonna stop doing regular shows around State College after spring break. Now I'm very sad.
For Groundhog Day way back on the 2nd of February, a bunch of us (a few meteo grads - Nat, Caren, Walter, Steph, David & Amber - plus my two South African friends from Bible study, Daniel & Stephanie) got up ridiculously early (how does 1am sound?) and made the trek over to Punxsutawney. It's only about an hour and a half away, so why not have some fun and take part in this incredibly cheesy but integral part of American culture? I mean, who wouldn't want to stand out in the pre-dawn cold for hours, waiting for a large rodent to be yanked out of a hole? Especially when the rodent is Punxsutawney Phil, the world's most famous animal weather forecaster! 
Anyway, we all had a blast, even though it was a bit chilly for just standing around. They had all sorts of music and games going on the loud speakers, and then they had fireworks before dawn too, set to Star Wars music (except for a random Indiana Jones song at the end), so that was fun as well. When trying to roast marshmallows for s'mores at a huge bonfire that was also roaring, I nearly burned myself even though I was still several feet from the flames, it was that hot. When my pockets started smoking I felt it was time to back away, I didn't want my coat to melt, haha. Anyway, 15,000 people gathered at Gobblers Knob outside Punxsy to witness Phil not see his shadow - a fairly rare occurrence in the history of this tradition (I think he's seen his shadow 90-some times, compared to only about 15 no-shadow proclamations) - meaning that spring will come early. 
(HA! Mind you, this was a day or two before temps plunged and we had windchills around -20F! And now we're gonna have a massive snowstorm, but more on that later...) We eventually got back to Punxsutawney, where we had some pancake breakfast at the Salvation Army (so many places around town have pancake breakfasts, it's crazy), though it wasn't all that great. But hey, it's only 5 bucks and it's supporting Sal Army. We wandered around town a little bit more but had to make it back to Penn State by around noon. Getting up and driving that early in the morning made me tired, but I still managed to force myself to do homework that night till around 11:30pm (math sucks, by the way). But even though it was tiring, it was really fun! I just may do the whole Groundhog Day thing again next year. :-)
The next day I went to a Penn State Icers hockey game with Ryan, John, Steve & Daniel from Men's Group. I hadn't been to an Icers game before, and it was a lot of fun. We were down by where all the crazy fans were, who do all sorts of spontaneous and crazy things during faceoffs and whatnot at particular points in the game, it was great. The game was really good too, Rhode Island jumped out to a 2-0 lead, but Penn State came back to tie it, 
aided by a furious 3rd period, where the Icers outshot the Rams something like 25-to-1. Luckily for us, all the action was at our end! After a scoreless overtime, the game went to a shootout, which Penn State won 3-0. I even got a nice photo of the winning goal in the shootout too! :-)
Oh, and Ryan flew down to Los Angeles the week before last to do appear in a taping of Jeopardy! He can't say how he did, but he will be appearing in the show on April 16th at least, so make sure to watch for him! He also sent me a Jeopardy! referral, I really should do something with that one of these days. I guess I've just been a tad busy. But it'd be sweet if I could find my way to be on Jeopardy! someday too, I'd love that!
The day after the hockey game was Super Bowl Sunday, and Petters & I hosted a party for the meteo grads. We got a turducken all ready (technically Steph & Kerrie cooked it upstairs because our stove's too small and ghetto), in addition to all sorts of other food (I made a broccoli salad from my sister-in-law Laura's recipe, yum). Everyone had a fun time watching the game, but afterward I was completely exhausted from the past few days (which also included many hours in Walker doing math hw). 
As for the game, a Super Bowl title couldn't have gone to a nicer person than Tony Dungy, I was really happy for him, even though I was somewhat conflicted over who to cheer for during the game. And the commercials were overall fairly disappointing (way too many car ads and other lame ads), though there were definitely some good ones (CareerBuilder.com, the Budweiser ESL classroom ad, to name a couple). It's been a few years since we had a Super Bowl with a slew of great commercials, oh well.
Okay, well, that gets me mostly caught up, at least through what I have pictures of (I may do another catch-up post if I feel like it in a couple days). :-) That, and I'm getting pretty tired. But I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the big snowstorm that's gonna wallop State College and the rest of central PA through Wednesday afternoon (Winter Storm Warning!). We've all been "honking" since Saturday or Sunday, when the models started bringing the storm back up our way (it'd been running south for a few days), and started agreeing with each other. So on Saturday evening I made a prediction of 6-10" of snow for Tue/Wed. This afternoon I upped it to 8-14", with the caveat that if there wasn't sleet mixed in with the snow at all during the storm, then 20" or more was very possible. Well, now it's looking like sleet is a bit less likely than even earlier today, so I'm gonna up my forecast again to 12-18", with some areas around here (especially to our west and north, in the Laurel Highlands and the Allegheny Pleateau), receiving 20-24". I'm betting that Penn State will close on Wednesday. :-) Hooray for snow! This'll be BY FAR our biggest snowfall of the season, I don't believe we've had more than about an inch so far this winter in one event. The snow will start mid-morning, and then continue all the way to Wednesday mid-afternoon (hence why I got groceries tonight, because the roads are going to be atrocious Tue & Wed). This is going to be quite the winter storm! All of us in the meteo department have been absolutely giddy the last couple days about this storm, we can't wait!
Posted by Jared at February 13, 2007 12:46 AM
Comments
Ladies love the 24s Jared, keep it up.
Posted by: Cory at February 16, 2007 04:43 PM
I suppose they might, Cory. Too bad I've mostly forgotten how to do them though. My legs are getting sore just thinking about them, haha. Have *you* been keeping up with the 24s or anything else from that class?
Posted by: Jared at February 17, 2007 10:26 AM