It’s been a fun last couple of days, although not quite as witty around the section as it usually is, as Josh left on Wednesday morning with Heidi for their interviews with JET on Thursday, a program that pays people to teach English in Japan for a year. Then they hung out with Josh’s dad in Milwaukee for a couple days, which is where Josh’s family will soon be moving to. Yep, that’s right, Josh will shortly be able to say that he’s from Wisconsin and not South Dakota. A major step up if you ask me, even if it is Milwaukee. 😉
Wednesday wasn’t all that interesting though, unless you count homework as interesting. I can’t even remember what I did other than a little astro homework that day. I can remember a couple fun things about Thursday though. In Golf class all we did was learn grip, posture, and how to take our swing to the top of the backswing. Now for a beginner like me that’s actually quite a bit, and it’s mostly tough for me to keep my left arm straight the whole time. Yeah, I need a lot of work. Sigh. But this is why I’m taking a beginning class in it, so that I can actually learn how I *should* be doing it whenever I happen to go golfing for real again. 
In the evening on Thursday at the SPS meeting, after hearing all the juniors talk about their Electronics II projects (including an interesting humidity sensor that Josh J. & Matt tried to build, I might try to join their research project). Once the talks were all done it was time for some delicious LN (liquid nitrogen) ice cream! Next time when we make LN ice cream though, we need to make sure Kelly doesn’t pick up fat-free half & half for it, as we found out the fat-free stuff doesn’t congeal or crystallize as much as we need it to. For all of you curious as to what LN ice cream is, it’s just half & half mixed with sugar and flavouring of some sort, with liquid nitrogen poured over it and stirred in to freeze it all into ice cream. Mmm mmm good! After that I went to Prepare for a couple hours, it was a really good and reflective time that I think I really needed.
Friday once I was done with class and work I came back to the section for awhile, and instead of taking a nap or doing homework like I had planned, I wound up playing 500 for a couple hours with Ben, Zach & Megan, until it was time for supper and physics dodgeball! For some of the games we’d have 15-20 people on just one of the racquetball courts, which is a crazy amount for such a small dodgeball area. And what’s really crazy is that as far as I can remember, it’s also the first time I’ve ever actually played an “organized” game of dodgeball. Sigh, the things I missed out on by not being in public school in elementary or middle school, haha. 
But it was a really fun time, even if it was surprisingly tiring. Then I went to Gaming Society for awhile, where I played a new game (well, new to me at least) called “Power Grid,” with Zach, John & Ben. Usually the first time I play any game that requires a fair bit of “strategery” I have no hope of winning, and this time was no different, but at least I managed to beat Zach (quite narrowly) to avoid being grand loser. 🙂 And for future note, Saturday mornings at 12:30am is an absolutely fantastic time to do laundry around here, all the machines are totally free!
Yesterday morning I had to get up early to work at Admissions. Oddly enough, this is the third year in a row that I’ve given tours on the morning of Case Day, but fortunately this year I didn’t run into any sights along my tour route that would’ve been a bit awkward trying to explain to the prospie (to the parent(s), more specifically). I’m always nervous on weekend mornings during rush, on Case Day and other such events as to just what I’ll encounter around campus while giving a tour. 
In the afternoon we had something like 13 or 14 people show up for pep band, which was fantastic for us. We played at the final regular season game for the men’s basketball team, as they beat St John’s 83-74 for their 16th consecutive win. The Gusties clinched the MIAC regular season title back on Wednesday night, are now ranked #22 in the country in Division III, and host a MIAC playoff semifinal Thursday night. Despite sporting a 16-game winning streak and the regular season title, they’ll probably need to win the MIAC playoff title in order to get into the NCAA’s for what would be the ninth time in the last ten years. The downside of the game today was that portions of our crowd were extremely obnoxious today, since it was Case Day and everything. Oh well. After playing a bit of 500 with Zach, Megan & Vicki, I went to the very first “King of Hearts” Christian Game Night over in Linner. Luke & Jenna are the ones that are organizing this, and it’ll be a weekly Saturday night thing all semester, which is really awesome. There was a pretty good turnout tonight too, that was cool to see. They aren’t specifically “Christian” games that we play there, it’s just a group of mostly Christian kids getting together for a night of regular fun and games on the weekend. Maybe it’s a bit redundant with Gaming Society on Friday nights, but whatever. Part of why I’m so actively pursuing a bunch of this type of stuff is that I just feel like I really need to start making some more Christian friends here on campus, even though this is my last semester. In particular since I got back to GAC from Oz, there have been quite a few times where I’ve actually felt quite lonely here, even though I’m surrounded by friends, it’s an odd feeling…
It’s snowing!! We’d been without snow on the ground here for a little over two weeks, but it started snowing yesterday afternoon, is still snowing now (with what looks like at least 4 inches on the ground, though I haven’t been outside yet this morning to check), and it looks like it’s gonna keep snowing some more! Yay for the winter being a little less wimpy now!
Sigh, I just found out late last night why my mouse hasn’t worked for the last three days or so. I was able to click and use the scroll wheel and everything, but couldn’t move the cursor at all when I moved the mouse itself. So I tried restarting my machine a couple times, put my mouse into John’s laptop and it worked, and just generally couldn’t figure out why it was only partially working on my machine. So I was in here in my room talkin to Josh around midnight, and he wanted to show me somethin on his webpage, so tried to move my mouse around. When it didn’t move and I told him it’d been messed up for three to four days now, he started laughing, because he remembered that he’d put a piece of clear tape over the optical sensor on the bottom of the mouse. Curse you Josh! But at least now my mouse works properly again… (sheepish grin)
Oh, and I’m officially gonna be flying out to visit The University of Colorado at Boulder on the evening of March 9th, and flying back early afternoon March 12th. They’re even flying me out there in business class, but who knows what that means. It could just be that coach was all filled up on that particular flight to Denver, but it’s still just awesome that they’re paying for almost my entire visit there. 🙂 And I also heard from Florida State on Friday that I’m accepted into their Meteorology program, and they’re also the first school officially to offer me an assistantship (this one’s a research, as opposed to teaching, assistantship)! And they’re also offering to fly me down to Tallahassee for free for a visit the weekend after I’m at Colorado. Hmm, decisions, decisions…
Time to go to church, and then it’s Olin time. Sigh.