Battle of the Bands

The last half of this week has been fairly interesting. On Wednesday afternoon our astrophysics class went up on the roof of Olin for a solar spectrum lab. Because there wasn’t a whole lot to do once we got it set up, we basically spent a lot of time playing hackeysack and then shooting the t-shirt cannon off the roof and onto the football field. 🙂 Wednesday evening was mostly consumed by me writing a paper for Senior Sem, about whether the US should take over Britain’s former role as the deliverer of Western ideals, systems and norms to the rest of the world. Meh. Personally, I wouldn’t mind Australia taking over that role. The world would definitely be a more relaxed and laid-back place if that happened. Although because of the tall poppy syndrome, I don’t know that Australia could ever be confident about taking the leading role in much of anything, sigh.
Thursday evening I hosted a prospie from Chaska named Charlie. Admissions was really desperate for hosts on Thursday morning, so I agreed to host him. I don’t know how it happens, but whenever I agree to host a prospie, they turn out to be really cool. I chatted with him for awhile about what Gustavus is like, sports, all sorts of stuff. Then once the rest of my roommates got back from whatever they were busy doing, we taught him how to play a bit of Smash Brothers (I think it was the first time I’ve played that since the last time we hosted a prospie, hehe). He also hadn’t seen either “Kill Bill” movie before, so we had him watch the first one. It seemed like he enjoyed it enough that he’ll go out and watch the second one. My roommates are befuddled as to how I can like “Kill Bill,” yet hate “Sin City,” but I do.
This afternoon a couple of the IFSA Australia reps were on campus talking to the Gustavus students that will be going abroad to Australia next school year, and they invited some of us returnees to stop by as well, so that we could help answer some of their questions about what to expect there, what to watch out for, etc. It’s always fun talking about Australia, and seeing other students (who are in the same position I was in exactly a year ago) get so excited about their upcoming journey. After that it was time for Battle of the Bands, an event outside on Eckman Mall here on campus with a bunch of bands playing, Gustavus faculty and staff volunteering to man the dunk tank (including Warren Friesen, the orchestra conductor, pictured in his tux after getting dunked … shortly after this I dunked him too just for fun, even though I’m not in orchestra, hehe!), and free grilled burgers and hot dogs. In short, the quintessential spring afternoon on a college campus. 🙂 SPS (Society of Physics Students) was also involved with Battle of the Bands, as a couple weeks ago the organizers asked us if we could make a t-shirt cannon to shoot shirts out into the crowd, so in between all the acts we got up on the stage and fired a few out there. The first few were mostly flops that barely made it to the first row, interrupted by a fluke that went way back beyond everyone into the visitors parking lot, hehe. But then we managed to figure out the range and started booming them way up in the air. It seemed like people thought it was really cool, I think mostly because they thought it was cool that we could make something like that ourselves. But there were some cool solo musicians and groups playing, including Anders Peterson & Organ Donors, which rocked hardcore. There was also a bit of physics football tonight, and then Kate Johansen stopped by, which was tons of fun. She said she needed to get out of her natural environment for a bit, being a journalist at the Minnesota State House, so she, Josh & I watched “Intolerable Cruelty.” Truth be told, I don’t remember a whole lot about the movie, we were talking most of the time and Josh was being very scary. Let’s just leave it at that, shall we?
In some other news this week, geologists are making some serious progress with the moho mine. Recently they drilled the third-deepest hole ever, and missed hitting the Earth’s mantle (which is the goal of the moho mine project) by only 1000 feet. Pretty cool if you ask me. I’d supply other links right now that I was meaning to, but I’m really tired and they’re all slipping my mind right now. Sigh, such is life.