Winter Makes a Cameo

I figured I may as well throw another post up here just for the heck of it, since it’s been a few days. It’s been a bit chilly around here the last couple days, a powerful cold front swept through the area Thursday night, which kept highs in the 40s on Friday and Saturday, coupled with strong winds that pushed windchills down into the 20s. Brrr! Hopefully this was the last gasp of Old Man Winter until mid-late autumn at least. And it’s not just giving us cold weather here in the North, the front swept all the way down into the Deep South. Zach said it was only around 50 for highs in Virginia (he was down there all week presenting a research paper at NCUR, and just got back this morning). It also brought a big snowstorm to Michigan and Ohio, causing the Twins-Tigers games in Detroit to be postponed both of the last two days. Sigh, and I was really hoping to watch the Twins game this afternoon while I was waiting for my laundry to get done…
The last half of last week was okay. Wednesday I did the entire astrophysics assignment just because I had time and I felt like getting it out of the way, so as a result I didn’t really do anything else. Because we didn’t have Senior Sem on Thursday afternoon, I took advantage of that time to email all my Aussie friends. I’d been falling down on the job, and hadn’t made contact with them since January. And I’ve gotten some replies back already and chatted with a couple of them on MSN, it’s been so good to hear from them again, I really miss them. Thursday night there was a physics talk by a former student of a few years back, who went on to the University of Michigan to study geophysics and climate change. It was really interesting hearing his talk, he was showing how boreholes made in the earth’s crust can reveal something of the planet’s climate history. That’s such a new type of proxy record that not very many people in the climatology field even know about it or have incorporated it into their models, which would explain why I hadn’t heard about it during my Climate Change & Variability class down at Monash. 🙂 And his fiancee, who also came up for the talk, we found out was directly involved with the group that I mentioned a couple posts ago, that just recently drilled the third-deepest hole ever in the earth’s crust, nearly hitting the moho, the border region between the crust and the mantle. It’s a small world after all… 🙂
Friday evening Cory & I went over to Paul’s house, where Kelly was babysitting Paul’s kid’s for the weekend, and we all went out to Dairy Queen, which was the restaurant of choice of the kids, hehe. Mmmm, that was my first Blizzard since before I went to Australia, it tasted so good! After that, despite the cold and the wind, Cory & I joined up with Carl, Joni, Nate & Seth to play some outdoor soccer. Most of us took a fair beating, by unintentionally blocking line drive kicks with our ankles, shins and knees. And then I had a rather embarrassing spill right in front of the goal while going one-on-one with Carl, enabling him to steal it and kick it in for the winning goal. If you want the full story, ask me and I might tell you, haha. Then a few of us went over to Cory’s apartment for awhile and had a fun night till it was time for bed.
Saturday was a lazy day for me, and a much needed one. I basically sat around and watched most of the first round of the NFL Draft, getting pretty excited about how well the Vikings were drafting again this year. We just had some really bad drafts under Denny Green, but Mike Tice sure has turned that ship around, and had a few solid drafts in a row. And I had to console Mike a bit, who was really upset at how poorly the Packers appear to have drafted this year. Oh well, it’s only a game. Anyway, after that I spent two or three hours starting to look through some Scripture verses to determine what I might build a talk around, since Anders told me that he found a spot to squeeze me in to speak at Proclaim, on Tuesday, May 10th. I’m really glad they managed to fit me in, I’ve been really hoping they’d find a place for me. What I think I’m gonna try to talk about is addressing the question of who God is, by looking at some of His attributes and character qualities that are mentioned in the Bible. I think I’ve got a really good start so far on preparing for the talk, I’ve got some good ideas that are starting to coalesce. Then after that it was time for fun and games the rest of the evening, first at Christian Game Night with Luke, Ben R. and a few other people, and then back here in the section, where John, Ben H. and I taught Josh, Matt & Liisa how to play hand and foot, it was pretty fun. That and John had his 22nd birthday yesterday, which made the night a bit more festive. Happy birthday John!
This morning when I got to church, right after I sat down Betsy came over and asked if I could be an quick emergency fill-in for a candle-bearer for the service, so I did that instead of just sitting out in the congregation. It feels good to be able to pitch in and help when people need it. And this afternoon I’m not up to a whole lot, just writing this and doing laundry, basically biding my time until John gets back from the Cities so that we can work on our Astrophysics lab that’s due tomorrow. I suppose I could try to do a little bit of the analysis myself before he comes back…
Oh, and another thing that’s been taking up a good deal of my time this week is Facebook, a new online directory (new to Gustavus anyway) for a ton of colleges around the country, that allows people to find old friends and get back in touch (and stay in touch with their current friends). I’ve found a couple people from high school on there (like Josh P. out at Air Force Academy), and then some people that I studied abroad with down in Australia, like Caroline, Sam, CJ, and Meghan, which has been really cool. Sorry Cory, I know I said I wouldn’t blog about facebook, but hopefully you can forgive me this and will still read my blog. 😉
It’s only 5 more days until Macintosh OS 10.4 is released! Josh and I will be going up to the Apple Store at the Mall of America on Friday night to get a copy and install it on our machines. And according to the BBC, “an Apple a day keeps the doctor away.” So see, I’m doing this for my health! 😀 And April 25th is the 90th Anzac Day in Australia and New Zealand, a major national holiday in both countries, akin to Independence Day here in the U.S. Anzac (Australia and New Zealand Army Corps) Day marks when the Anzacs stormed the beach at Anzac Cove at Gallipoli, Turkey, in World War I at the orders of the British. But there was a mix-up by the British, either sending the Anzacs to the wrong beach or sending the artillery cover to the wrong beach, which resulted in a horrifying bloodbath and stalemate on both sides. Both Australia and New Zealand regard that fateful day as the first day of being semi-independent of the British Crown, and having their own national identities. We should never forget the sacrifices that so many people have made for us here in the free world.