Halloween Weekend

Wow, what a weekend. I must say this one was pretty fun, though also balanced with getting a fair bit done, so I’m pretty happy about it too.
Back on Thursday we were all working hard on getting our corrections done for our Rad Tran exams, which were due on Friday morning, so about the only pleasant thing about that day was actually when we had Rad Tran class that night at 8pm, and Dr Clothiaux was in rare form, with some of his best quotes of the semester, he was hilarious! I’m gonna have to parcel these out for awhile, and there’s already a queue of great Clothiaux quotes in line ahead of these just waiting to be listed as “quotes of the week,” so I shouldn’t be running out of material anytime soon!
On Friday in between (and during) classes a bunch of us were still pondering what in the world we could get or make for costumes for Saturday night’s halloween party. At last Amber & Walter came up with a stroke of genius — Pac-Man and assorted ghosts from the Pac-Man game! We decided that Walter would be Pac-Man, and then I’d be the red ghost, Daniel the light blue ghost, Amber the pink ghost and Caren the orange ghost. We all went down to Wal-Mart in the afternoon to look at buying some sheets to make the costumes out of, but that was proving too expensive and too complicated (sewing would’ve been a necessity), so we just decided to get inexpensive plain coloured t-shirts, while Walter picked up a cheap $5 yellow sweatshirt. We ghosts just drew on the eyes and jagged bottom edges with black marker on the shirts, and Walter cut out a big section of the sweatshirt in the shape of Pac-Man’s mouth, to let his black undershirt show through, it was awesome. Daniel & I joined Frame, Victor, Bob, P. Allen, Walter & Jacob down at the Sports Cafe for another weekly game of team trivia (this week’s team name: “Pur-Don’t,” since it was homecoming weekend vs Purdue), and another 3rd place finish (stupid final question about “The English Patient,” grr). Following that Daniel & I made a trip down to Dick’s Sporting Goods to pick up our t-shirts for our costumes, then it was off to do a bit of homework the rest of the evening.
Saturday afternoon I hit the last half hour or so of the tailgate with the meteo people before it was time to head up to the stadium for the homecoming game vs lowly Purdue. It was amusing to see all the different costumes being worn by people around the stands, such as an all-out penguin suit (animal, not the Batman character), ketchup & mustard bottles, a white crayola crayon, the obligatory random Santa suits, plus a few others. The game wasn’t the most exciting game I’ve ever seen, particularly in the middle, but Penn State did manage to pull away in the end for the 33-15 victory, to push their record up to 8-1 overall, tied with Wisconsin (next week’s opponent here in Happy Valley) for the Big Ten lead. Perhaps one of the most amusing happenings during the game was during a timeout, when the Lion mascot and two members from the Blue Band were down in the end zone doing the entire dance to “Thriller” by Michael Jackson, it was a riot, and got probably the loudest cheers of the game out of the student section!!
After I made it back to White Course Daniel drove over here, and then we walked over to Shannon & Stephanie’s apartment (which wound up being significantly farther than we thought it’d be, at least a 30-40 minute walk) for the halloween party. A condition of being let in was that you were in costume, and there were some good ones. (Pictured at left are most of the first-year grad students that showed up.) The Pac-Man costumes were a hit (even if they were a bit cheesy, hehe), P. Allen dressed up as “not himself” (which was actually a good costume, he shaved his goatee, didn’t wear a baseball cap, and had on something other than a t-shirt and shorts — I seriously didn’t recognize him at first!), Vic was an extremely redneck hunter, and the best costume of the night went hands-down to David, who did amazing job making himself look almost exactly like Dr Shirer (complete with the suspenders and light sweater-jacket), it was hilarious! It was a fun party for everyone, definitely. Daniel, P. Allen & I finally left around 2am or so (standard time, thank goodness for the switch this weekend), and when we got back to White Course at almost 3 we decided to drive over to Eat ‘n Park (much like a Denny’s) for a little middle-of-the-night meal, hehe. So when it was all said and done it got to be 4am before I got back to my apartment. Unfortunately it was awhile before I could fall asleep, I was still on a bit of a sugar high from the brownies and other goodies from the party, oh well.
Despite the lack of sleep I managed to wake up in time for church, and then I had the fortune to have to miss an absolutely gorgeous day outside today in order to spend 5 hours doing one measly homework problem for 501, grr. And then this evening I graded the labs from one of my sections, so yeah, I’ve been working pretty much solid today. Apart from writing this, but hey, I’ve got a responsibility to my readers to keep the updates flowing. 🙂
Since tomorrow’s Halloween, look for a re-appearance of the Pac-Man gang at the beginning of Rad Tran, to act out a game of Pac-Man, as we slowly chase Walter around the room, going around all the rows of desks and whatnot, hehe. Hopefully Dr Clothiaux will appreciate it. I’ll let ya’ll know how it went. And hopefully David dresses up as Dr Shirer again, I think he’d get a kick out of it too.
But hey, at least the Halloween celebrations here in State College don’t get as out-of-control as they do over in Madison at the University of Wisconsin. UW-Madison’s famed nationwide for their State Street Halloween Party, and as usual, this year a whole bunch of revelers got themselves arrested. Who knows, maybe by now those people are sober enough to realize the legal/financial trouble they’re in…