Irradiance on the Mind

Wow, I need to take a break from studying for Rad Tran. Nevermind the fact that I really only started studying this evening, but you can only spend so long reading a textbook before your mind starts to melt. Especially when that textbook is about radiation, radiance, irradiance, scattering, absorption, transmissivity and solid angles. Definitely not looking forward to that test on Friday morning.
Daniel & I went to the early (9am) service at my church on Sunday. It was the first time he’d come along to SCEFC, so he got to meet a bunch of the other grad students I’ve gotten to know some this fall, so that was cool. I think he even kinda liked it too, bonus. Going to the early service enabled both of us to start tackling our respective hefty workloads a bit earlier. I hadn’t been planning on it, but I decided to stick around in my room for the first quarter (and then first half) of the Vikings-Giants game (which the Vikings amazingly won with an interception, kickoff and punt return for touchdowns!), but by halftime I had to go up to Walker to continue my homrwork, it was too excruciatingly painful to watch the Vikings offense amass a whole 6 yards in the first half. But hey, a win’s a win. After spending a few tough hours on the 501 homework (with stunningly little, but hard-earned progress to show for it), a bunch of us (Daniel, Mario, Amber, Caren, Levenia and I) went over to Kerrie & Brian’s apartment for the conclusion of “Category 7.” Unfortunately, the second half was not nearly as entertaining as the first, it was just plain-old bad. There was hardly any storm even, or talk of what was causing it. The computer animations of the multiple tornadoes/falling chunks of mesosphere were ridiculously poor, and so was what happened when they got the temperature in the clouds above DC to drop to the supposedly magic level of 79.2 degrees (the clouds instantly evaporated, ha!). But even though the movie was a disappointment, it was still a nice study break, and any chance to hang out outside the confines of Walker Building is a joy. 🙂
Monday was a bit stressful, with having to spend virtually all day (until after 10pm) working on finishing the 501 homework. In the past 501 has been long and tedious, but we’ve known what we were doing, or what the end goal was, but this assignment was long, tedious, hard, and not obvious or intuitive at all, which is a frustrating combination, especially when you’re on deadline. And when you have grading that needs to get done that night too. And when you need to sleep at some point eventually.
Tuesday I finished grading and everything, and then I didn’t know what to do with myself in the evening, without an assignment due in the immediate future (though I have tests coming up on Friday and Monday). So I did my best to find ways to procrastinate, including watching a pretty cool PBS “Nova” special called “Newton’s Dark Secrets” (apparently he was an alchemist and a pretty major heretic, though he hid those views pretty well; he even predicted the Apocalypse would happen in 2060…), calling my parents for a bit, and then catching up on my finances from the past month. All that equalled not touching my backpack, much less my books. Success.
Today when it came time to go to lunch, both Daniel & I were pretty well tired of the usual Subway, Wendy’s, Arby’s or Taco Bell, the fast food places that are the closest to Walker on College Ave. So we decided to be adventurous today, and in the course of wending our way through downtown we happened onto a place we never knew existed, Bell’s Greek Pizza, tucked away in a niche on Calder Way. The food was amazingly good (and lots of it too!), we both got spaghetti dishes, and it was well worth the wait, I highly recommend it. The pizza there looked really good too, I’m assuming we’ll be heading back there on a semi-regular basis. Though next time I might have to make sure I don’t eat breakfast beforehand. 🙂 It sure beat the heck out of fast food! And then I’ve spent (or at least tried to spend) much of the afternoon and evening studying for Rad Tran. At 3:30 I was starting to get so engrossed in it up in the TA office that Kerrie asked me, “Don’t you have to teach now?” Okay, so I almost forgot to go teach my lab today. So sue me. I got there right before it was supposed to start, so it was all good. 🙂
Following the weather has been interesting the past few days with the big storm that moved through the midwest, and the associated extremely powerful cold front that’s now sweeping through the Northeast. While Minneapolis was waking up to windchills down around zero this morning, it was a balmy 65 here in State College. Of course, the temp dropped almost instantly by 10 degrees when the front passed this morning, and now it’s down to 35 and still falling, with highs the next two days slated to be in the low-mid 30s. Our first significant taste of a cold spell, I love it! Unfortunately we don’t have much in the way of snow or flurries to go along with the cold yet, though it’s kinda lookin like there might be a big snowstorm setting up somewhere in the Northeast in the middle of next week, just in time for Thanksgiving. At the very least it’s looking like it’ll be rather chilly here mid-late next week, with highs probably in the 20s. Looks like winter might finally be coming after all! It might be time to start dusting off that winter coat. 🙂
Well, tomorrow’s gonna be hardcore studying, Friday will be the Rad Tran test, and then Friday evening I’ll be driving down to Baltimore to hang out with Carl & Jess, along with Seth (who’s flying down from Michigan Tech) and Betsy (who’s comin up from Chapel Hill). Should be a fun pre-Thanksgiving Gustie reunion weekend! The only downside is that I’ll have to be studying some this weekend for Monday’s 501 test… Sigh, it never ends.