Wisconsin Whited Out

I’m so glad the past few days are over and done with. Too busy and too stressful, if you ask me. Just “toooooooooo much.” But I did manage to have at least a little fun along the way.
After Thursday & Friday basically being hw time (apart from another 3rd place finish in team trivia at the Sports Cafe Friday night, our team name this week is gonna be “3rd place every week” or something, since every single week we’re leading going into the final question and then choke), Saturday morning was good. Daniel, Kerrie, Brian, Amber & Caren all came over here to meet and then walk up to the meteo grads tailgate at the other end of campus, up near the stadium. It was a grand ol’ time for everyone involved, and the first Penn State tailgate for Kerrie, Brian, Amber & Caren. Since this was the last tailgate of the year, that kinda motivated people to come out a bit more, hehe. I’m gonna miss tailgating though, I can’t believe it’s gonna be next August or September before there’s another one…
Anyway, I went to the Penn State-Wisconsin game with Robert, Lindsey & Maggie. It was a fun game to be at, what with it being Senior Day, and with a white-out of Wisconsin being declared, meaning everyone in the student section was wearing white, just like for the Ohio State game a month ago. There was also a lot riding (or as Josh would say, “ridding”) on the game too, as both teams were 8-1 coming into the game. Well, the Nittany Lions absolutely dominated the Badgers, winning 35-14, much to the chagrin of Mike & Kevin, two of my Badger-fan friends back in Wisconsin that I was calling periodically during the game, hehe. So now Penn State is 9-1 and ranked #5 or #6 in the country, depending on which poll you look at, heading into their bye week. Another interesting thing to note is that the attendance for the PSU-Wisconsin game was the 2nd highest in Beaver Stadium history, up around 109,900, passing the previously 2nd and 3rd-highest-attendance marks in Penn State history, set earlier this year for the Ohio State and Purdue games, respectively, each with an attendance over 109,000. And I was there for all of em, so in a very real sense I was part of history. 🙂 I’d say 109-110,000 isn’t too shabby, especially for a stadium with a stated capacity of “only” 107,000, hehe.
After church Sunday morning I spent all afternoon doing homework for 501, which was rather demoralizing. Partly because it was unbearably warm and stuffy in the TA office (like it’s been in there for a week or two now, at least), and partly because there was so much more I had to do than ultra-tedious busywork. But in the evening we all took a break, and Mario, Daniel, Levenia, Kerrie & I headed over to Amber’s apartment to catch the “movie event of the year” on CBS, “Category 7: The End of the World.” It was both hilarious and ridiculous, especially when it tried to explain in meteorological terms what was going on, because they’d just string a few random terms together and hope they impressed the non-scientists who don’t know what’s going on. Statements such as “falling chunks of mesosphere” generally don’t gain you many points in the scientific world, unless it’s intended to be a comedy. 🙂 The best part is that it’s a continuation of last year’s CBS movie “Category 6” (which Frame bought on DVD), and part 2 of “Category 7” is on this coming Sunday night. Don’t miss it! 🙂
Yesterday I was starting to feel a bit stressed out, since I only had page 1 done out of all 50 Meteo 3 exams that I had to grade, and Bill wanted them yesterday or today. So I buckled down and managed to grade the remaining four pages of all of them by the end of last night, I was rather proud of myself. And there were a few gems along the way, such as “metal is a convector of lightning,” or that “nocturnal conditions” are a factor in causing flash flooding, which gave me the inspiration to keep going through the rest of the exams. 🙂 Some other favourites included several failed attempts at spelling “Connecticut” (with all of them crossed out vehemently, except for their final answer of “Connectit”) — it’s just too bad the question was asking for a large city in Rhode Island, or the one that Amber graded, with the question asking what the name of the process was (evaporation) when liquid turned into a gas, and the student answered “defecation.” Now, I’m sure they were probably thinking of dessication and just got confused, but still, that has to be one of the most hilarious answers to a test question any of us has ever seen.
Today I worked a bit on the Rad Tran hw that’s due this Friday, but only half-heartedly since my brain is fried from the last few days. Hence why I’m blogging. 🙂
There’s sure a lot going on in the world right now, what with the UN and EU (at the behest of repressive regimes like Iran, North Korea, Cuba & China) trying to do a power-grab of the internet, the Aussies foiling a terror plot down under, Wal-Mart keeping down inflation, France burning (they’ll probably surrender like the French usually do, and turn into a caliphate within two months…), new PHASR guns being developed by the US military, and the Kansas school board legitimately calling for debate about evolution in the public school classroom. At least that’s a snippet of what I found interesting in the last day or two. Until next time, sayonara.