Weekend in Walker

I’m definitely overdue for a new blog entry, so I thought I’d throw one up here. I definitely didn’t accomplish a whole lot more last week, apart from finishing grading my smaller section of labs Wednesday night. Teaching back to back labs on Thursday tired me out like usual, I can’t really remember what else I did the rest of the day, except for Daniel comin over in the evening to finish watching “Forty Year Old Virgin,” which we’d started last Saturday night when Carl was here before we all fell asleep sometime after 4am. I was expecting it to be pretty bad and stupid, but I was pleasantly surprised overall, I thought it was pretty funny. And Steve Carrell is absolutely hilarious. After the movie it started snowing just about the biggest, fattest flakes I’ve ever seen (no joke!), which scared Daniel into driving home earlier than he was planning, since he didn’t want to be sliding through intersections on the way back or anything. (Though at least it wasn’t brown snow like Colorado had this weekend.) So I spent the rest of the evening watching the ladies’ figure skating finals with my roommate Emre. It was disappointing to see everyone falling though, I was really expecting a higher level of performance in the Olympics, especially from the top skaters, but oh well.
Friday was Friday. Couple classes in the morning. Had lunch with Daniel at the Golden Wok. Remembered my TA meeting with Dr Nese for I think the fourth week in a row (go me!). Dynamics was so horrible and excruciatingly confusing and pointless in the afternoon (seriously, the worst single lecture I’ve had at Penn State, we all wanted to stab ourselves in the eye with a pencil) that it drove me to drink at the Sports Cafe for trivia in the evening. Okay, so I would’ve had those couple beers anyway. But it made them taste just that much better because they were taking my mind off Dynamics. This week we chose the team name “The Edmund Fitzgerald Swim Club” (I know, it’s horrible and I apologize to anyone that’s offended :-), and we came in third, which isn’t bad for having absolutely no clue on the final question. After trivia Jacob, Vic, Walter and P. Allen came over to play a couple games of LOTR (though Allen elected to watch “Memento” instead). The first game was over frighteningly quick, and then on the second game we lost at the very end, KAAAHHHNNN!
On Saturday I went up to Walker around 1 o’clock to start workin on Mesoscale homework. Daniel & I were slavin away on this one problem for a few hours, before we finally figured out that a hint that Yvette had given us in class was wrong. Sigh. So by the time 7 rolled around we were both burned out a bit frustrated, and more than ready for a break, which came in the form of a play that our fellow meteo grad David was acting in over at the Forum. (No, nothing terribly funny happened on the way to the Forum, other than neither Daniel nor I had a proper coat on, since it was about 50 out when we came in to Walker, and about 15 or 20 on our walk to the theater… stupid cold fronts… though it’s our own fault for not paying attention to the forecast…) Anyways, a whole group of us went up there, Kerrie, Amber, Caren, Mario, Walter, Frame, Vic, P Allen, Jacob, Daniel & I, and it was a very good break from homework. David had jokingly advertised it to us beforehand as “a vile, offensive play,” but it was pretty funny and extraordinarily random (think way more random than Monty Python, and then you’re getting close). I managed to get a few decent pictures during the play, despite not being able to use flash. Not like flash would’ve helped from that far anyway. At any rate, David played several roles, including a raging drunk, a deputy, a beggar, a gangster, a purple-caped guy named “Thunderlips” and the personification of justice. Like I said, it was a really random play. 🙂 Daniel & I had been planning on doing more homework after the play, but by then all motivation had been lost, so instead we joined Kerrie, Frame, Vic & P Allen down at Sports Cafe for a few hours. Good times, good times. There was especially some entertaining people-watching, let’s just leave it at that. 🙂
This morning Daniel & I went to church again, which was enjoyable as usual. And guess where we both spent all afternoon and the first part of the evening again? You guessed it, Walker. We were there from about 1 or 1:30 until almost 9, when we realized we were quite hungry and very unproductive, when we went to Back Yard Burgers for supper for the first time to see what it was like. Daniel was pretty excited to find a place way up north here that had sweet tea finally, so he’s a big fan of it. It was my first time having sweet tea as well, and I must say it’s pretty tasty. And the burgers are very good there too, so we’ll definitely be back again sometime. But we actually got a fair bit accomplished today, we finished that Mesoscale problem that had given us so much grief yesterday, plus we did about two-thirds of the Cloud Physics assignment. Go us.
Who doesn’t like a good stupid criminal story? This one from Britain is pretty good, where robbers used a blowtorch to help cut open an ATM, unfortunately (for them) not realizing that paper money is indeed flammable. I love it.
Less than a week to go until Spring Break, woot woot! This week’s gonna be really busy, but at least we got a nice jump on it this weekend, that’ll be a huge help. It’ll be so nice to go someplace warm for awhile, I can’t wait!