Sudden Developments

Well, these have been a rather eventful last few days, and not entirely in a good way, as I’ll get to later.
We’re starting to notice a trend at trivia on Friday nights at Sports Cafe: when our team name is sports-related, we tend to place higher. Case in point, our team name this week was “Nowitzki & Hasselhoff, Sittin’ in a Tree” (which is really funny if you follow the NBA at all), and we easily took first place.
I made a couple runs to the State College airport this weekend, dropping Daniel off on Friday morning and picking him up Sunday evening, so that he could go home to Alabama for a weekend and surprise Katie. Judging from what Daniel said she had absolutely no idea he was coming and was quite shocked when she came downstairs and saw him in the kitchen of her parents house in Birmingham. 🙂 Kudos to Daniel & everyone else who successfully kept the secret! Less than three weeks to their wedding in Huntsville, it’s comin’ fast.
After making six visits to Walker on Saturday (but only for a grand total of about half an hour, that’s the only redeeming thing about it) to hit start on several runs of my code, it was time to head up to Sue’s place in the evening for the “Dispersion Party” for all the students and faculty members working on projects (including mine) that are small parts of this massive dispersion project that’s going on here at PSU. It was quite an enjoyable evening, lots of great food and everything. Oh and by the way, congratulations to Chris (“P. Allen”) on being offered a job down in Raleigh earlier this week! He’ll be leaving PSU pretty soon actually, less than two weeks now, so maybe I should think about trying to absorb some of his SCIPUFF knowledge before then…
I got a rather sad phone call after the party from my friend Mike M., my best friend from back home in Wisconsin. It turns out that a 16-year old Cumberland boy named Marcel drowned in Beaver Dam Lake (the lake that nearly surrounds Cumberland) on Saturday near Eagle Point. Marcel’s death meant that Mike’s younger sister Amber’s two best friends have now both died since the start of 2006 (the other was a girl named Katie who died in a single-car crash), so Mike dropped what he was doing in Green Bay to come home and spend time with Amber for a few days and try to help her cope with it all, especially since he also knew Marcel a bit. (I’d met him once or twice before and given him & Amber rides a couple times when I was driving around with Mike.)
Apparently what happened is that Marcel and his friend Adam were out on a pontoon boat on the lake. Marcel’s doesn’t really know how to swim, and usually wears a lifejacket, but this time decided to try to be a little bit more independent, and so hopped in the lake without one, intending to hang on to the side of the boat. But it was a bit breezy on Saturday afternoon, and so the boat drifted away from Marcel, and he started to panic. Adam jumped in and tried to help him, but Marcel was panicking and thrashing around so much that he was pushing Adam down underwater in an effort to keep himself afloat. Adam pushed him off and came up for a breath, and told Marcel that he’d quick swim over to the pontoon and throw him a rope or a lifejacket or something to hang onto. But by the time Adam got back to the boat a few seconds later and turned around, he saw Marcel underwater and sinking. Adam drove in and tried to save him, but to no avail. Rescue/recovery dive teams have been searching that part of the lake (which is over 90 feet deep and infested with milfoil) since Saturday afternoon, but they have not yet found Marcel’s body, at least as far as I’m aware. It’s just a very, very tragic situation, especially since he’s now the second person from that grade in my town to die this year. Your prayers for Marcel’s family and friends and for everyone involved in the search would be much appreciated in this very trying time.
[UPDATE at 9:20pm: I just got off the phone with Mike and he said that the recovery team found Marcel’s body about an hour ago. Pray that this news will begin to bring closure and healing to Marcel’s family and friends.]
Church on Sunday morning was a bit different from usual, as several churches in State College banded together for an outdoor community service over at Hills Plaza. The turnout seemed pretty good, with probably around 2-3,000 people in attendance. The weather stayed mostly cooperative as well, only dropping a sprinkle once for about 2-3 minutes. The rest of Sunday was pretty rainy though, but the monotony was broken up a bit by going over to Amber’s with a few people for an episode of “Flash Gordon” and “Rocky Jones, Space Ranger.” Ahh, ya gotta love 1950s science fiction, it’s so easy to make fun of!
I’ve now moved in to my new office down in Walker 405. I’m loving my sweet new Dell that I get to play with at work now. And finally I’m in an office with a window too! Maybe I should turn in my key to Walker 530 one of these days…
Yesterday there was a great deal of excitement and anticipation amongst several of the grad students here in the department, as we’d gotten word that College Hots, the newest restaurant in town, had finally opened up over the weekend (about 2-3 weeks later than planned). A pretty big group of us went down there, but Vic and Shannon were really excited in particular, as these “hots” type restaurants apparently originated in Rochester, NY, so they’re both pretty familiar with them. Their specialty is the “garbage plate” — I know, that sounds totally appetizing — which usually has some kind of meat (cheeseburger, hot dog, pulled pork, etc) with optional ketchup, mustard, hot sauce and onions, over two types of sides (macaroni salad, french fries, homestyle fries or baked beans), combined into one greasy slop. It actually wasn’t nearly as bad as I had been fearing (especially judging from the lovely garbage plate picture Vic had circulated around the department from the Rochester place), and I even liked it, though not enough to consider going back there more than maybe once a month or so, haha.
Yesterday evening it was time for another church softball game, this time vs Faith Baptist at our “home field” at the CMA church. This week I played in the first half of the game, 9th in the batting order and playing catcher. The infield was pretty muddy yet from Sunday’s rains, and I only had one at-bat, grounding out to the pitcher, oh well. At least I caught both pop-ups that I could get to, turning one of them into a 2-unassisted double play with the bases loaded and one out in the top of the 1st inning. The ball was popped up down the 3rd base line, and I ran down to catch it, at which point I saw the runner from 3rd base making a break for home. I stood there for half a second wondering why on earth he was trying to come home, since I had caught a foul pop only a step or two into foul territory, about halfway in between 3rd and home. Once I got over my disbelief I took a couple steps into fair territory and tagged him out as he ran by. But hey, I’ll take an unassisted double play any day! Too bad it didn’t help us win the game though, as we lost 11-9. It was still a fun evening though.
Ahhh, 25c wings and a Yuengling taste so good any time of the day, especially while sitting outside enjoying a gorgeous day. Even a nice long lunch at 2:30. 🙂 Chalk up another hour and a half lunch for Daniel & me; we really seem to have a propensity for taking our sweet old time at lunch, hehe.
Now for some really cool news. I got a call from Mario on Sunday afternoon letting me know that one of the other people who was supposed to be joining him and Dr Markowski on their upcoming storm chasing trip had come down with a bout of mono, and so he was wondering if I was interested in taking his place. To make a long story short, my advisor was fine with me taking a week off for this and I’ll be going storm chasing! We’ll be leaving early tomorrow morning and meeting up with the Doppler-On-Wheels (DOW) people somewhere in Nebraska or South Dakota on Thursday afternoon to go chasing from Thursday through Monday or Tuesday (depending on where the storms are), and then getting back to State College next Wednesday in time for dinner. I was somewhat hesitant about going because of the sudden cost (over $500), but storm chasing is something I’ve always wanted to do at least once, and I figure that I won’t always have the chance to do something like this, especially after I’m out of school and have a job in the “real world,” so I’ll somehow make my finances work. I haven’t ever seen a tornado before either, so I’m hoping that we spot one on our trip, I’m really excited. There are of course no guarantees that we’ll see anything, but the weather from Friday-Tuesday seems to be shaping up more favorably for severe weather than anytime in the last month, but then again that’s not saying a whole lot, since there’s been virtually no “good” weather since April anywhere. Theoretically we’ll be chasing anywhere from the Canadian border to the Mexican border, but more than likely we won’t end up going south of Kansas, as Oklahoma and Texas are pretty much closed for business as far as severe weather is concerned, with how the patterns are set up. Since chase days can get pretty long, I wonder how many “Texaco dinners” are in my future this week, haha. At any rate, I’ll definitely be taking quite a few photos, and if I get a chance I’ll post a couple from somewhere in the Northern Plains/Upper Midwest over the next week. Keep your fingers crossed for some good supercells and tornadoes!!