My Summer Vacation

I’ve heard some complaints about the lack of bloggish activity on this site in the last week or two during my vacation. Sorry about that, I just never got around to it. I was somewhat busy and having fun (or enjoying relaxing) during most of my vacation when I wasn’t driving. And boy did I do a lot of driving by myself, over 3200 miles in 11 days! I guess it’s a good thing I like to drive, and that my 1991 Mazda 626 is still going strong after 213,000 miles. Anyway, I’d better get to it, and I apologize in advance for the length of this post. Hopefully all the pictures will break it up a bit.
My drive two Fridays ago from good ol’ State College, PA to Huntsville, Alabama went well, and somehow I really wasn’t sleepy-tired at all. A couple comments about the drive: I-79 between Morgantown and Charleston in West Virginia is a beautiful stretch of highway; and Kentucky took entirely too long to drive through. Daniel’s family had arranged for me to stay with the Sieja’s, a family from their church in Huntsville, so I managed to wend my way at night rather successfully through the city, arriving at their place at around 10pm or so, about 15 hours and 830 miles after I left State College. Boy was I ready to get out of the car! I was *very* grateful for being able to stay with the Sieja’s on Friday and Saturday, they were amazing! Aside from being given a free place to stay in a home, I was most glad about getting the chance to know some people before the wedding, particularly since I didn’t know anyone beforehand apart from the bride (a little bit) and the groom. They were so kind to me, and I’m very thankful I had the chance to stay with them and get to know them; they really made my stay in Huntsville tons more enjoyable than if I would’ve been by myself at a motel.
Daniel & Katie’s wedding last Saturday was wonderful. The service was about half an hour long, seemed to go off without a hitch (apart from the flower girl literally throwing — not tossing — handfuls of petals as she walked up the aisle, hehe). A thunderstorm actually rolled in right as the wedding was about to start too, and a loud rumble of thunder caused a bit of commotion during one of the last prelude songs; I thought it would’ve been cool if Daniel’s entrance would’ve been accompanied by thunder, but I guess that was close enough. 🙂 After Daniel & Katie were proclaimed man and wife (yay!!) it was time to move downstairs for the reception, and in the course of mingling around I met a few of Daniel’s friends & relatives, including his parents and his brother, which was nice. I got to talk with several of them a good deal more at the afterglow party a couple hours later at someone’s house, they were really a bunch of interesting and really cool people. Daniel’s friends Tuan, Gavin & Matt were even inviting me out for a couple drinks at the Thirsty Turtle after the party, which I really appreciated and I totally would’ve taken them up on their offer if it weren’t for needing to be up and driving by 6am or so the next morning so that I could make it to Green Bay at a reasonable hour. Though as it turns out I wouldn’t have gotten any less sleep by doing that, but hindsight is 20/20… At any rate, I was very glad that I decided to stay at the afterglow party until things were winding down, instead of leaving way early and staying at a motel at least a couple hours up the road (to give me a head start on my Wisconsin drive), since I got to meet and talk for awhile with so many cool people. I’m wishing I had more time to get to know them, but oh well. And I offer my apologies here to my fellow Penn Staters, since I really didn’t get very many pictures taken during the afterglow party — two, to be exact. I was just too busy having fun! You’ll all just have to live with the ones I took during the ceremony and at the reception I guess.
After getting only a couple hours of sleep (maybe, and that’s being generous … gosh, I hate the nights when my mind’s just racing about every thing imaginable and I can’t get it to slow down so I can sleep, argh! — and why do those nights seem to happen so often the night before I have to wake up early to go on a trip?), I said goodbye to the Sieja’s and hit the road a bit after 6am, heading for my buddy Mike’s place up in Green Bay, Wisconsin. I was pretty tired early on in the trip in Tennessee, but after getting another dose of caffeine in me I was good to go the rest of the way. The detour through the city streets of downtown Chicago around the torn-up Dan Ryan wasn’t too too bad either (well, my standards are a bit different in Chicago, a city I absolutely loathe for trying to drive through or around at any time of the day). At any rate I made it the 800 miles to Green Bay in 14 1/2 hours altogether, which I guess isn’t too bad. That drive tuckered me out a fair bit, especially on the heels of so little sleep, so when I was hanging out and playing cards with Mike and his friend Sarah who came over for a bit, or watching “Super Troopers,” I was obviously quite mellow, much more so than usual.
After being awakened by Mike’s fiesty little kitten I watched Australia fall 1-0 to Italy in the World Cup while Mike was at class. I really don’t think that was a penalty in the 93rd, but obviously the referee had a different opinion. Following the game we grabbed some lunch together, and I stayed as long as I possibly could to keep chatting with him and whatnot before I had to leave to make it to the Twin Cities in time for the Twins game. I’ve really missed being able to spend time with Mike, and while I really wish I had more time to spend out there, that was way better than nothing.
The Twins-Dodgers game last Monday night was tons of fun. Quite a few of my friends from Gustavus that are still around the Cities these days came out for it too, including Jolene, Zach, Dave, Ben, Mueller, Al and his fiancee Katie, Brendan, Vicki & Scott. Add to that Jacob from PSU (who was also home in the Twin Cities last week) and two of his friends, and we had a pretty sizable group at the Metrodome to watch the Twins trounce the Dodgers 8-2 in very entertaining fashion. I brought my PSU Meteo sign that I’d made for the Twins game at Pittsburgh back in mid-June, and then my physics phriends had another two signs that were classically nerdy. I can say I’ve never seen anyone else say “Circle Us Bert” in a more creative way on a sign at a Twins game before, that’s for sure! After the game a few of us went to Town Hall Brewery to meet up with Andy, Nate and his girlfriend Christina, it was really good to see them again. Jolene & Sara were nice enough to let me crash at their place for the night.
Tuesday I did a little shopping at the Mall of America and then drove over to Eden Prairie to pay a visit to my former co-workers at Choice Auto Rental and then I dropped in at Bergin’s, my brother Aaron’s body shop, for a quick surprise visit. I wish Aaron & Eve could’ve had some time some evening for me to drop by for a longer visit, but oh well. And I’d only seen pictures before, but Aaron had his newly souped-up golf cart on display at the shop. Check out the picture, it’s pretty sweet! The one thing he has yet to finish is getting some cushioned arm rests put on there, but other than that it’s all done. Finally on Tuesday evening I made it home to Cumberland, but right after supper I bopped over to my brother Nathan & Laura’s place in Rice Lake for a good long game of Catan.
Wednesday & Thursday I basically just relaxed at home for a bit, enjoying the sights and sounds of nature around our house, reading a book out on the sun porch, and just taking a breather from all my running around, though I did go to Bible studies with my parents on Wednesday evening in Taylors Falls and Thursday evening in Rice Lake. Then on Friday evening Nathan & Jake came over for supper, so we had some good family time at my parents house, with Aaron being the only brother unable to be there.
Saturday I made an appearance for a couple hours at my 5-year high school reunion. Most of the people I hung out with in high school weren’t there, but it was still fun to catch up with the people who showed up, play some volleyball and enjoy a couple of free brats (we love Louie!). After the reunion I hung out with Kevin for a bit, going out on Beaver Dam Lake on the homemade double-decker pontoon boat he (along with Mike and some other people from their grade) helped make for an hour or so. It was so relaxing just to sit up on the second deck (which also is a putting green, hehe) and enjoy a beautiful evening on a quiet part of the lake. My one major complaint about Pennsylvania is the severe lack of water, I’ve been spoiled while growing up by the abundance of lakes in Wisconsin and Minnesota. After that we went back to my place for a little while to play some pool, and I managed to hold my own, eking out a 1-1 draw. I was glad to get to see KG for awhile, and I’m really hoping that Mike & Kevin can make it out to Penn State for a visit sometime in August.
Both Nathan & I went along with my parents to church Sunday morning in Taylors Falls, which was really good. They’re such good people, and it’s always quite enjoyable to go down there and see them again. And it just happened to be a week where everyone went over to Cliff & Joyce’s afterward for a grill-out. The only downside of all that is that I didn’t end up leaving Cumberland until 4:30 or so to begin my long, 1000 mile trek back to State College. It was really nice to be home for a few days, but I have so much to do research-wise in the coming weeks that I had to make it back. I made a two-hour stop in Madison at 8:30 to pay my friend Claire a visit, where we grabbed some ice cream on campus (at UW’s equivalent of the PSU Creamery) and caught the last half of the fireworks show that was off in the distance across Lake Mendota. I only made it to Rochelle, Illinois, about half an hour south of Rockford, when I had to stop for the night. I was really hoping to make it further, but oh well. That left 700 miles for me to drive on Monday to get back to State College, which I did in about 13 hours. I really think caffeine is a must to make it through the Ohio Turnpike. The western half of it in particular is so dull…
For the 4th of July yesterday, I was awakened at 10:30 to the sound of the transformer blowing out less than a block away. Nothing like a few extra fireworks to start off the 4th! After we’d been out of power for an hour I decided to walk down there to see if I could see anything, and I definitely spotted the offending squirrel that caused the outage — he was fried and flayed, and actually laying next to the skeleton of the previous squirrel that last bit the dust and caused the transformer to blow earlier this summer. Stupid squirrels. Fortunately by noon the power was back on at least. If you wanna see a zoomed in photo of the squirrel, just let me know!
Then yesterday afternoon Shannon, Ken & I helped Daniel & Katie move Katie’s stuff into their apartment from the Uhaul, and then there was an Independence Day BBQ over at Frame’s place with a bunch of the other Meteo grads. Several of us decided to watch the State College fireworks (which according to fireworksguide.com are rated as the 5th-best show in the entire nation) from a bit closer up, so we went into campus and got a spot pretty close to the baseball stadium. The show was pretty impressive, choreographed to 40 minutes of music. While the show was really good, I’m not sure it’s top-ten quality; but then again, I haven’t seen any of those other top-notch displays for comparison.
Today it was back to reality, the harsh reality of Walker Building. And surprise! Joel said that in addition to making a poster for the GMU conference August 1-3 in Virginia, he wants to bring me along to a conference in Albuquerque (also in early August), and he wants me to give a talk there. Gulp. Ummm, let’s just hope I can be super-productive in these next 3-4 weeks!
El fin. Time to give my fingers a break!