Down Under Developments

Believe it or not, prior to last night I had never seen “The Shawshank Redemption.” It’s not that I’d avoided it or didn’t want to see it, I just hadn’t gotten around to watching it ever yet. Everyone I talked to always raved about the movie, so a few months ago when I saw it for ten bucks in Target I bought it, on the assumption that it’d be good enough to own. And last night I finally did watch it, with John, Ruth, Kerrie, Daniel & Ben (Ben hadn’t seen it before either). It was such a good movie, I absolutely loved it! I can’t believe I hadn’t watched it earlier, but it was well worth the wait. Once “Shawshank” was done, we put in another all-time classic, “The Princess Bride,” which Daniel had somehow not seen yet (I think he thought it was a chick flick). So I’d say it was quite an enjoyable movie night!
So another softball game resulted in another loss. This time we were playing Penns Valley Community Church, the same team we opened the season against, at a rather dreadful field in Centre Hall. We got 2 in the top of the 1st inning, but then got ambushed for 12 runs in the bottom of the 1st. We were a bit shellshocked by that, since they only scored 2 runs in a full 7 innings against us a few weeks ago. We managed to hold them down the next three innings pretty well, but after our half of the 5th inning we were only trailing 14-5, so while the “official” score was 15-5, we kept playing till the middle of the 7th when we were down 23-6. Sigh. I playing in the first half at second base, but at the plate I was only 1-for-2 again, with a groundout to short and perhaps the weakest RBI single ever, a tapper that went barely 10 feet to the third base side of the pitcher. But hey, a hit’s a hit and an RBI’s an RBI. It would be nice to win a game again though, it’s really been awhile.
I’ve got some pretty exciting news about Australia to share. I wrote an email on Sunday to Dr Cally (my Fluid Dynamics prof down at Monash, he wrote a letter of recommendation for me for grad school) to let him know that I finished my M.S. and everything. I also let him know that I am planning to visit Aus next summer, and that I’m seriously considering looking into a job or a post-doc down there after I finish my Ph.D. in 2010. Well, he wrote me back right away, and also cc’d Dr Reeder, the head of the Atmospheric Science dept at Monash, who also wrote me and invited me to give a seminar at Monash when I go down there! I’m thrilled! And Dr Evans up here at Penn State (whose alma mater is Monash) said she could also probably help set up meetings for me with other people down there from CSIRO and the BoM, too, so I might have a full day or two of “work” on my vacation, which, given the nature of the work, would be just fine with me. 🙂 Add these new developments onto the chance to go to Joel & Rosey’s wedding, and it’s looking more and more like I’ll definitely be going back for another visit to the Land Down Under!