The Joy of (New) Mac

[On location in Cumberland, Wisconsin]
I realize I’ve had a distinct lack of bloggish activity on here lately, but I’ve been crazy-busy. I had wanted to get a post in before I left for home in Wisconsin, but that obviously didn’t happen. There’s a lot to cover, so here it goes.
First off, my new Macbook is here!! It arrived last Thursday, so on Friday night & Saturday morning I worked to get it all up-to-date with my data from my PowerBook and new versions of quite a few programs. So with all that I’ve now made the operational switch to my new Macbook! Hooray for new toys! I’ve noticed that my new machine is quite a bit faster, especially with iPhoto, which was getting dreadfully slow on my old machine with my 13,000+ pictures. And my new Macbook also has a built-in video camera, so I can video-chat with up to four people simultaneously in iChat. I think I’ll be using the video chat feature a fair bit for sure! And then I still need to find a really short Phillips #0 screwdriver in order to switch out my computer’s current memory with the new 2GB RAM that I bought (neither Radio Shack nor Office Depot nor Wal-Mart nor Lowe’s has anything that’d work for me — I drove around and checked them all Wednesday evening). And I still have to take my printer and my iPod out of their respective boxes and get them set up. I just haven’t had time lately, believe it or not. So that might be a project for home, at least for the iPod. And I’ve gotta send in those darn mail-in rebates too, so I can get $300 back.
Chris & Amber came up for the weekend to visit. So partly because of that Caren organized a trip on Saturday morning to one of everyone’s favorite places to eat in State College, Waffle Shop. And despite having a 12-person group, we all got our food within 10 or 12 minutes of ordering, so Waffle Shop maintained their reputation of excellent, fast service. It was so much food though… Then in the evening all the girls went out to a few bars for Anke’s bachelorette party, while a few of us guys got together at Walter’s place for Dave’s bachelor party. We basically just hung out and whatnot, having some alcohol while playing Scattegories and then Hot Death Uno, it was a really fun night, though Vic & Chris got a bit frustrated at times how long a hand could last, hehe. Dave & Anke left on Monday for Germany, and they’re gonna get married in Hamburg (where Anke’s from) this weekend if I recall correctly. Congrats!
I finalized my thesis late last week, and bought three 500-page boxes of 100% cotton paper from Office Depot for it. Why did I need 1500 pages of expensive, nice paper? Well, because I needed to print out ten copies of my 143-pg thesis. Copies on nice paper for Joel, Sue, Dr Wyngaard, Dr Stauffer, Meteo, ARL, Thesis Office, myself and my parents, with an unbound copy on plain paper going to Meteo as well. What a pleasant way to spend an entire Sunday afternoon, ugh… But I had printer demons show up only during the first couple I printed out, and I was able to get them all done. I turned one copy into the Thesis Office on Monday (along with a $17 fee), and then on Wednesday I took six of the nice copies to ARL to get bound for free (charged to the grant I’m on), and then the other two (for me and my parents) I took to the HUB print shop to get nicer binding for “not free” (blue cover with white lettering and a PSU logo, instead of black with gold lettering and no logo). It’s so nice to be done with my thesis finally! I haven’t totaled up quite yet how much I spent on paper, binding, etc. to get it done, but it’s not insignificant.
Caren’s birthday was on Tuesday, but before Anke & Dave left for Germany, they stopped by Walker to deliver a cool Transformers cake for Caren, complete with an actual Optimus Prime transformer on top, haha.
We had two games this week for IM softball. On Monday we played another pretty bad team and won 14-3, with their runs scoring all in the top of the 1st off an error by Walter and some atrocious calls by the umpires (literally, they didn’t know the rules, including what the foul line was or that a runner is out if he’s struck by a batted ball before a fielder touches it, sigh). I batted 2-for-3 with a run scored, with a groundout to the pitcher and then singles up middle and through a hole at shortstop.
Then on Wednesday we had our toughest game of the year so far, although that’s not saying much. We fell behind 5-0 after 3 innings, with all our hits right at their fielders (in the 1st I had my best-struck ball of the season, a fly to deep left, but the fielder managed to turn around and catch it on the run, and in the 3rd I struck out, eww), but then our bats got started, and we had a 5-run 5th inning to take a 7-5 lead (I had an RBI tapper right in front of the plate and later scored a run). In the 6th I had a 2-out RBI single to deep shortstop to put us up 8-6. Then in the 7th Nat hit his second home run of the game, a solo shot to give us back the lead 9-8. Talk about drama! But then in the bottom of the 7th, their first batter lined out to short, but then they got two singles to put runners on 1st and 2nd with one out, and then they had a walk-off two-run double to right-center, so we lost 10-9. Sigh. Talk about an IM heartbreaker. But even though we lost, it was still tons of fun to be in a close game like that for a change.
The moving season has begun. Of the four PSCGers, I’ve only been able to help Anna, unfortunately. When Steve & Liz moved out, I was at the GMU conference. Anna moved last Wednesday, and a whole bunch of people showed up to help. Matt & Joanna loaded their truck on Tuesday afternoon, and I was fully intending to help out for at least half an hour before leaving for Baltimore or whatever, but I got sidetracked by some friendly JWs from New York who were walkin around town. I wound up talking to them for over half an hour, except I didn’t even know they were Jehovah’s Witnesses until about 20 minutes into the conversation — I just thought originally that they had a little funny theology on a couple things. I was just interested in talking to them and hearing more about what they had to say, so I could learn more about their positions on stuff, because I really didn’t know very much of what they believed. Then they gave me a little booklet too, which was very… interesting. They certainly believe some off the wall stuff, though they have elements of other issues right. It’s a curious mix, really. But anyway, I wasn’t able to help Ed & Ellen move this Friday either, because I was in Cleveland for a baseball game. And then I won’t be able to help Daniel & Katie move next week because I’ll be in Wisconsin, but they have Air Force movers packing everything up for them anyway for their move to Shreveport.
On Tuesday afternoon, I went with (South African) Daniel, Ryan & Sarah down to Baltimore for the Orioles-Devil Rays baseball game. I originally had hoped to go to Toronto for the Blue Jays-Twins game that night, but gave up on that idea because I didn’t think I could really afford to take two whole days off right before going away for two weeks. But anyway, Ryan really wanted to go to this game because it was the Hall of Fame sendoff for Cal Ripken Jr, and the second Cal Ripken Jr bobblehead night of the season. (The 2632 is on the Warehouse behind right field because Ripken played in 2632 consecutive baseball games at one point in his career, with the old record being 2130 games.) And we even got there early enough that each of us got one; for me, it was my first-ever bobblehead. The ceremony was cool too, and it was fun to see the stadium so full, and the fans go wild when all these all-time Orioles greats were introduced on the field or gave video messages to Cal. When the mayor of Baltimore was introduced to come to the stage to make some sort of proclamation, it was pretty humorous because she was soundly booed by the vast majority of the fans in attendance. I have no idea who she is or what she’s done, but it was apparent that she’s not well-liked! As for the game itself, it was a good one, with the O’s scoring a few runs in the late innings to win 3-0. It was my second game ever at Oriole Park at Camden Yards (and my first-ever major league game that didn’t involve the Twins), and I absolutely love that stadium, it’s gorgeous. And it has some fantastic ballpark fare too, Boog’s BBQ, but Daniel & I also wound up with the worst-ever service at another food stand (it wasn’t a very long line, but it took us some pregame plus two full innings for us to get an order of fries). It was still a really fun night, I’m glad I went. We rolled back into State College a bit after 1:30am, so I was kinda tired at Walker on Wednesday!
Walker A/C update: It was on for an entire week before breaking again for a day back on Tuesday afternoon/Wednesday morning. But unless it broke again on Friday, it’s been working since Wednesday midday.
With Arts Fest in the rear-view mirror, that means it’s time for Wingfest! Both of the last two Thursdays I’ve gone out to Tussey Mountain with some meteo friends to enjoy a bunch of tasty wings. The admission this year is the same as it was last year ($5, with a free beverage), but this year wings are only 3/$1 instead of 4/$1. Also, there’s no voting this year, they’ve made it purely a “festival,” which is kind of a bummer. Also, they’ve only had three vendors both of these two weeks, and both Prospectors and Quaker Steak & Lube have been there both weeks too, whereas last year there were four new vendors each week. So while it’s still fun and tasty to attend, it’s lost some of the allure from last year. That, and it’s rained on us both of the last two weeks, putting a bit of a damper on things.
Ever since Daniel got his orders earlier this summer that he’s to move to Shreveport, Louisiana, on August 1st, I haven’t been looking forward to this part of summer and having to say goodbye to Daniel & Katie. It’s never fun to say goodbye, that’s for sure, especially to good friends. It’ll definitely be different when I get back to Penn State and they’re not around, I’m really gonna miss them…
I was agonizing on Friday morning over whether or not to try to go to the Indians-Twins game over in Cleveland with Kerrie and [South African] Daniel, because we hadn’t purchased our tickets yet and the weather forecast was looking really iffy for rain around gametime. So my decision was between going to Cleveland and hoping the game was still on, not going to the game but still heading west a bit and staying at a motel, or sticking around for another evening, going to trivia and whatnot (to get one more chance to hang out with Daniel & Katie), and then getting up super-early on Saturday and trying to drive the whole 950 miles back to Cumberland in one day (ugh…). So it was a really crazy morning, perseverating over that decision, packing all my stuff, taking care of other things that needed to be done before I left, and generally having the feeling of a chicken running around with my head cut off. But finally around noon I decided to go to the game, and we left at about 1:30.
Anyway, we got to Cleveland about four hours later, and finding a cheap parking spot was really painless. Jacobs Field is a really cool park too, and even has lots of picnic tables in the concourses for everyone, not just the people with super-expensive VIP tickets. And the concessions employees were very pleasant and polite too, much more so than in New York or Baltimore — I really felt like I was back in the Midwest, haha. Our seats were pretty good too, along the first base line in the upper deck, looking out to the giant left-field scoreboard and the skyline of downtown Cleveland just beyond the left and center field walls. There was even a really cool fireworks display after the game too out in left field, and our seats were looking straight out at it. As for the game itself though, the Twins fell behind 10-0 (Boof kinda blew up), before finally making it almost “respectable” at 10-4. Before the Twins finally scored in the 7th, I had yet to see the Twins score in a game in person this year (they lost to the Yankees 8-0 in the other game I went to), so I was glad to see them get rid of that annoying goose egg. But it was still a really fun time we had in Cleveland, I’m glad I went. As for ranking the five MLB stadiums I’ve been to so far, I’ll leave that for a future post.

We stayed overnight at a motel near Cleveland, and then it was off to Cumberland a bit before 9am. The drive was fairly uneventful, if long, except I was reminded once again of just how much I hate Chicago traffic. About 13.5 hours and 750 miles later, I was finally home. Home sweet Wisconsin! It’ll sure be nice to be home for a week and a half or so.
Congrats on making it to the end of this unnecessarily-long post. I hope there were enough pictures to keep y’all entertained. 😛