Welcome Week ’07

The first week of the Fall 2007 semester is in the books. It’s gonna be a bit of a tough one for me. I’m only taking one class this semester, but it’s Atmospheric Turbulence, quite possibly the toughest grad-level course in the meteorology department. Quite a few people are taking it, around 25 or so, largely because it’s almost certainly the last time that Dr. Wyngaard will be teaching it before he retires, and he wrote the book on turbulence (well, technically he’s nearly done writing it)! He’s already given us one assignment, and that’s due tomorrow, so I spent all afternoon in Walker today working on the final problem. Ugh.
The weekend before the semester started we hosted a welcome picnic and party for all the new meteo grad slav–, I mean, students. 🙂 There are about 10-12 new grad students I think, and it’s a pretty diverse group, including four from China, one from Puerto Rico, one from Scotland, and then a few others from all across the US, including from Florida State to Purdue to Idaho. It was pretty hot and humid outside (and even inside with everyone in Gall’s basement), but it was still a pretty fun evening. I always look forward to the meteo welcome party, it’s a good time every time!
The band Guster is gonna be coming to the Bryce Jordan Center here at Penn State next month on October 4th! They’re one of my favorite bands, and with tickets with a student ID being just $20, they’re at the right price too. So we’ll have a group of us from meteo going to that, Aviva, Justin, David, Lindsey, Ethan & me. That should be a fun concert. I really should also get tickets to the Phil Keaggy guitar concert down at the State Theatre on Sep 29th.
I’ve been essentially without a car since Friday evening. Walter & I were driving around to start some errands to pick up stuff for the tailgate this weekend, when my car’s clutch pedal started sticking occasionally, and thus not letting me shift at all. Most of the time I had to shut off the car so I could safely pull the pedal back out, and then turn it back on and get it back into gear. At first it was an annoyance that had me kinda concerned because it hadn’t ever happened before, but when it started happening with increasing frequency I got really concerned, and just drove back to my place. Fortunately Frame was able to come by and take us on all our errands, including picking up the flagpole from the UPS distribution center (woohoo!). Hopefully it’s just a clutch bearing/plate issue and not something serious with the transmission. I’d be really sad to have to say goodbye to my car right now. Hopefully when I give Ripka’s a call tomorrow they’ll have an open slot sometime soon.
College football season is underway! Jon, Walter & I kinda organized the meteo grad tailgate this week, and for this one we had a joint tailgate with the geoscience grad students too. We left in a caravan from our place before 8am, and got all set up at the tailgate field by 8:30. There’s nothin quite like a Molson at 8:30 in the morning to kick off the tailgating season, haha. It was an absolutely gorgeous morning too, not a cloud in the sky. We got the hurricane flags all set up too, and once there got to be a breeze toward mid-morning they stood out and were pretty easy to spot. 🙂 The only downside to the tailgate, aside from us forgetting some key stuff (hey, it’s a tune-up for next week, just like the football game), was that it had to end rather early due to the noon kickoff. And the football game wasn’t much of a contest either, with Penn State destroying hapless Florida International by a score of 59-0 (I left at the end of the 3rd quarter when PSU was up 52-0). FIU was absolutely terrible, probably the worst team I’ve ever seen. Even with that big score, the Nittany Lions simply couldn’t run the ball in the first half, their offensive line blocking was quite poor. So that’s a bit of a concern, but apart from that we saw what we needed to see from the team as they prepare for the big game against Notre Dame. “Notre Lame” just got crushed at home by Georgia Tech 33-3 though, so some of the luster of the game has been lost, but Lions fans are still out for blood after last year’s embarrassing loss in South Bend. The first-ever stadium-wide whiteout has been declared for the game too, so make sure to watch ESPN at 6pm ET on Saturday, seeing 110,000 fans in a sea of white will be quite a sight in person and on TV!
The big story from the weekend though happened over in Ann Arbor, where the mighty Michigan Wolverines, ranked #5 in the country, lost at home to tiny Appalachian State 34-32. It was the first time ever in the history of college football that a Division I-AA team beat a team that was ranked in the Division I-A poll. Fans of the underdog and Michigan haters (myself included) all across the country shouted for joy when Appalachian State kicked the go-ahead field goal with 26 seconds left, and then blocked the potential game-winning field goal try by Michigan on the game’s final play! As fans were filing out of the Penn State game on Saturday, the TVs in the Beaver Stadium concourse were showing the end of the Wolverines-Mountaineers game, and last night I watched a bunch of YouTube videos of the unbridled jubilation of the fans when that field goal was blocked. You would’ve thought that Penn State had just won the national championship judging from the fans’ reaction, but no, no, it was just hated Michigan suffering the most embarrassing loss in the annals of college football history! 😀 Hail to the Victors! 😉 It still warms my heart every time I see that replay, hahahaha!!!
Yesterday afternoon was also the Fall Picnic for Penn State Christian Grads. It was yet another fabulous day weather-wise, a fantastic afternoon for a picnic. It was great to see several new faces too. It should be a good year for PSCG, hopefully we can continue to grow. And now that Ashley & Heather (our new staff workers from Campus Crusade for Christ) are here (they just moved in from Ann Arbor a week and a half ago), we should be able to do even more things.
Alright, well I should get back to watching the 4th quarter of the Florida State-Clemson game. If Clemson hangs on to win I’ll have a perfect week in Dirty-Dawg, 15-for-15 on my picks! Go Tigers!