Fall Cleaning

Admittedly, I’m not typically a clean- or neat-freak. Various and sundry piles tend to grow in my bedroom and office rather steadily, and usually in a bit of a haphazard and messy fashion. Oftentimes I’m not at all bothered by it, and know pretty much everything that’s in the piles and where I can find particular items. Eventually I reach a breaking point though, and get a tremendous urge to clean and tidy up everything. Well, I finally hit that point once again last week, so I took all or part of the last few evenings to clean my room (among the things I found: the license plate renewal registration notice from the Wisconsin DMV in a bundle of mail that I never remembered receiving, *sigh*), and get all caught up with my finances (I had a big pile of receipts dating back to mid-July on my desk that I needed to reconcile with credit card and bank statements, ugh). It feels good to have just about everything cleaned up again at long last (I hadn’t cleaned my room since probably early July), and I won’t make any pronouncements about how I plan on not letting everything go that long again. Such resolutions in the past obviously haven’t stuck, so why bother making another one? That being said, my life would be a whole lot easier if I could just stay on top of everything and keep my room relatively neat and organized constantly. 🙂
The last home football game of the season for Penn State was this Saturday, when the Nittany Lions hosted the Purdue Boilermakers. It was a noon kickoff, and I was kind of tired of organizing all the meteo tailgates this season (especially after really long waits to get out of the parking lot after the Wisconsin and Ohio State games), so there wasn’t any tailgating for me. It was a really nice day for a football game again, with crystal clear skies and cool temps. Purdue took the opening kickoff back to the house for a 7-0 lead, but then Penn State came back to take a 13-10 halftime lead, and hung on for a 26-19 victory over the visitors. The officiating was pretty bad throughout the game though, with the incompetent Big Ten officials making several horrible and head-scratching calls throughout the game that hurt both sides. In any case, it was good for the PSU seniors to go out with a win in their final game in Beaver Stadium. It’s hard to believe that another home football season has gone by the books already, this semester has just flown by so far. Penn State currently sports a 7-3 record, and will try to close out strongly with road games at Temple and Michigan State the next couple weeks.
I finally got my plane tickets for Christmas break on Friday night. I figured I’d probably end up flying out of Harrisburg or Pittsburgh again because State College is usually so expensive to fly out of, but I managed to find a good deal: $391 for State College to Minneapolis round-trip, with only one stopover both ways in Detroit. Not too shabby! Then tack on that my parents bought it with air miles from their credit card, and it was an even better deal! Thanks, Mom & Dad! I had planned on flying out on Fri 21 Dec, but it was significantly cheaper to leave on Thu 20 Dec, so that’s what I’m doing now. I’ll be flying back to State College on New Year’s Eve day so that I have close to a full week to study before I take the PhD Candidacy Exam [whimper]. I’ll be so glad when that test is over…
I don’t know about you, but I’m getting tired of all the “rages” that we have these days as a seeming excuse for poor behavior — “road rage,” “cell phone rage,” etc. But this is a new one entirely: “suburban water rage”. I mean, I know the drought in Australia is bad, but this is getting ridiculous, especially when the victim was completely law-abiding and obeying the water restrictions.
And finally, Adrian Peterson is single-handedly giving me reason to cheer for the Vikings again, and to hope for good things in the future. After torching Da Bears for 231 yards and 3 TD earlier this year, he ran roughshod over the Chargers for 296 yards and 3 TD today! It was only the eighth game of his career, and he’s already set the NFL single-game rushing record! And he’s doing all this despite the fact that the Vikings have an absolutely pathetic passing game; everyone in the stadium knows the ball is going to Peterson, which makes his accomplishments all the more impressive. Skol Vikings!
And will the first snowflakes of the season in State College fall on Tuesday night? Stay tuned!