Smooth Sailing

[On location in Cumberland, Wisconsin]
Home again, home again, jiggity jog. On my way home from the Twin Cities last night, one sure sign that I was at last back in Minne-sooooo-ta was that I was able to order a walleye sandwich for dinner. You sure can’t get good walleye in central Pennsylvania (or any walleye, for that matter)!
So the “weather porn” that I mentioned last week? Yeah, about that… Of course it didn’t verify. These things never seem to. The forecast storm tracks kept inching further and further westward as the weekend approached, eventually indicating maybe we’d get a little sleet mixed in with the snow, then a fair bit of sleet, then finally by Saturday morning it was clear we’d be getting almost entirely sleet with a healthy mix of freezing rain/drizzle thrown in for good measure, before getting dry slotted. And that’s exactly what happened. Sigh… It looked so promising for so long, too… It was so frustrating. Can’t we please just get a good all-snow winter storm in here someday? It doesn’t have to be a Storm of the Century-type storm, but a nice snowfall of a foot or more would be wonderful.
20071214-MarioPettersTo celebrate the end of the semester, and primarily to celebrate Mario & Jon passing their PhD Comprehensive Exams, a bunch of us went out to Bar Bleu a week ago. Who wants to do studying on a Friday night anyway? 😛
I got my Christmas shopping all done on Saturday before the “storm” arrived, instead of studying for finals. This is the third year that my family’s elected to have all the adults draw one name of a person for whom to buy a gift, and I must say it certainly reduces a lot of stress that would otherwise be there from buying gifts for a bunch of people. It also makes it easy to get all my Christmas shopping done in one stop. 😉
My old laptop computer sold last weekend on eBay for $475 + S/H to some guy from Quebec, so I got that shipped out on Tuesday morning. I had hoped for a bit more, but I’m still satisfied with that price. If only I hadn’t been so lazy and sold it back in August or September instead of December, perhaps I could’ve gotten another $300-$400 for it. Oh well. At least I got what I got, it’s still a pretty decent amount.
I’m all done with Atmospheric Turbulence class! We had our final exam on Tuesday afternoon, and I think I did reasonably well on it. Just like the midterm, all the questions on the exam were (mostly) from the review sheet Dr Wyngaard had given us, and since I’d focused on the “key concepts” in those review questions, that turned out well for me. At least I didn’t embarrass myself. Since grades don’t matter much at all in grad school, that’s really all I aim for in exams in classes anymore (other than actually learning the material, of course). It just doesn’t pay to worry myself sick over trying to get an A.
Representatives from DTRA (Defense Threat Reduction Agency) were up at PSU this week for a series of IPRs (interim/annual project reviews), as they have six research contracts with groups from Penn State Meteorology. And, as usual, the IPRs were conveniently held during finals week, just when all us students are most stressed out. But anyway, my project’s IPR was the last one of the group, late morning on Wednesday. Joel & Sue gave me a half-hour slot for my talk and some question time, which was largely a recap of my M.S. thesis work from earlier this year, and I think it went fairly well. So once I was finished with that, Christmas break commenced!
In the last couple weeks when I was working on my presentation and scanning through some articles so that I could contribute to some slides that Sue needed for her talk, I suddenly came up with a potential topic for my PhD dissertation! So here’s my idea (warning: contains jargon): Using WRF (and possibly MM5 and other numerical weather prediction (NWP) models), examine different initial/boundary condition & NWP ensemble initialization techniques for mesoscale short-range ensemble forecasting systems, and their relative impact on atmospheric transport & dispersion uncertainty, paying particular attention to both wind direction variability and atmospheric boundary layer height variability. For those of you who didn’t understand all that jargon, I guess it could basically be boiled down to that I want to investigate how different ways of initializing weather models impacts uncertainty in predictions of where some chemical would be transported & dispersed after a release. I got pretty excited when that idea popped into my head, because I had been struggling for months to come up with a good idea for my dissertation topic. I still need to do a bit more of a lit review to see if someone’s already addressed my topic, but I’m pretty sure it’s a niche topic about which nothing specifically has been published just yet.
My flight was scheduled to leave State College yesterday morning at 6:10am, so I got up at 4am to get ready and finish packing, and Ash was nice enough to come by my apartment at 5:15am to take me up to the airport. It was my first time flying out of SCE, and from what I’d heard from other people, showing up half an hour early was usually plenty of time since it’s such a small airport (only two gates and one security checkpoint line!), but apparently yesterday morning was abnormally busy. By the time I got through the check-in line and the security line, it was already after our scheduled departure time. So by the time everyone actually boarded, the plane was de-iced, and they had burned off over 500 lbs of excess fuel to make weight, we finally took off for Detroit at 7:10am. That hour-long delay caused me to miss my original connexion to Minneapolis/Saint Paul. If I would’ve been able to run a 4- or 5-minute mile pace I might’ve been able to make it all the way to the gate to catch it, but I decided it just wasn’t worth it, seeing as how there are 15 flights per day on Northwest between DTW and MSP. So instead I just went to the gate of the next flight departing for MSP (about 45 minutes after my scheduled flight), and they put me right on it. So I only had to wait about 20 minutes at that gate before boarding my new flight, so it turned out to be way more relaxing than sprinting across the terminal of a huge airport. 🙂 And my luggage even managed to follow me onto my new flight too, so it all turned out nicely. I’m all for not letting myself get stressed out over anything while travelling, especially flying, because there’s nothing that I can do about the process anyway. It is what it is, and for me it’s usually worked out fine and I’ve gotten where I’m supposed to go, even if it’s often a tad later than expected.
20071220-JaredScottKatieAn good friend of mine from high school, Scott (he’s the one who was in the Navy for a few years as a rescue swimmer), picked me up at the airport in the Twin Cities right after he finished up his last final exam of the semester. So for lunch we went out to Buffalo Wild Wings and had a couple drinks to celebrate the end of the semester, and we just had a great time all day hanging out, catching up and reminiscing. I’m so impressed with how Scott’s changed over the last few years, and glad that he’s become such a good friend. Scott & Katie definitely have a lot on their plates right now though, what with a new house, Scott in school, and their new baby arriving in Feb or March sometime, plus being incredibly active in church and Bible studies and everything. They’re definitely an encouragement.
The early-break blitz of visiting friends & family will continue the next few days. Maybe late next week I’ll take some time out to start studying for the Candidacy Exams again. It definitely feels good to be home again, even if exam anxiety is gradually growing ever-larger in my thoughts this Christmas break. Bloggish activity shall continue in the coming days as I feel so motivated.
Merry Christmas! And safe travels, everyone!

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