Semi-Productivity

I’ve actually had a few fairly productive days recently, it’s been good. Thursday didn’t start out so productive, as my back-to-back Meteo 003 labs that I TA kept me so busy with constant questions that I didn’t even have time to snarf down my sandwiches until after they were both done. Kinda frustrating. So after colloquium, floor managing for “Weather World” (where Marisa basically told me she’s looking forward to getting me some camera time this summer for CWS, yay!) and re-doing a Cloud Physics problem that we’d all apparently done incorrectly (grr), then it was time to get working on Dynamics. Everyone else went home, but Daniel & I decided to stick it out in Walker until late in the night to work hard and get stuff done, just like old times (in other words, last semester). Even with taking a nice long break for supper down at Bell’s Greek Pizza (my favourite restaurant here in State College so far, or top three for sure) and then catching “The Office” on TV back at my apartment before heading back to Walker, by the time we gave up for the night at midnight we’d gotten all but the last problem done (I hate diff eq’s!). That was an awesome start on the assignment, particularly since it’s not due till this coming Friday. I so needed to take at least one night out of the week just to focus on work, otherwise I’d be sunk.
Got some stuff done on Friday, but most importantly we won team trivia again. Go us. I loved the final question too: “What’s the only venue to have hosted the World Series, Super Bowl and Final Four”? Answer: The HHH Metrodome, of course. Being from Minnesota/Wisconsin finally came in handy. 🙂 I elected not to go out with most everyone to the Skeller afterwards, and instead decided to do a bit more trivia, helping out Crazy Carl down in Baltimore with the annual 50-hour KVSC (a radio station from St Cloud, MN) Trivia Weekend contest he’s competed in for several years now. I was gonna head down there for it, but with all the work that piled up and the impending nor’easter comin up the Atlantic seaboard, I just decided it wasn’t a good idea to drive to Baltimore. So instead I tuned in to the station over the net and was googling away and calling in some answers for the team, “Crabs? We Got Em!” (Baltimore’s known for its crabs, haha). I was only able to do it for a couple hours before I got too tired, but at least I was able to help them out some by answering a few questions. Mmmm, double dose of trivia…
Saturday morning I took a walk down to PNC Bank to try to clear up why I got three overdraft fees charged to my account. At the end of last month I’d set up a balance transfer online from my savings to checking accounts, but apparently it didn’t happen, resulting in me overdrawing my account a few times. Sigh. They still couldn’t find any record of it being arranged to prove that I was telling the truth, but they still refunded me the overdraft fees this time. Glad that’s taken care of. One thing’s for sure though, from now on I’ll be checking my account status online every couple of days to make sure nothing quirky is happening, and writing down all my transaction authorization numbers and such.
After that I went into Walker to get a bit of grading done, and then Daniel & I went to the men’s basketball game between Penn State and Wisconsin. It was a “white out” so the whole student section was wearing white t-shirts (not quite as impressive as at the football games, but still cool), and the fans were energized and really into it in the first half (it was like a real college basketball atmosphere!), as Penn State took a 36-34 lead into halftime. But it was all downhill from there, as the Badgers took control and cruised to an 82-62 rout. But hey, at least the first half was fun. 🙂 The halftime show was great yet again too, this time they had a group called “Quickchange” performing, a man and woman doing a magic/illusion routine, where they both completely change costumes multiple times in the span of about a second, it was flat-out amazing. I really don’t know how they do that, but it was awesome to watch.
Following the game Daniel & I joined Petters, Steph, Shannon & her friend Rachel for dinner at someplace neither of us had ever been before, Home Delivery Pizza Pub. From the name it doesn’t sound all that great, but it’s actually pretty nice and pretty cheap, and not just for pizza. There are so many cool places in this town, and we keep discovering them. A bit later a bunch of us went out to Bar Bleu for the jazz night with the band Andrew Jackson. I guess he plays there every Saturday night, but it was the first time I’d made it down there to hear him. In fact, I think that was the first time I’d ever heard jazz in a bar at all, and I loved it. It’s so much more relaxing and comfortable than listening to an obnoxiously loud and bad punk band while you’re trying to talk to people. To finish off the night, P Allen, Daniel & I all went over to Jacob’s place to watch some “Family Guy,” though he couldn’t find the “Family Guy” movie he’d promised us. Tsk tsk. 🙂
Today was fairly productive too, after church I holed myself up in Walker and got in a zone grading Meteo 003 labs, managing to finish my last 35 in five and a half hours. I’m so glad I got those done, because now I can focus on studying for Wednesday night’s Cloud Physics exam the next couple days/nights. My evening tonight consisted of going to the PSCG Bible study, and then talking to my parents on the phone for a bit while watching some of the Winter Olympics. I figure I may as well take a respite from studying for a brief little while.
Some other interesting things have transpired in the last few days. Now that Kerrie’s accepted a research offer with Dr Young, I’m the last student in the department left who hasn’t found summer research funding. Go me. I expect that Dr Clothiaux will start turning up the heat on me to find something now that I’m the last one. I wonder what’ll get worked out… And I also found out late last week that the deadline for signing leases for next academic year here in White Course is this coming Friday (if we want to stay in our current rooms, that is). I really like how they hid it at the bottom of a random page in an electronic newsletter, without really advertising that this deadline is coming up or anything, grr. So now I’m frantically trying to decide if I want to stay in White Course or get a different place off-campus starting in either May or August. Fortunately for me, I found out that Petters, another of the meteo grads, is also looking for a place, so we’re looking into possibly getting an apartment together somewhere, which’d be cool. It’d be great to get a fairly nice place off-campus but be able to split the cost with someone and save around $100/month from what I’m paying now, definitely. It’d be nice if I could have both the research and apartment stuff semi-figured out by spring break, which is suddenly only three weeks away.
Most of you have probably seen or heard about the mega snowstorm that walloped the eastern seaboard this weekend, including dumping a record 26″ of snow in NYC (especially if you’ve been watching the Weather Channel at all, they’ve been absolutely breathless about it for a few days now). All last week the snow geese were honking around here and wishcasting for a big snowfall, but as the week wore on all the models started indicating that the storm was gonna slide a bit too far to our east to bring us much. So while places as close as Philadelphia got a foot of snow, we got only a measly inch. Sigh. I want a big snowstorm! But even the little bit of snow and ice made for some interesting driving on Saturday evening, particularly for the southerners in our midst who admitted they were “driving like an old grandma.” 😉 Too bad the snow won’t stick around too long though, it’s supposed to get into the mid-upper 40s around here by mid-week. This has really been a weenie winter overall, it kinda sucks.