A ‘New’ New Office

Drat, I’ve caught a cold again. Fortunately this one doesn’t seem too bad, and I’ve already had it for a couple days now after a little bit of a sore throat on Thursday & Friday, so hopefully it’ll go away pretty soon. Thank goodness for Cold-Eeze though, I really think it’s helping. And so did going for a run yesterday (Saturday) morning. In my experience, running or some other form of exercise has almost always helped me either ease or completely get rid of a cold or some other minor illness. So perhaps if I would’ve gotten up the motivation to go for a run Thursday or Friday I’d be in better shape. But as it stands I only ran twice last week, so it only took me two weeks to fall short of my goal of running 3-4 times every week this summer. Oh well, I knew it’d happen at some point. The weather’s gonna be nice this week though, unlike this past week (today we finally got rid of the crappy, cloudy, damp weather!), so I’m rather certain that’ll give me more motivation to get out there for a jog.
Thursday evening Daniel came over here and we watched “Half Baked,” which he’d seen some time ago but I hadn’t seen yet. I’ve been meaning to see it for years on the recommendations of several friends, and I’m glad I finally saw it because it’s pretty funny. Though I still can’t believe that I believed Daniel when he said initially that he had rented “Steel Magnolias.” Tsk, tsk, tsk, I’m so gullible. My high school and Gustavus friends would be glad to see that I haven’t changed in that respect, haha. But rather than thinking of it as “gullbile,” I prefer to think of myself as being “trusting.” Perhaps too trusting. 😉
For lunch on Friday a group of us went out to eat at the India Pavillion, mmmmm, so good… I definitely didn’t need to eat again the whole rest of the day, I totally stuffed myself. I absolutely love their naan bread and “nuclear chicken” (as we call it), it’s so delicious (despite what Frame would argue, don’t listen to him). Then on Friday evening we won 1st place at trivia again at the Sports Cafe, wooo. Our team name was a Helen Keller joke (I can’t claim that I came up with it), but if you really wanna know what it was let me know and I’ll tell ya. I just don’t want all sorts of people getting mad at me and leaving nasty comments on my blog. It’s really not that offensive, but whatever. 🙂 Anyways, afterward several people came over to my place to play the LOTR board game and watch the Mavericks-Spurs basketball game. We tried two games at the hardest difficulty (and failed miserably quite early on both times), but then in the third game we made it a fair ways in at the intermediate difficulty. That’s sure a tough game to win. Most everyone left at 1am, but Bob and Rob C. stuck around till almost 2:30 just chatting. Bob filled me in a lot on what goes on at AccuWeather (he’s a forecaster there), and I’ll likely end up taking him up sometime in the near future on his offer to have me shadow him during one of his shifts at AccuWeather (which is based right here in State College), so that I can get a feel for what it’s like to have weather forecasting be your job. Since that’s a career I’m definitely quite interested in (though definitely not for the money, as it doesn’t really pay all that well), I’m glad to have the opportunity to do this. Now I just need to find some night where I wouldn’t mind pulling an all-nighter, since Bob usually works the overnight shifts…
Last night I went out for some wings at Quaker Steak & Lube with Daniel, Stephanie, Petters & Mario. The name might sound kinda disconcerting for a restaurant, but their wings are quite good. The wings themselves are better than the ones at Sports Cafe, though I still like a couple of the sauces on the Sports Cafe wings more than at Quaker Steak. I hadn’t ever been there before, but I give it a definite thumbs up. Daniel will need to try the atomic wings sometime though; I may try them as well in the future, if I get up the courage to risk having my taste buds seared off.
Today at church and then this evening at PSCG there was a fair bit of focus on the Da Vinci Code, but not really in going through and picking apart the book point-by-point (though one certainly can do that with pretty minimal research). Instead, especially in the Bible study tonight, the discussion was more about the different reactions various kinds of people might have after reading the book or seeing the movie, and why they might have those reactions. One thing is for sure though, as a result of all the hoopla surrounding the Da Vinci Code in our culture these days, I’ve learned a fair bit about the real history of the early Church, in contrast to the distortions/mistruths that are put forth in the Dan Brown novel and the movie.
This week I’ll start doing some real work on research finally. On Friday morning we had a training session on SCIPUFF, so now I have a better picture of some of the stuff I’ll be doing, at least qualitatively. And progress has also been made on the office/computer front. After discussing it with Joel, I won’t be moving to 627 after all, but instead will be moving to 405 either this week or next in all likelihood, which will put me very near all the other students who are involved on this huge project and are also doing things with SCIPUFF (the other students in 627 literally had nothing to do with my project, it was just an open space to put me apaprently). I’ll also be nearer most of the other grad students too (yay!), as most of them are on 4th floor, with only a few being on 6th. And Joel had Dave (who had Karen) order me a computer for work on Saturday, so that might even be here by the end of the week! I’m really feeling quite a bit better about my research now that I know I’m gonna be in an office nearer people doing related research, and that I’ll be getting a computer within a week or so.
So other than that I got around to installing SimCity 4 and Civiliazation III on my computer this weekend, which I toyed around with for a bit yesterday. I didn’t play games this afternoon though, I actually did some real work and finally started updating/redesigning the webpage for Penn State Christian Grads. And also doing a little bit of reading. I have so many books I need to get around to…
At least two new stadiums look like they’re going to be built in the Twin Cities. On Saturday the Minnesota State Legislature approved a plan for a new open-air, on-campus football stadium for the University of Minnesota, and in the wee hours of this morning they approved a plan for a $522 million, 42,000-seat, open-air stadium for the Minnesota Twins in the Warehouse District of Downtown Minneapolis, right behind the Target Center. While I certainly wish the Twins stadium could’ve been built with a smaller (or non-existent) contribution from taxes, I’m very glad to hear that they’re finally building a stadium for the Twins. The Metrodome absolutely sucks for baseball, and I’ll be glad it won’t be the Twins home anymore after the 2009 season.
It’s also interesting to note that 10% of Mexico’s population is living in the United States (illegally), and that despite all of Mexico’s protestations about any planned restrictions on illegal immigration here in the U.S., Mexico has quite severe restrictions on what jobs any non-native-born Mexican can hold. Can you say “hypocrisy”?
Congratulations to Ben & Margaret on getting married today! Fortunately the morning rain was replaced by sunshine in time for the afternoon outdoor ceremony.
Also, for what it’s worth, I’ve finally passed 10,000 unique visits to my web page. Woooo. Though I’m sure Josh will soon leave some sort of mocking comment considering his website probably has had some ridiculous number of visits in basically the same period of time, like 50,000 (I really have no idea since he doesn’t have a very visible counter on his page), and since he just generally likes to mock me whenever presented an opportunity. At any rate, thanks for reading my pointless drivel, I couldn’t have made it this far without all ya’ll. 🙂