El Partido de las Piñatas

I’m well aware that Chris “Action” Allen has been putting a fair bit of pressure on me lately in his blog to provide a semi-detailed blog entry on this site about this past weekend so that he wouldn’t have to. I call that just downright lazy, but I think I’m up to the task for blogging for both of us. 😛
Last Friday evening Chris, who drove up from Raleigh to State College for another visit, came out to the G-Man to join us at team trivia. We’re always trying to come up with a solid and creative team name, and sometimes it’s a bit of a struggle, but Jeff thought up an absolute gem: “I Went to the Beirut Zoo, and All I Saw Were Guerillas.” The outcome came down to the final question, where our knowledge of Michael Jackson albums was severely tested. Not exactly the ideal question to bid the max of 15 points on to hang on for the win, but it worked out nicely.
Saturday was the big day of the weekend though, with a Mexican/Spanish-themed piñata party over at Jeff & Vic’s Houserville Resort. Mid-July is apparently a popular birthday time here in the meteorology department, as Amber, David, Caren & Aviva all have birthdays within a six day span. So each of them (plus Margaret) have been working over the past couple-three weeks to make their own piñatas in preparation for the birthday party. But these weren’t your ordinary piñatas; Margaret made a three-balloon “bouquet,” Aviva made a green Mrs. M&M, Caren created “Kirby” of Nintendo fame, David built the Hindenburg (complete with some Nazi symbology), and Amber made a beautiful running ostrich, really showing off her artistic side. It seemed like they all built them almost too well, as it was tough for everyone to bash open their piñatas. So tough, in fact, that it required pitching the piñatas like a softball and using the stick as a bat, except in David’s case, where he did his best King Kong impression and ripped the Hindenburg in two (it’s somewhat unfortunate that he didn’t fill the piñata with red, orange and yellow crèpe paper). But in addition to all the piñatas, we had all sorts of Spanish, Mexican and Cuban music, some sangría and margaritas, and plenty of taco fixins, in addition to festive mariachi band wall decorations, so they really went all-out in the planning of this party, kudos to Amber, David, Caren & Aviva for putting together an amazingly fun party!
After a Sunday afternoon round of frisbee golf with Chris, Amber, Walter, Jeff & Vic, on Sunday evening it was time for another weekly Bible study with Penn State Christian Grads, and this week Kerrie came along to the study to see what it was like (last week Fangxing came with me to the study). Afterward she said she was really impressed with the group, so hopefully she’ll come back again. Fangxing also really likes the PSCG group and will be coming back again this week and after she comes back from her trip home to China, so it seems like we’re developing a strong Meteorology representation at PSCG! Tim & I were also brainstorming this week after the study for ideas for the PSCG men’s group, and I think we definitely came up with a winning idea, “theology pub,” where a few of us get together at a pub and have a chat about big issues over a good dark beer, listening to each other about what we believe on that issue and why we believe it. I think it sounds like a blast!
In softball we finally broke our Monday losing streak — by forfeit, because nobody from the other team showed up. It obviously would’ve been preferable to play a real game and settle our streak on the field, but hey, a win’s a win, and it keeps us in the race for the IM postseason.
Yesterday evening before Kerrie & I had our third CNET on-camera practice session (I managed to get on time and have somewhat more confident/comfortable body language, but I still need work), a group of us went out to Dr Frank’s house in the shadow of Mt Nittany for a BBQ, as Stephanie is house- and pet-sitting while the Franks are gone. That’s a pretty sweet gig if you ask me, they’ve got a beautiful place!
Oh, and I finally have a few Penn State photo albums uploaded on my webpage. I got myself caught up through the end of October, but I doubt I’ll be getting any more done for at least a week. Check them out by going to my Photos page!
You may be wondering why I’m doing a blog entry in the middle of the day. Well, it’s because I really can’t do much of anything while my code is running. So I’m actually doing work, I promise. I’m just being extra-productive (I’m also listening to the Twins-White Sux game currently) while Matlab is cranking away toward giving me the results I need to put on my poster. And it’s definitely getting to be high time that the poster gets finished, we need to get it to Kinko’s either this afternoon or tomorrow morning so that they can get it printed and into my hands on either Friday or Saturday (or Monday morning as a last resort). Walter & I will be leaving for the George Mason University 10th Annual Conference on Atmospheric Transport & Dispersion on Monday afternoon, and the conference itself will go from Aug 1-3. Unfortunately Kerrie, Anke and others won’t be able to go because their grant *still* hasn’t come in, more than a year after the grant was approved by the sponsor. So even though we don’t know much at all about their research, Walter & I will do our best to stand by their posters and answer questions about them, while I simultaneously field questions about mine. Should be an interesting few days.
I’ll leave you for now with a couple of interesting links. The first is about President Bush’s clean air initiatives that have actually been wildly successful in lowering pollutant emissions. Hmmm, I thought we were told by the mainstream media that we were all going to die if Bush got his way on environmental policy… And then I’ve heard a lot of criticism in the past about Bush’s No Child Left Behind policy, but this is one of the best critiques I’ve heard or read. After being a fence-sitter on that issue, I think now I’ve definitely come around to be against NCLB. An amazing archaeological find just happened in Ireland, where a psalm book from AD 800-1000 was found buried in a bog. It’s amazing how long that medieval book survived buried in moist soil for so long. And at least the Aussies have good taste in music. Residents are upset over the police blaring loud Barry Manilow music every weekend to disperse late-night crowds at a suburban Sydney park. I think that idea’s awesome, but I do feel for the residents who are having to put up with it.
Well, I better get back to work, and focusing on listening to the Twins game, at least until my Matlab code gets done running. It sure is a good time to be a Twins fan these days (I’ve been wearing my “TC” hat with pride these days), coming into today the Twins are 33-8 in their last 41 games! We’re currently only ONE game behind the Chicago White Sux (and half a game behind the hated Yankees) in the AL Wild Card race, after trailing Chicago by 11 games earlier this year. There’s already some major positivity happening with the Twins, but if they can keep up their torrid pace, especially this weekend vs the Tigers, the positivity will be at a fever pitch! GO TWINS!!