3 Days Till Defense

Okay, so working on my thesis and my presentation have caused me to live in a bit more of a hole recently than I anticipated. But I have still managed to get out and do some things not thesis-related, believe it or not. Here’s a recap:
Commencement for M.S. and Ph.D. graduates was on May 20th. Daniel’s parents flew up from Alabama for it, so I made sure to find where they and Katie were sitting. There were quite a few meteo grads getting their M.S. degrees – Daniel, Jon, Addison, Margaret, Ben, Kerrie, Amy, Amber, Vic, Zack & Zach. Levenia’s sister LaMonique was also there to accept the M.S. degree which was posthumously awarded to Levenia. Only one meteo grad got his Ph.D., Song-Lak. A few PSCGers also graduated, including Steve (M.A., but wasn’t there), Anna & Pei-Hsuan (Ph.D.s). Overall it was a nice, relatively quick ceremony (especially for over 500 Master’s and almost 200 Ph.D.s being conferred). For the most part people were respectful and didn’t shout or sound their noisemakers, though there were a few during the Ph.D. portion. I really thought that was a bit classless, especially since this is a graduation for a professional degree. I know you’re proud parents and friends, but interrupting the name-reader with noisemakers during a graduate-degree commencement is bit ridiculous. This isn’t high school or undergrad commencement! Treat it with some level of respect, please.
We’ve had two more church softball games, both of which were losses. A week before Memorial Day we hosted Faith Baptist and wound up losing 19-6. I played the first half in left field and was 2-for-2 with singles to center and the first baseman (I beat him in a race to the bag, woohoo!). But there’s a reason why we lost the way we did. You see, we had to modify a ground rule at our home field. It used to be that if a batted ball struck the houses well past the left field fence on the fly or the first bounce, the batter was out and the runners could not advance. Well, after having three balls hit the house the week before, resulting in an upset home-owner (but seriously, what do you expect when you buy a house next to a softball diamond??), we decided to change the rules. Now if a batter hits a ball that makes contact with the house at any point — even if it gently rolls down the hill and taps the house — the half-inning is forfeited, including any runs that may have scored in that inning prior to the home run. Well, Ben hit a home run in the bottom of the 5th to pull us to within single digits (and hence prevent the mercy rule), but the ball did roll down the hill and came to rest in contact with the house, meaning the inning was over (and therefore the game, since our runs in that frame were forfeited, leaving us behind by 10 or more after 5 innings). Who would’ve ever thought that rule would hurt us?!? Ben said it was his first-ever walk-off home run, and it’s probably one of the few home runs in baseball/softball history that resulted in a loss! Then this Monday we had our first road game of the season, at Calvary Bible Church in Bellefonte. After sitting out a passing shower, we were able to get the game underway. I played the first half again, this time in right-center with a bit of an unnecessarily circus-like catch in the field, paired with going 1-for-2 batting (infield squib hit and fly out to left) with a run scored. We were only trailing 8-5 at the halfway mark, but then their home run hitters poured it on, and they wound up winning 19-7 after five. Now our record stands at 1-3, oh well.
On May 27th, the day before Memorial Day, we had the third semi-annual Bad American Swill Festival up at Jeff, Vic & Bob’s house in Houserville. (For those of you who don’t recall, the BASF is a bad-beer smell/taste-test, where everyone brings the worst beer they can find. The goal is to crown the worst of the worst beers in the land. Why do we do this to ourselves? I really don’t know.) I made sure to bring back the defending champion from BASF2 — the one and only La Crosse Lager, which tastes just like the aluminum can it comes in, and has a smell to rival the taste. I was pretty confident it could repeat as BASF champ coming in, though I did see that it had some stiff competition this time around. Not that the beer for BASF2 was any treat, but I think the overall quality of the beer this time around for BASF3 was even worse. After the single-blind smell test (15%), cold taste test (65%) and warm taste test (20%) were completed with the ten “contestants,” with each person ranking the beers in each category from 1-10 (using each number once, no ties), the final standings were announced — and La Crosse Lager finished a shocking 5th, a big uspet. This year’s medal winners were Koch’s Golden Anniversary (second straight bronze), Gennessee Light (silver) and Big City Lager (gold) (scores might be posted in a comment once I get a copy of them). Big City Brew is actually made by the same brewery that makes La Crosse Lager, and Walter & Frame picked it up the day before down in Harrisburg, for something like 8 bucks for a 30-pack, haha. Man alive those beers were awful! I have to regroup though, and figure out what to get for BASF4, which will be held around Labor Day. La Crosse Lager is still a possibility since it finished in the top half, but if I could find one that’s worst that’d be great. Any suggestions from my reading public? It’d preferably be something I could purchase in Minnesota, Wisconsin or Pennsylvania.
2007 student season tickets for Penn State football went on sale this morning (Thursday) promptly at 9:00am. Last year I missed on getting tickets by a few hours (they sold out in a record 13 days, and I called on the 14th day), and with this year’s sale being online for the first time ever, I wanted to make sure I wouldn’t miss out, so I stuck around at home until I got my tickets. I logged in and submitted my ticket request on Ticketmaster probably 10-15 seconds after the sale opened, but the queue was apparently already so long that it took 20 minutes or so before my request was able to be processed. Fortunately, the order finally went through and I was able to secure my season ticket. Many people weren’t as lucky though, as all 21,500 student season tickets sold out in a mere 59 minutes. (I think that figure’s exaggerated though, since Jim tried submitting a ticket request at 9:25am and was turned away because the online queue had already been closed; the tickets had really sold out in fewer than 25 minutes, for all practical purposes.) I have several friends that got tickets (Jon, Steph, Walter, Andrew, Jeff, Meaghan, John, Ruth, Kristin, Elisa), and several that also didn’t manage to get tickets (including Vic, Lindsay, Adam, Isaac, Daniel) for various reasons, mostly because they didn’t expect them to sell out in less than an hour. I’m just glad I’ll be able to go to the Notre Dame and Ohio State games under the lights, and to the homecoming game vs Wisconsin. Those are the three I’m most looking forward to, although Iowa and Purdue aren’t bad either. As for the inevitable sacrificial lambs Buffalo and Florida International? Meh. It should be a fantastic 2007 season for the Nittany Lions though, and a great time to be in the best and loudest student section in the country! WE ARE… PENN STATE!!
I have a few more minor changes to make to my power point slides for my thesis presentation, but I’m basically all done with preparation. I just need to do another dry run or two and I should be all good. I’ll be so glad once Monday afternoon comes and I can finally relax…
Check out the size of this wild hog that an 11-year old boy shot in Alabama! That’d sure be tough to barbeque!