Thesis Defended!

Like I mentioned in my last post, I was pretty laid back about my thesis presentation coming into the weekend, since my dry run went pretty well back on Thursday. Based on what I did this weekend, you wouldn’t even know I had to defend my thesis on Monday morning!
At trivia on Friday night we had a small team (Daniel, Katie, Walter and I) due to all the Houserville guys being down in Atlanta for Robert & Lindsey’s wedding. We did very well through the first four rounds, only a point off perfect, but then the questions were insane in the fifth and sixth rounds (including “What is the name of the professor on ‘The Powerpuff Girls’?” — who the heck knows that?!?), leading to our downfall.
Saturday afternoon I played some tennis again for a couple hours, with Daniel, Katie, Kerrie, Steph & Petters. I’m definitely hitting the ball better than I was last year, for whatever reason. Got a nice light sunburn to boot, which mellowed quickly into a good tan within a day like normal. I think I can usually avoid getting burnt to a crisp as long as I stay out of the Australian summer sun, which definitely is not a problem these days, haha.
Speaking of Australia, after stopping by a party at John’s place for a bit, (South African) Daniel & I went into Bill Pickle’s Tap Room to watch some Aussie rules football! I only discovered earlier that day that they carried the satellite channel (Setanta Sports) that airs Aussie rules here in the States (they also air rugby league, rugby union, Premier League soccer and Champions League soccer), and since my team was being shown live at 11pm, I was totally going. It was the first footy game I’ve been able to watch since the 2004 Grand Final too, so I wasn’t gonna miss it. Even though they didn’t have the sound on, I was able to follow it just fine, and loved every minute of the tense 69-62 victory on the road for the Geelong Cats over the Adelaide Crows. The Cats are now 8-3-0 with a six-match winning streak and are tied for first place with West Coast. And luckily for me, there’s another Cats game being shown live at Bill Pickle’s this coming Saturday night at 11pm, this time a home match vs the Brisbane Lions. You can bet I’ll be there again!
On Sunday after church we had a meteo cookout down at Whipple Dam State Park, just southeast of State College adjacent to Rothrock State Forest. It was a really nice time, and it was wonderful just to be near some water again. I was almost beginning to doubt that there was any water here in central PA, but my faith was reaffirmed. 🙂
I made sure to get into Walker plenty early on Monday morning, though I really don’t know why as I was basically already all prepared, and so wound up just twiddling my thumbs for awhile. But I guess it’s better safe than sorry, right? My defense went pretty well, though. I started out stumbling over a few words on the first couple slides because my mind was thinking faster than my mouth could talk, but eventually I settled into a nice pace, finishing in about 35 minutes. The questions weren’t too bad (except for a question by Stauffer about Walter’s research that I thought was kind of unfair and couldn’t really answer because I didn’t know what he was even asking), and neither was the committee grilling afterward. In fact, for most of the grilling I just kept my mouth shut and listened to Joel and Wyngaard discuss/debate stuff. Fine by me! But they passed me, and that’s all I really cared about at that point. Not that I was really ever worried about not passing, but it’s still really good to have that out of the way. So now I just have some thesis corrections to be working on, and then I should be good to go for getting it bound. But thanks to everyone who came, I really appreciated it!
To celebrate my successful defense I took the afternoon off, then played some softball. This week we hosted Runville United Methodist, and promptly fell behind 16-0 after two and a half innings (a bunch of good hits plus a few errors), before Adam made the second-half team switch an inning early. We got 5 runs on the board right away and really cooled off their offense, but it was still too big of a hole to climb out of, and we were mercied 20-8 after 5 innings. I played in the second half in right field, catching the one ball that came my way, and going 2-for-2 at the plate (two singles, one an infield hit to third and the other a solid knock to short center) with a run scored and an RBI. Next week we pay a visit to Bellefonte First Baptist to watch them put on a home run derby like they usually do (last year they beat us 37-4 in 5 innings!!). Should be fun, hopefully we can keep it a bit closer this time! After the game a few of us went to The Creamery for some ice cream, and then I joined some of my meteo friends at The Darkhorse for a couple celebratory drinks. All in all it was a very enjoyable day.
Hmm, now that I’m done with my thesis defense, what on earth am I gonna do with my evenings? ‘Tis a very good question. 🙂