Can You Hear Me Now? Good.

I got back to State College a week ago from Thanksgiving break, but in less than two weeks I’ll be leaving again for Christmas break! I’m definitely looking forward to that, and it’ll be here before I know it.
I had a good end to Thanksgiving break a week ago. Last Friday afternoon Alex drove up to Cumberland to pick me up and drive me back down to Mahtomedi, to have dinner with his family. After dinner Alex & I played “Scat” (also known as “31,” a card game we’d learned from David D. this summer out here) with his younger brothers Patrick and Nicholas, and then following the conclusion of that game Alex & I met up with some of Alex’s good high school friends to play some “Cranium.” It was definitely fun to get to meet his family and friends! I’m glad that Alex had to leave early for Thanksgiving break, causing me to change my plans and fly instead, because we wouldn’t have been able to hang out as much as we did, or get to know each other’s families a little bit. It all worked out great! 🙂
Alex dropped me off at the Minneapolis-Saint Paul airport at 4:45am Saturday morning so that I could catch my 6am flight (now we’ve each given each other rides to the airport for 6am flights, ha). Thing is, even though we made sure I got to the airport in what should have been plenty of time, I still almost missed my flight. First, United Airlines didn’t have a separate check-in line for those not checking any luggage, so everyone had to go through the same line. Second, the line was crawling at such a pace that there must’ve been a whole bunch of people who had no idea how to use the check-in kiosks. Seriously, it took me nearly 45 minutes just to get through the check-in line. After waiting through the security line for awhile, I was allowed to jump ahead to the front, and then even with that, I still almost missed the flight to IAD — I was just about the last person to board, but at least I made it. And then I nearly missed my flight from PHL to SCE too. I made sure to get to the gate a half hour before the departure time, and while I was reading my book, never heard a call for the State College flight (I heard calls for plenty of other flights though). So then I went up to the gate agent 15 minutes before departure and asked if they were boarding the State College flight yet, to which he responded, “no, not yet.” So I went back and sat down, and just two minutes later I was paged by name to go to the gate (the first time I’ve ever had that happen to me). It turns out that I was the last person they were waiting for, because as soon as I boarded the plane and sat down, they closed the door. I just found it curious that they said they hadn’t started boarding yet, when everyone but me had already boarded. Oh well.
I’ve been annoyed by how finnicky my cell phone has been to charge for several months now. It often took a bit of fiddling to get the cord put in the phone just right so that it’d charge, and to be able to set it down and still have it charge. It was a process. Anyway, because of how annoying that was, and because my phone was over three and a half years old (and the first cell phone I ever owned in America as well, incidentally), I finally got motivated enough to drag my butt to the store to get a new phone. I did my research on the internet on Monday night, picked out a phone and decided to make the switch from AT&T to Verizon (most of my friends now are on Verizon, so unlimited calls and texts to/from them will go a long way!). Then on Tuesday night I went down to the Verizon store, picked out the phone I wanted (the Motorola VU204), but had to run home to get my most recent Penn State pay stub. It turns out that there’s a Penn State employee discount with Verizon, which was enough to get me the phone for free (instead of $70 with a 2-yr contract), and 18% off my monthly bill, woot! I also bought a car charger and a bluetooth headset, so I’ll be all set on the long car drives I take every so often (like in just over a week and a half!). Hooray for discounts and new toys! Oh, and I still have my same number, I was able to have it ported over from AT&T to Verizon.
On Friday evening this week, Ash & Heather took all of us on the PSCG Leadership Team (me, Tracy, Ashley G., Brendaly, Chad & Rachel) out to dinner to celebrate the semester. We initially decided to go to La Bella Trattoria up in Bellefonte, but found out a couple days earlier that it had closed, unfortunately. So instead we went to High Street Pub, also in Bellefonte. I hadn’t ever heard of the place before, but it was awesome! I might have to explore Victorian Bellefonte a bit more, to see what other hidden gems (well, hidden to me) that cool town holds! And then after dinner Ash & I went to see the new James Bond movie, “Quantum of Solace.” It’s always fun when environmentalists are the villains, haha. I know some people don’t really like Daniel Craig as James Bond, but I’ve really liked the two Bond movies he’s been in so far (way better than any of the four Pierce Brosnan films, for sure). One thing I’ve noticed and appreciated about the two Daniel Craig films is that the sex scenes and Bond’s notorious womanizing have been very much reduced and de-emphasized, compared to the other Bond films I remember. In my opinion anyway, it makes the movies better, and really works with the character development. I’d say it’s definitely worth seeing “Quantum of Solace” in the theater. Just be sure you don’t miss the very very beginning, or else you’ll miss a sweet car chase!
And if you look closely in the picture above, you might notice that yes, my goatee is back, after a four-year absence. I just felt like growing one again. 🙂 I don’t think I’ll keep this one for over a year and a half like I did my previous one, though. We’ll see.
This is going to be a very busy week coming up, getting ready for next week’s IPR (interim/annual project review for our sponsors from DTRA). Yep, it’s that time of year again. At least this year I don’t have a final exam to worry about during the IPR! I have a 20-minute presentation to get ready for next Tuesday, but need to have a pretty good draft put together by Wednesday this week. There’ll be some of the same material as was in my CBD conference talk in New Orleans a couple weeks ago, but DTRA of course doesn’t want to see the same talk again. So even though there’s not much time between presentations, we’ll see what new stuff I can put in there for the IPR. Thankfully I’ll be able to pull material entirely from my CBD and IPR talks for my 12-minute talk at the AMS conference in Phoenix in January, since it’ll be a completely new audience!
Time to get ready for Bible study, since I’m leading one of the small groups tonight. And prayers for Alex, as he’s taking the GRE tomorrow!! It’ll be one step closer to Alex hopefully being admitted to Penn State for next year!