The Last Year of the Naughts

Happy New Year, everybody! I hope you all had fun and safe celebrations out there. For my New Year’s Eve I drove down to White Bear Lake to spend the evening with my good friend Scott from high school and his wife Katie. It was a fairly low-key but fun evening, as a couple of Scott & Katie’s friends and Alex also came over (Alex’s family lives a mere 3 miles away from Scott & Katie, so it was a quick trip to go pick him up!). We played several games, enjoying some beer and a couple big bottles of champagne, before watching the ball drop in Times Square. It was way more fun than I had last year for New Year’s Eve, when I was already back in State College and studying for the PhD Candidacy Exam, that’s for sure!
Alex & I stayed overnight at Scott & Katie’s, and after dropping Alex off at his place on New Year’s morning, I drove back up to Cumberland to watch the Rose Bowl at my parents’ place in sparkling HD. The game started out promisingly, with Penn State and Southern Cal tied at 7-7 after the 1st quarter. The 2nd quarter proved disastrous for the Nittany Lions though, as the Trojans outscored PSU 24-0, taking advantage of a number of befuddling mental errors and defensive breakdowns by Penn State. With a 31-7 halftime lead for USC, the game was basically over. At that point I was just hoping for Penn State not to mail it in, and actually come back and make the score a bit more respectable. And sure enough, they did, making the final score 38-24. There were even a couple glimmers of hope in the 4th that PSU could make it a one-score game and give themselves a chance to recover an onsides kick and make the game really interesting again, but it just wasn’t the Lions’ day. I wasn’t surprised that USC won the game, because they’re a very good team, but I was quite disappointed with how poorly Penn State played in the 2nd quarter, and how poorly our defensive secondary played all game long. Sigh. Oh well, it was still a fun season. After the Rose Bowl ended, I drove over to Nathan & Laura’s to play a game of Settlers of Catan: Cities & Knights. I had originally planned to go over there a couple nights earlier, but the snowstorm we had that day made me decide not to go anywhere on the roads. I’m really glad it worked out for me to make it over there for at least one game night!
With the end of break upon us, on Friday I packed up all my things, loaded up my car, and drove down to the Twin Cities to pick up Alex. It was a great drive down to Valpo, with perfect road conditions and no precip (and a working heater!), and especially because of being able to share the drive with such a good friend. 🙂 We stopped to visit one of Alex’s friends south of Rockford for a couple hours, and it was a bit after midnight before we rolled into Valparaiso. And then we stayed up till 4am jamming out in his dorm room (me on keyboard, Alex on electric guitar), since there wasn’t anyone else in the whole building to be disturbed. Lots of fun, and hopefully just one of many more jam sessions to come!
After grabbing some breakfast with Alex at Steak ‘n Shake (I wish we had those in PA!), I hit the road around noon Central, and got to State College before 9:30pm Eastern. That’s the fastest I’ve ever done that leg of the trip, that’s for sure, and largely because I only made two stops the whole way before State College (normally I might make more like four stops). I just wanted to get back, so was definitely pushing to make good time. The weather and roads were great again too, but I’d definitely have to say that Friday’s drive with Alex was tons more fun and less tiring than Saturday’s solo drive!
Penn State wasn’t my only football team to lose a postseason game, though. I went over to Ben’s on Sunday afternoon to watch the playoff game between the Vikings and Eagles. The first half was pretty competitive, with the Eagles taking a 16-14 lead. But then the Vikings offense went completely M.I.A., as the Eagles eased to a 26-14 win. Am I surprised the Vikings lost? Nope. They always find a way to choke eventually. Boy, do we ever need a starting quarterback… It was fun to watch the game with Ben though. I even got to try one of his Uncle Oinker’s Bacon Mints. Let’s just say the taste was… well… unique. Just try to imagine the flavors of bacon and mint all rolled into one. I never knew it could be done. It was certainly higher-quality than the Vikings second-half offense!
Yesterday and today I’ve put in a lot of work getting ready for next week’s AMS Annual Meeting in Phoenix. The primary thing I’ve been working on is writing a short manuscript to accompany my oral presentation. The manuscript is due tomorrow, and today I completed a draft of it, woot! And I have a draft of my power point presentation already done, too! I’d call that a couple productive days at the office (and evening at home)!
Only three days until I leave for Phoenix!! I can hardly wait!