Jared's One Blog

Time to start clearing out the blogging backlog while I have a chance; more posts coming soon, I promise…
Back in mid-April I took a weekend to go visit Alex in Ann Arbor again. We hadn’t hung out at all since Christmas break, and Alex was due to leave for Colorado for the summer barely a week later, so time was short to fit in a visit. I had hoped to go a couple weekends earlier in the semester too, but they didn’t work out. But fortunately Alex had a weekend where he was going to have a manageable amount of work to do, so I eagerly made the trip on the 16th. It was a really good, enjoyable visit, and we had a great time hanging out.
I got pulled over about five miles after I got on the Ohio Turnpike, though. I was in the left-most of the three lanes, approaching an overpass. There was a cop car sitting off the left shoulder underneath the bridge, as if he had just recently pulled someone over. When I was still about 100-200 feet from the cop, his lights went on, and I knew he was pulling me over for something. I couldn’t figure out why though, because I was going just 72-73 mph (in a 65 mph zone). So I pulled over, and the cop (I think he was a state trooper) asked if I knew I was going 75 mph. I was really surprised, and told him I thought I was going only 72. He said, “If you were going 72 I wouldn’t have bothered you, but you were going 75.” He asked if I’d like to come see the radar gun, so I said sure. He invited me to walk back to his car, and then motioned for me to hop in the passenger seat (after he cleaned some stuff off of it). He showed me the gun, and sure enough, it said 75. While he was running my license and registration, he started talking about how the rain was unbelievable, how it seemed to be following him everywhere he went that day. I mentioned that I’d gone through three bands of rain since PA. I wasn’t sure what else to say. I mean, a cop being chatty while I’m sitting in his passenger seat? It was kind of odd, and I was a bit nervous. Anyway, then he asked me if I had any other speeding tickets. I mentioned that I had only one, back in 2003 in Minnesota. Then he asked me if I had ever been cited for any moving violations in the state of Ohio. I told him no. Then he said he was just going to give me a warning, and that I should slow down a bit and be aware that my speedometer might be a little off. That was close, but I was really grateful that I didn’t get a ticket. It did have the effect of slowing me down a little bit the rest of the time I was in Ohio, that’s for sure! This wasn’t my first close call with speeding in Ohio either; in November the lady right ahead of me, who I’d been tailing for an hour because she was the fastest car on the highway, got pulled over. Ohio cops LOVE to pull people over on the Turnpike, that’s for sure.
So anyway, I made it to Ann Arbor without getting pulled over again, fortunately. Alex & I went out to dinner at The Original Cottage Inn, and got some great pizza. Then after that we watched “Return of the King.” Alex hadn’t seen the LotR movies, so over Christmas break we watched the first two movies, and then completed the trilogy on this visit. It seemed like he enjoyed them, even though they were “long.” 🙂 On Sunday his girlfriend Anne said that while she was glad I got him to watch the movies, she was dismayed that he saw the movies before reading the books, hehe.
On Saturday after we got up we decided to go on a good long run. I’d been working hard on upping my mileage in the weeks leading up to my visit so that I could go on a long run with Alex, and we planned out a route of 6.8 miles. For me it was ambitious, as earlier that week I’d just done my longest run since high school, of 5.8 miles. Alex routinely does 7-10 mile runs, but he hadn’t gone running in 3 weeks because he was so busy. It was a cold, windy morning, too, and for a couple miles in the middle of the run we were going straight into a 25-mph headwind, which totally sapped my energy. As soon as I stopped the first time I knew I was doomed to stop several more times. I was disappointed with myself that I had to stop to walk so many times, especially on a run I’d been working hard toward being able to do, but I was still glad I ran the longest distance I’d ever run. And it was fun to run a completely different route (in a different city) than I usually do. Hopefully next time I go on a run with Alex, it’ll be for a good distance *and* without any stops.
Alex needed to do some homework, so we spent most of the afternoon in his office in the AOSS building on campus, which I hadn’t seen before. I knew a homework party was coming, so I also brought along some work to do, mainly a couple “journicles” to read. We went back downtown for dinner late that evening, to Prickly Pear. It’s a pretty small but popular southwestern restaurant, and the host said it could be a 45-minute wait. Compared to the 2.5-hour wait when we tried to go there last October the night before the PSU-Michigan football game, 45 minutes was not bad at all. They must be used to customers being willing to accept long waits, because they gave us pagers that could range all over downtown. So we took advantage of the freedom to roam and grabbed a beer at Conor O’Neill’s in the meantime. But oh man, Prickly Pear was awesome — the best margarita I’ve ever had, plus excellent mahi mahi fajitas. Mmmmm!! And it was the first time Alex had been there either; I didn’t know this until he told me that night, but he said he deliberately held off going to Prickly Pear until he could go with me, since we tried to go that one time back in October but were turned away by the really long wait. It was a small thing, but I really appreciated that gesture by my best friend. 🙂
On Sunday Alex was playing keyboard with the worship team at his church, so I tagged along and spent the whole morning there — for the rehearsal, and then both services. I might’ve considered leaving after the first service, except I needed to get Alex’s keyboard, which was being used in the service. (Alex graciously agreed to loan me his keyboard for the summer so that I could use it at Mike’s wedding in Green Bay.) Having been on the worship team at my church for 2-3 years with two services, I’m not unaccustomed to spending that much time at a church, hehe. After the service Alex invited a few of his friends over to his place for lunch, so I stuck around for that too.
When I was loading up my car though, I noticed that my rear driver-side tire was low. Really low. So low that a tire pressure sensor wasn’t registering anything. It’s not a comforting feeling to have a tire down around 10 psi right before leaving on a 400-mile drive. Alex & I drove down to a gas station a half mile away that had free air, so we pumped up my tire. I was rather paranoid about it, so I stopped fairly frequently early on just to check on it, but fortunately it didn’t lose any air the whole way back to PA. It still hasn’t lost any more air since then, actually.
So I guess I had an “interesting” drive both on the way to and from Ann Arbor on this visit, but I’m very glad not to have gotten a speeding ticket or a flat tire on the interstate! I think I could do with a little less excitement or stress on my next road trip!

So what have I been up to that led to me blogging only once in all of April? Well, for one thing, I was busy learning some piano music for Dan & Kerrie’s wedding, which was Saturday! They asked me to learn “Canon in D” for the processional, “Wedding March” for the recessional (they wanted to keep it pretty traditional in those respects), and then several other hymns and praise choruses for prelude music. It took a lot of time, mostly “Canon in D.” That had me nervous enough that I’d usually take most any “free time” that I had in the evenings in April to go practice it for an hour or so.
By last week “Canon in D” still wasn’t to the point that I’d hoped it would be (perfection), so I was stressing out about it. I was maybe even stressing out about it so much that it could’ve contributed to me coming down with a sore throat and cold late last week (the cold came on full strength Saturday morning, just in time for the ceremony). I was putting a lot of pressure on myself to play “Canon in D” perfectly, because I knew that Dan had been dreaming for years of hearing that song as his bride came down the aisle, and I didn’t want any mistake of mine to distract people’s attention from Kerrie as she walked down the aisle. Along with that, I figured that if nobody noticed my playing, then I would know that I had done a good job. 🙂
Anyway, part 2 of Dan’s bachelor party was Thursday night at Daryl’s place. It was pretty low-key, we just hung out and chatted, told some embarrassing stories about Dan, then the married guys who were there gave some advice to him about marriage, and then we all prayed for him. It was definitely much lower-key than part 1 of the bachelor party two Saturdays ago, when Daryl and one other groomsman took Dan skydiving! That caused quite a stir, and got Kerrie somewhat upset at Daryl. In fact, Daryl didn’t even show his face to Kerrie from then until the wedding rehearsal on Friday night, hehe.
The rehearsal was on Friday night, and didn’t last very long. Basically just one run-through, and then they changed how some stuff was going to happen (and thus what I’d have to play at the beginning, and for how long), but they didn’t do another run-through to give me and everyone else a chance to make sure we knew exactly how it’d go. Oh well, it was really warm in the chapel anyway, and so everyone was eager to get outside again and get to dinner. That was at the Allen Street Grill, and it was the first time I’d ever been there, even though I’ve lived here for almost five years now. Excellent food. It was a fun to be a part of that and celebrate with the rest of the wedding party. I was definitely getting sicker and could feel the onset of the cold coming that evening, though.
The actual wedding was on Saturday morning at Eisenhower Chapel on campus. It’s pretty small, and only seats about 125. It was quite warm in there even before 10am, it felt like it was over 80 degrees. It just didn’t cool off overnight. I didn’t need to start playing prelude music until 10am (ceremony started at 10:30), but I wanted to get there plenty early to have more time to practice on that particular piano in that space. Because I was rather out of it due to my cold that I’d come down with, I forgot that I’d taken my music up to my apartment the night before, so when I parked on campus, only then did I realize I didn’t have it in my car with me. Fortunately there was plenty of time to drive back to my apartment and get it, but it cost me 20 minutes of practice time, only leaving me with 20 minutes. But hey, it all worked out. The piano playing went just fine, even with a few flubs during “Canon in D.” At least I was able to keep going and didn’t have to go back and restart a phrase or anything. One of the places I messed up was when Kerrie appeared at the back of the church. Tracy (one of the bridesmaids) said it seemed totally natural since everyone had a collective gasp (a good kind of gasp) when they saw her there in her wedding dress, so it seemed like I had the same reaction (even though I couldn’t see her at that point). 🙂 And nobody else claimed to have noticed my mistakes. Go figure, all the attention was on Kerrie. 😉 I think I overestimated the distracting effect that a couple minor mistakes would have in that situation, but in any case, I’m glad it all went well overall. The ceremony was short and sweet, a whole 15-20 minutes or so. In fact, I think it took longer for Dan & Kerrie to dismiss each row individually than it did for the whole rest of the ceremony. Dan & Kerrie wrote their own vows, and instead of the pastor reciting a phrase and them repeating it, they had their vows written on pieces of paper and simply read them to each other. And of course they both shed some tears during that part. Some people said that several people in attendance, and even some kids, started crying too. The wedding went off without a hitch, and now they’re married! [I obviously didn’t get any photos of the ceremony itself, because it would’ve been tacky for me to snap some pictures from my perch at the piano up front. I only had a good view of Dan and the groomsmen from where I was anyway.]
The reception was at the Days Inn downtown. Because of the early wedding, the reception featured brunch food, like crepes, yogurt/granola, eggs/sausage, potatoes, and even an omelette station with two chefs making omelettes made-to-order. I’ve definitely never been at a reception with brunch food before, but I’ve never been to a morning wedding either. There also wasn’t any alcohol apart from the champagne flutes for toasting, so it didn’t turn into a dance party or anything. There was also a live jazz trio instead of a deejay, which I actually enjoyed. Dan studies honeybees (he’s an entomology grad student), and Kerrie loves songbirds, so the reception theme was “the birds and the bees,” with the favors being small jars of honey labeled for their wedding with “Thanks for bee-ing here!” Despite being rather miserable with my cold, I had a great time hanging out with the other meteo people that were invited/could make it: Caren and Shannon & Jerry came down from New York; Chris & Amber drove up from North Carolina; and Jon & Steph flew in from California. Unfortunately Dave & Anke and Daniel & Katie couldn’t make it, but they both have very small children that make traveling difficult, so they had a very valid excuse. Anyway, the reception was all over by 3pm, when Dan & Kerrie had a last dance to James Taylor’s “Mexico” — they chose that song because their honeymoon is in Cancún. With the whole afternoon ahead of me, I went home and laid down to rest a bit — I was exhausted!

It was a great wedding, and I’m really glad I had the opportunity to be a part of it. I’m really happy for Dan & Kerrie, they really are great together. I’m also glad to have a chance to relax a bit and stop worrying about “Canon in D.” 🙂 The next wedding is coming up in under four weeks, but I’m strangely not nervous about that one, even though it’s in Lambeau Field. Maybe the nerves will come when the date approaches (or at least for the rehearsal and/or ceremony itself), but if I learned a lesson here, it’s that I shouldn’t let myself stress out as much as I did. It’s good to strive to do something to the absolute best of one’s ability, but there are certain situations when a couple small mistakes simply won’t be noticed, so it’s not worth it to agonize over them. That can be applied to many areas of life, not just music/piano, that’s for sure.

I don’t normally put much stock in dreams. Maybe that’s because I don’t often remember my dreams. Often the few that I remember turn out to be quite odd, but sometimes they’re at least relatively normal. Often I become aware in the dream that I’m dreaming — which usually means that I’m soon to wake up. I don’t tend to have recurring dreams either, strictly speaking, but occasionally I do have a dreams that appear to be parts of a series or sequence, or definitely related to each other in some fashion. Sometimes those occur in the same night, sometimes they’re spread out over several days. Those multi-part dreams tend to catch my interest more, and I tend to remember them better after I wake up.
Well anyway, last night I had two separate dreams about my passport (which expired back in mid-January). More specifically, the issue of not being able to go somewhere because I hadn’t renewed my passport. In the first dream I was about to book a trip to New Zealand (I think), but then I realized I wouldn’t be able to go because I didn’t have a current passport. I got frustrated, woke up, and then fell back asleep. In the second dream I was at home in Wisconsin, and had gotten everything packed, and was about ready to get a ride to the airport for a flight to Australia. I was taking a walk down by the lake, when all of a sudden it occurred to me that I hadn’t renewed my passport. Suddenly I was incredibly frustrated and disappointed, and decided that my only hope was to go to the airport and hope they let me in with my expired passport. And then I woke up, very aware that I’d just had two dreams about an expired passport thwarting my travel plans.
Is there a moral to the story? I have no idea, other than I should stop dawdling. Whether or not it was a prodding from God (maybe He has something for me to do on a trip to some country in at least 4-6 weeks from now) or just the product of thinking occasionally over the past few weeks that I really should stop putting it off and send in the renewal form, my dreams prompted me to finally take action. Today. So this afternoon I filled out the form, and early this week I’ll make an appointment at the post office to get passport photos taken. I will send everything in this week. I don’t want the lack of a passport to prevent me from going someplace cool, whether it’s someplace far away like Australia for a few weeks or someplace relatively nearby like Toronto for a baseball game or whatever.
Maybe tonight I’ll have dreams about actually being able to go to Australia or someplace. Maybe someday I’ll actually go somewhere again. I’d like that. Especially before I’m done with grad school. So I’d say I have roughly 1.5-2 years in which to fit in a big trip somewhere. Or two! That’d be cool, too. My dream trip right now is to go back to Australia & New Zealand for 3 weeks (or more, if it can be managed), preferably with Alex. I’ve already done the whole traveling alone thing in Aus & NZ, so I’m not all that eager to go by myself again. Hopefully things will work out for us to go, either this summer (now looking not so likely), next summer, or sometime in between. I’m definitely getting tired of saying “maybe next year” though!

There’s nothing quite like a wedding to force a reunion. For a few days late last week it was like old times with so many friends who’d graduated back in town. They’d all returned to State College to celebrate Vic & Lindsay’s wedding.
The fun started with Vic’s bachelor party on Thursday the 18th. Eight of us (Vic, Vic’s friend Joe, Jeff, Robert, Rob, Bob, Walter and me) went over to Clearfield to have dinner at Denny’s Beer Barrel Pub. Why Denny’s? Because they have the world record for the largest hamburger, and while it’s obviously far from a world record, Vic wanted to order a 6-pound burger for all of us to attack. And yes, it was as ridiculously as it sounded, although it would be more accurate to call it a six-pount meat loaf on a bun, with a plate on the side full of condiments. We cut the burger into eight equal 3/4-pound segments, and each of us finished ours except for Vic. That was rather surprising to all of us because in the past Vic has downed a one-pound burger and fries all by himself in just ten minutes. We made sure to give him grief for that.

After dinner we all drove back to Bob’s house in Pine Grove Mills to watch some of the late-evening first round NCAA games, and have a special wedding edition of the Bad American Swill Festival, the fourth one we’ve had. We didn’t have enough of each beer (often just one can or bottle) to do both a warm and cold taste test, so we did just the smell and warm tests. As an indication of the quality of beers in the contest, a previous winner, La Crosse Lager, finished 8th out of 9. There was some truly awful beer. The winner was Clear Creek Ice, in second place was Schlitz, in third place was Steel Reserve, and then Koch’s Golden Anniversary once again finished in fourth place. There was a lot of variance in this BASF compared to previous editions of the BASF. There were two beers that were both ranked best and worst by different people. It was still a fun time, even with the lingering aftertaste/aftersmell of all the bad beers. 🙂

On Friday the 19th the weather was so incredibly gorgeous that a bunch of us took some time off in the afternoon to go play 9 holes of disc golf at Circleville Park. I think we had a nine-some and even a small gallery following us around, haha. While the wedding party was at the rehearsal and rehearsal dinner, I played some tennis with Ben and watched some more NCAA tournament games. Later at night we all met up at Bar Bleu. The really neat thing about that is that there were probably about 30-40 meteorologists at the bar. Quite a few of the younger grad students were out to celebrate Caroline’s birthday, and a bunch of others were out because of Vic, and then a bit later on Lindsay’s bachelorette party bar tour made a stop at Bar Bleu also. It was cool to have so many meteo grad students in one place, from first years all the way up through alums. That was fun, I’m glad I decided to go out.
Vic & Lindsay’s wedding was on Saturday the 20th at 4:30pm at Eisenhower Chapel on campus. The day couldn’t have been nicer, sunny and close to 70 degrees. The weather was far nicer than I’m sure any of us ever imagined it would be when we found out they’d scheduled a wedding for mid-March in State College. I guess Vic & Lindsay just had one heck of a long-range forecast! Anyway, the ceremony itself was nice and pretty small (about 70 people in attendance??). I was also taking some mental notes of the setup since I’ll be playing piano at Eisenhower Chapel one month from now for Dan & Kerrie’s wedding. After the ceremony we all provided a “bubble tunnel” outside for Vic & Lindsay to walk through. Of course several of us had plenty of fun playing around blowing bubbles.

The reception was at Toftrees Resort, with people assigned to tables that had pictures and stories of different locations that were significant to Vic & Lindsay (Grand Forks, ND, Barrow, AK, Grand Rapids, MN, State College, PA, etc.). They also had one-pound burlap bags of Moose Lake wild rice with a mini-recipe book of Vic’s favorite wild rice dishes. Very Minnesotan. 🙂 After the meal and before the dance floor was opened up, Vic & Lindsay presented a fun slideshow about their lives from when they met in Walker Building until their lives now in Minnesota (they now both work for Wind Logics up in Grand Rapids). Then there was lots and lots of dancing (the sappy ballads were kept to a minimum, but even Dr Lamb came out onto the dance floor for one or two songs!). I was even out there dancing about 70-80% of the time, by far the most I’ve ever done that. I was pretty worn out by the end of the night, but I had a blast, and so did everyone else, it seemed. It was fun to see so many people again too, who had come from all over, including Hawai’i, California, Texas, Oklahoma, Illinois, North Carolina, New York, New Jersey, and even Scotland. Like I said, there’s nothing quite like a wedding to force a reunion!

Then on Sunday morning eight of us (Dan, Kerrie, Chris, Amber, Caren, Kent, Walter & I) went out for breakfast at Waffle Shop, always a favorite place. I think I’ve been to Waffle House way more frequently since people started graduating and moving away, because now whenever people come back into town we try to get breakfast there one morning. Then after church I watched some more basketball with Kent over at Walter’s, and then had lunch with Kent & Walter on Monday before Kent flew back to Oklahoma.
It was so much fun to hang out with everyone again all weekend, it was just like old times! I wonder if we’ll ever be able to get such a big group back together again. I sure hope so! Maybe someone else will just have to get married. 🙂

In the past several weeks I’ve become both a published photographer and a published videographer!
First, my published photos appear in the book Design Through Dialogue: A Guide for Clients and Architects by Karen A. Franck and Teresa von Sommaruga Howard. Two of my photos are included (one in its entirety, one cropped), on p. 176 and p. 194 (the last photo in the book):

They are both photos I took while visiting Te Papa Tongarewa (the National Museum of New Zealand) in Wellington, NZ back in December 2004. Back in February 2009 Ms. Howard stumbled upon my photos on my website while doing an image search for Te Papa, and asked if I would be willing to give her permission to print the photos in her upcoming book. I said yes, and asked if she’d send me a free copy of the book when it was published, which she kindly did back in February.
Second, my published video (a 7-second clip of it, anyway) appears at the end of this PSA for Big Ten Conference men’s basketball, called “Magic Number”:

Yep, that video of Talor Battle swishing a game-tying three-pointer at the end of regulation vs George Mason in the 1st round of the 2009 NIT was taken by me. 🙂 Back in November a representative from TeamWorks Media, an ad agency in Chicago, contacted me because they’d stumbled across my video of Talor Battle’s shot vs GMU on YouTube. They asked if they could use a clip from it, but said that a) they couldn’t give me any credit line because they have a policy of not doing that for PSAs, and b) they couldn’t pay me because ESPN owned the rights to all video from that game (and mine was technically not legal, I guess, or at least it wouldn’t be legal for me to profit from it), but would instead make a donation on my behalf to the charity of my choice (Voice of the Martyrs). I didn’t hear anything for the longest time, and was wondering if the PSA ever got made or not. I didn’t see it on TV during the regular season, but then again I watched far less basketball overall this season compared to previous seasons. And then while I was watching the Big Ten men’s basketball tournament a couple weekends ago on CBS, I saw it!
Needless to say, I’ve found it pretty cool to be a published photographer and videographer, as well as a published scientist. 🙂 Maybe this will serve as motivation for me to get more of my photos and videos online someday.