Update

It's been forever since the last post -- let me give an update and offer a partial justification. I'll also look ahead to the coming few days.

First, on Mon. 22 Jan, my Gateway laptop died on me. After ordering a new one from Dell, it finally arrived Tue. 30 Jan. While I tried to make the most of a tech-free week, ultimately I realized just how dependent I am on this device for school, work, and even play. I was able to post an entry on Jan 24th, but was basically offline for 9 days.

Second, on Wed 31 Jan (just a few hours after my Dell arrived), my OSLEP course on global warming began. It is an entire semester class offered in 5 days, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily. Tomorrow (Sun 04 Feb) it ends, and I will be glad. The course has been great for many reasons: excellent content & timeliness (IPCC 4th assessment was released on Friday 02 Feb); great opportunities to befriend people from many different backgrounds (meteo, geog, env sci, art, journalism,poli sci, etc.) as well as several different countries (US, England, Australia, and Canada); and a favorable time structure both to facilitate in-course discussions and also to start & finish the requirements for a 3 credit hour class in only 5 days. (Not entirely true: we had a pre-course set of readings, including "An Inconvenient Truth", and will have a post-course group paper due at the end of the month).

Third, I have just plain been busy! Not a real excuse, but valid none-the-less for me. Many of the blogs I read regularly have posted about this in some form or another: what do you post about when nothing really is going on, and you don't have anything really significant to pontificate about? Effectively, you just turn to silence instead of rambling on about something meaningless.

A few things I'm looking forward to about this week:

1- being done with the OSLEP course. see above-- the course has been great --but I get home each night exhausted.
2- start of regular weather briefings. I want to remember what it's like to critically review forecast models & make decisions about temps, rainfall, and (probably later in the semester) severe convective possibilities
3- continued connections with friends, and meeting new ones
4- superbowl party with wildwood folks. should be great, and i love preparing foods to serve the group.
5- wednesday chats with ryan (my kraettli roommate) and thursday chats with trey. also thursday night bible study. this semester we're hitting up the sermon on the mount. regardless where you are spiritually, the sermon on the mount contains some of jesus's most-quoted sayings, and I believe it reveals a great deal of how God views sin and our behavior.
6- frisbee on friday. this friday i missed out (mostly due to OSLEP, but it was bitter cold too). have i mentioned before that frisbee is perhaps the best sport known to man?
7- zach barnes. we need to catch up. you get a line in my top-13. hope all is well in cz-land.
8- finding my mailbox key. i lost it last night at 2.30 a.m. when i went to the post box to get the package my mom had sent. seriously, we didnt get home from the OU groundhog's day party till very late (> 2.00 a.m.), and i somehow dropped the key (not on a ring b/c we were going to get it copied, thus up to this point, we left it taped it to the wall). it's somewhere on the ground between my apartment door and the mailbox (about 100 feet). small, brown object: shouldn't be too hard to find, considering the ground is only full of millions of other small brown objects. there was a funny sight last night at 2.30 though -- as i grabbed my flashlight and spent ~15 mins scouring the ground for the key. wonder what the neighbors thought?!!
9- warmer weather & no snow. it's been cold now for about a week. ugh.
10- finalizing my plans for spring break.
11- going back to NC on 24 feb to see my family!! should be a great fun time! plus my friend jason douglas is getting married in durham on that saturday (24 feb) and i'm eager to reconnect with him and any mutual UNC friends who can come to the wedding. it's been 3 years since i went back and saw them (spring 2004, their senior years).
12- SoM's visiting student weekend, 22 feb - 25 feb. whoop! always a great weekend of good fun and visits. chance to meet new people ... could I ask for more?
13- finishing up my bedroom organization. way too many things + small closet space = tight quarters. many wall hangings + no time = amazingly cluttered bedroom, a problem i hope to rectify soon. perhaps next weekend?

So - that's a brief summary of the past 10 days. my apologies for interspersing capitals and non-capitals; does anyone else struggle with that? is it even a problem? just curious.