Some Like It Hot....

.... but I sure as hell am not one of them! I'm so completely sick of the heat and humidity here. It's been over a week now that it's been so hot. I thought there was supposed to be some relief tonight, but apparently not. Or at least not in the form of thunderstorms. The State College effect occurs once again. They've completely crapped out before they got here. Not that I'm entirely surprised. I've heard that relief is on the way for the weekend, but I'm not entirely sure I believe that, even though I study meteorology. I'll believe it when I see it.

Things aren't going too badly here other than not being able to cool off my room enough to sleep well at night. (Sounds familiar to those of you that read this fairly often.) I'm running way behind on sleep, which is not good since I have a presentation to give on Thursday for my group meeting. I'm just hoping that I can catch up in the next couple nights.

So far, I'm pretty sure this presentation isn't going to be one of my finest. I don't exactly have a lot of stuff done to present, but I'll present what stuff I can. I'm still not even sure where I want to go with this research. I'm just getting my feet wet, which is kind of sad, because I've been working with Ray for two semesters now. Unfortunately, the first one of those I had turbulence, which took up a good chunk of time, and the second I was a TA, which took up an even larger chunk. But, I have the whole summer ahead of me with nothing to distract me from my research except for my own lack of motivation. Luckily, that hasn't struck yet; presentations are great motivators.

Speaking of being a TA, sort of, I just looked at the evaluations that Dr. Shirer got for the semester, and overall I'd say the students thought I did a good job, even though many of them criticized my grading. Some thought I was too harsh, but some of those people did grudgingly accept the fact that they learned something from my harsh grading. I know I can be picky, but I wasn't overly bad. Plus, I was a math major and am very adament about using the correct notation. On average, though, I believe that students were averaging mid-to high B's on their problem sets, which is pretty good for a dynamics class. A lot of them commented on how available I was, not that I had anything to do with that. Students would just show up no matter when and I couldn't exactly turn them away. So, I was stuck. But it was a good class. I'm happy with them.

Completely switching tracks, last weekend was pretty fun. A fellow meteo grad and his fiancee held a grill-out. A surprising number of people showed up. It was really fun to just kick back with some fellow meteo grads and relax, eat good food, watch storms roll through, and just have conversations about general things. It was just a great time. I didn't realize how much fun hanging out with some of my fellow students could be. I may have to do that more often.

This next weekend is looking to be pretty good as well. Hopefully my group meeting will actually still be on Thursday, because my advisor is out of town on Friday. Because of that, I'm taking the day off to look at apartments in the area. Hopefully I'll be able to find something I like. It would really help to know for certain how I did on my candidacy exam, but I'm still sticking around next semester at least, no matter what.

Then on Saturday, one of my officemate's husband or boyfriend or something to that effect is having an art exhibit that I'll probably go to. I'm always up for something a bit cultural. So, we'll see what happens.

One other new thing. I've been playing online poker tournaments (for play money) recently, to keep myself sharp for the meteo poker nights. I've found it to be quite fun. Plus, out of the five I've played, I've won twice! Granted, I've been getting rather lucky with catching cards when I need them. It's been great though, not quite the same as playing in real life, but still fun.

Well, I suppose I should get going. I need to try to get some sleep tonight. Hopefully I get more than I've gotten that past couple. If not, I'll just have to load up on caffeine tomorrow. Night!