The Stars That Usher Evening Rose

I figured I should probably post about Thanksgiving break. I left here Tuesday at 3:30pm and what should have been just over a two hour drive turned into a four hour drive thanks to rain and traffic. That Wednesday was my relax and do absolutely nothing because its break day. All I remember from Wednesday is going to my sister's neighbors house and playing Taboo for a few hours. On Thursday I got up and Cathy and Jacqueline (William was at his dad's place in Atlanta) were watching the parade. They were watching it on CBS and thier coverage was terrible. So finally with only about an hour left of the parade I told Cathy to check NBC (station we normally watch the parade on which she wasn't this year because she thought only CBS was showing it this year) and when she did there was the parade. Cathy was upset because that meant she had wasted most of the parade watching CBS's coverage instead of NBC. About an hour and half after the parade we had our Thanksgiving Dinner or Thanksgiving Lunch as I called it since we were eating at 1:30pm. Surprisingly she didn't ruin the dinner which was something all of us were half expecting. We had a turkey, rolls, candied yams, Waldorf salad, stuffing, green beans, cranberry sauce and one other thing that I am forgetting. The rest of Thanksgiving Day was fairly uneventful. Friday Cathy , Jacqueline and I went and picked out a Christmas tree. That night Tim wanted me to meet him and some of his friends down town at a bar but I wasn't able to go so he invited me over for Saturday. So on Saturday I pretty much relaxed watching the FSU-UF game and then around 6:45pm I headed for Tim's place. I got there a little before 7:30pm and finished watching Nacho Libre with them. From there we made a beer run and came back and set things up waiting for other people to get here. Over this time I drank two beers, normal beers too (Bud Lights) which anyone who knows me knows I don't like those kinds of beers. But I hadn't had anything in a little while so I drank them anyway. At that point still no one had come so me, Tim and his friend Brian went outside and put Christmas lights on three of his trees outside. By this time it was almost 9:30pm and Tim and Brian were getting impatient so we went into the garage where they had a beer pong table set up and I watched them play beer pong while waiting on the others. Brain, I guess was bothered by me just sitting there watching them, went over to the cooler and got me a third beer. I drank it but towards the end I was forcing it down as I had finally lost complete taste for it. No, I didn't play beer pong for two reasons, one I had to drive home and two because I knew I couldn't have forced down another beer if I tried and that's all they had. By 10pm other people finally started arriving and so they started playing 10 cup team beer pong. I must say not many of them were very good at the game. From then on (at least until I left) people kept arriving. For the rest of the night I just watched them play beer pong and talked with a couple of the other people there most of whom I didn't know. Finally around 1:00am I decided I better get going since I had to leave for school the next day. Overall I had a good time, it would have been better if there had been better stuff to drink than regular beer and I wouldn't have minded being able to try and kick their ass at beer pong. Oh well though, there is always next time.

I arrived back on Campus Sunday just in time to make it to work. Then Monday marked the start of the final week of classes. Its been a somewhat hectic week for me this week as I have had to do a take home synoptic test and I also have a presentation to do in Thermo tomorrow. Then its time for Exams, which will probably suck but at least its the end of the semester. Only one more left.

The Asheville snow curse continues. At this point its become predictable. Yesterday and last night they were calling for snow and even this morning when I got up they were calling for 1 to 2 inches of snow here. But as usually we got a big whole nothing. I saw a couple of flurries this morning but that was about it. I think we actually had even more in the way of snow flurries back at the end of October than we did today. Every time it supposed to snow here we either get nothing or well below what is predicted. There are factors that play into this of course but you think that National Weather Service would have caught on by now. With my self soon to be a Meteorologist I understand why they always forecast the snow as they would rather be wrong in forecasting to much snow than be wrong by forecasting to little snow. But in doing so you get tons of peoples hopes up that end up just getting dashed. Though for once I was actually hoping it wouldn't snow as I have leave here tomorrow for Thanksgiving and didn't want to have to deal with any possibility of road troubles. So I can't really complain to much but I know there have been some bummed people wondering around campus today. I have even talked to one guy who skipped his classes today in protest of the no snow.

As I said there are factors that play into this occurrence. The case with the past storm is that the moisture just wasn't there like they thought it was going to be. Being located in the mountains causes issues too. Some of the more common ones are that the mountains block the moisture from getting in here and in some cases the mountains will actually divert the precip around us instead of over us. Asheville being in a valley and therefore at a lower elevation than other places near by means we tend to run a little warmer so there are several occasions were the rain doesn't change to snow as quickly as predicted. There are other factors as well but those would probably just confuse most people so I wont mention them. Unfortunately for us snow lovers this will probably always be an issue. We will just have to sit back and wait for the perfect storm to come along. Who knows maybe it will come this year. I hope so anyway.

As for me I am heading to Charlotte for Thanksgiving. My parents are going to be in PA so this year it will just be me and my sisters celebrating Thanksgiving. William is going to his dad's place for Thanksgiving so he won't be there either. After break I only have two weeks of school left before I am finish. The semester went by fast though I can't complain I am ready for Winter Break. Then begins my final semester of college and it's about time.

Last weekend I went to my sisters. Got to see my nephew's basketball practice as he has started playing basketball. He needs some work as he is not the most graceful person on the court but he does have some potential. On Sunday night I had planned to go to Scott's(a friend of mine) band's concert. The show was to start at 7pm so William and I left the House around 6:45pm thinking we knew exactly where to go. We quickly get to the place we thought the show was at and realize it is just a bunch of old people there listening to some speaker. So we knew that it wasn't the right place. From there we left and started driving down the road we though it was on and couldn't find it. So finally we called Cathy and she gave us directions which we followed but got us no where. I then decided to stop and ask for directions and the people working the gas station had never even heard of the road I was looking for. So I decided to go back to the House and look it up myself. Finally understanding where the road I was looking for was we headed back out the door. We reached the road and drove down it about 7-8 miles and still could not find the place. So I stopped for directions again and they seemed like they knew where this place was and sent me back in the direction I had just come from. So I drove about 10 miles in that direction still not being able to find the place so finally I called Cathy back and asked for the places address. With the address we were finally able to find the place after over an hour and half of searching (it was 8:30pm). As soon as we pull in William made the comment "People are pulling out". Hoping this was just coincidence, but knowing otherwise, we still parked and walked up to the counter out front and asked the guy working there if the show was over. He said it was and I explained that I knew one of the band members and he let us in since the band members were still there packing up. So after waiting for them to finish packing, Scott walked over to us and apologized for putting the wrong address on their myspace page. He also said they had started at 6pm so even if we had found it right away we wouldn't have seen the whole show. He said that they were setting up another show in December at either Avondale or Tremont(which I have since found out it will be held here). So other than getting to talk to him for a few minutes hour and a half search for the place was basically pointless.

School continues to just flow along and a fairly quick pace. Just signed up for classes for next semester. Weird to think that it was the last time I will sign up for classes. Thanksgiving break is coming up in two weeks and I will be going to Charlotte and having Thanksgiving with my sisters since my parents are going to be in Pennsylvania. Then about two weeks after that the semester is over.

The elections are now over and the democrats have taken over power of the House for the first time in 12 years and it seems they are going to gain power in the Senate as well. Though this is definitely not good news for Bush it does seem from what I am hearing this will actually help him push through his immigration reform of which I am not a big fan of. But, oh well. Also today they announced that Donald Rumsfeld had resigned and was to be replaced by Robert Gates. I doubt many people minded hearing that news, including myself. It will be interesting to see how this all plays out over the next two years.