Take me out to the ballgame!

Hi all... hello from Happy Valley... the first entry of it's kind!

Believe it or not, I've been back in PA for almost a month now and I'm finally starting to get into the swing of things. (yay!) So far, the semester has me busy with my final classes before I take my comprehensive exams in the Spring and teaching a two-course load (although it's the same course!) full to the brim with 30 students in each class. The most awesome thing is that I have this one student who I had in 202 and he's making the class a hoot with his requests for "special treatment". Sorry about ya, but in my book... everyone's equal! (I'm sure he's sad to hear this).

Anyways, this past weekend I was in Vienna, VA for the Washington Nationals vs. the Atlanta Braves baseball game at RFK stadium. Julie, Bonny, Ben and myself all headed out early on a Saturday morning to start off at the Eastern Market (great great great!) and then on to the stadium for the game via the oh-so-wonderful Metro from Vienna.

Eastern Market (which I have no pics of for this adventure) was this really cool gathering of flea market bargains and also a section full of fresh fruit and veggies and an indoor section where you could get meats and cheeses. This place would be the best place to go if you were wanting to host a dinner party and have the freshest foods you could possibly get. This place was truly a site and Jules and I agreed that we would need to go back and just spend the day there wandering around.

But that's not even the best part! WHAT ABOUT THE GAME?!?!?! Well, the game was so much fun and it had to be the shortestone that's ever taken place. I dont' know if it's because the Braves are really that good (AND THEY ARE) or the Nationals were just playing good defense... but those innings seemed to roll by pretty quickly! I managed to get a pennant out of the deal and yay for the hot dog guy who sold cheap beer. I mean, what is a baseball game without BEER? (lol)

We had a lot of fun and cheered for the Braves when everyone else in our section was pulling for the Nats. Chipper Jones got it done though and the Braves won 4-0. Woo hoo! After that, it was off to Mister Days to catch the Georgia Tech (which to Julie is the ONLY REAL Tech there is... I BEG TO DIFFER!) vs. North Carolina game, which GT won. All in all, I would say it was a good day for Atlanta sports. Not to say that it wasn't a good day for TEXAS TECH too... THEY WON.. GO RED RAIDERS!

Oh yeah, and did I mention that Penn State managed to win their football game as well? God must have been smiling on the Nittany Lions that day! (lol) If you'd seen their record lately, you'd know what I'm talking about.

Well... that's it for now, it's back to the exciting world of Statistical Equation Modeling and the monster that is LISREL. Happy! Happy! Joy! Joy! (not!!!!)