Given the performance of our football team, I was a bit surprised today to see a large number of people on-campus for tomorrow's game. In a gesture of solidarity with the team, many of the students wore this year's "shirt" today. It was nice to see. Apparently the student government has asked them to do so for each home game. Plus, at the pep rally this evening, over 13,000 were in attendance...and I doubt they all showed up to see Regis.
This week my niece had the fun task of deciding what instrument to play. She opted for the clarinet like Aunt Sue. First it was a love of primates and Jane Goodall as a hero...now if I can just turn her into a Stargate SG-1 fan my work will be done. Buwah ha ha ha ha.
I posted some new pictures of "the boys" today. As Alicia says "they're better than TV." Yes...I know this makes me the spinster cat lady. I'm cool with that ;-) 
I had dinner tonight in the Press Box at the ND stadium. Pretty swanky. It was part of the Residential Scholar's program, where faculty meet with first year students for meals 5 times a semester. Seems like a good program, gives the kids a grounding at the university early in their college career. And somehow, this year, I think seeing the stadium sans the football team may have been the preferable view...
Al Gore just won an Emmy for his pioneering work bringing open formats to the internet. Pretty cool. An Oscar and an Emmy -- if he can sing, look out Tonys. Maybe a Pulitzer next??
Fun departmental dinner tonight at Gianetto's Italian restaurant, where they served us some awesome stuffed pizza (I don't really like pizza, so that's saying something). And we learned that Diane used to be a professional cake decorator, a fact clearly in evidence by the birthday cake she prepared for two of our faculty members.
Here's that most rare of items...an upbeat story out of the West Bank. Taybeh (a Palestinian beer company) recently hosted "Oktoberfest" a bit early, out of respect for their Muslim neighbors since Ramadan is earlier this year. Taybeh is a tasty treat...as is the mostly eaten dessert pictured to the left below. For the rest of the story, go to: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6987897.stm
You know how a ref can stop a fight if a boxer is 'down for the count'...I think they should consider adopting the same rule in college football. Today, that could have happened after the first quarter in Ann Arbor. Yet again we were projected as the winner for this game. I'd love to know where these predictions come from...
I don't yet mean the football team (but am sure a later posting will have nothing but praise for the Fighting Irish....) --- no, I mean the Tomb Team. Congratulations to Laura, Sarah, Matt, Ki Won, Shannon and Katie on the submission of their first AAPA abstracts. They will travel to beautiful and scenic Columbus Ohio in April to give their first professional presentations. Jaime and I will look on as proud parents, saying to each other (sniff) "they grow up so fast!"
To all the students who were ever in Osteology...and Jaime...here's a blurb that was just on the news ("Maureen's Medical Moment" -- does it get any more authoritative than that??):Millions of people across the country wear flip flops every day, but some doctors say that footwear choice could come at the expense of your feet. Flip flops do not have the cushioning or support of regular shoes. Doctors say that forces our feet into a toe gripping, foot slapping stride. This can result in hammer toes, plantar fasciitis and inflamed Achilles tendons..
"We're seeing many more young patients with problems--pain in their fore foot, pain in their heel, tendonitis because of flip flops," said Dr. Christian Royer, orthopedic surgeon. "[I’ve] experienced a lot of foot pain to the point that I could not wear shoes to work in, [I] was walking around in tennis shoes, even in my place of business," said Dana Walker, patientBut it is not just flip flops that concern doctors. Ballet flats are just as bad.
I've been a bit hesitant to write about this, afraid I might jinx it I guess. But here goes -- I'M GOING TO ANTARCTICA !! I've wanted to do this since I was a kid. Whenever asked, Antarctica was always at the top of my list of places to visit before I depart this mortal coil. Now I get to (in shallah)!!
No more long drives for me!! Here's an interesting article from Slate.com about the dangers of reclining in the front passenger seat with your seatbelt on. Here's the link:
When I awoke, the sun was down, and the football game was half over. Turns out that spared me twice the pain. They mixed it up a bit this week. Instead of their run-run-run-punt strategy of last week, they used the old run-run-fumble and run-run-offsides along with run-run-run-get hit in the head with your own punt play scheme. Quite entertaining...if you were a Penn State fan!!
I came across a story today about a simple "green" idea. Change the margins on the things you print out. Doesn't sound like much, but the stats on savings (money and paper waste) are pretty remarkable. Researchers at Penn State calculated that by changing margins campus wide, they would save "72 acres of forest and over $120,000/year" for their campus alone. Pretty cool. 
This has been me most of the day - fans galore. Jaime bought me a handy little plug-in fan for my computer, it got a workout today. It didn't help that we lost airconditioning in the lab -- Maintenance is never particularly quick about coming over to fix things for me or the students, but mention that you have some mummies and a couple thousand bones in the room, and you get some action! It's nice to have a break from all the rain, even if a bit steamy. It'll give the river some time to evaporate before the storms start again...
They said this would be a 3 point game...got that right. Notre Dame scored 3 points -- Georgia Tech, 33. Pretty painful to watch. Just about as boring as a game can get too -- run, run, run, punt....run, run, fumble...run,run, run, punt. 
