From The Back Row

Not getting a whole lot of rain from Alberto, but it's early still. For anyone curious, the best website to track Atlantic storms is the National Hurricane Center/Tropical Prediction Center. They have some good stuff in the 3 and 5 day cones as well as animations on the different probability pages. I know it looks big on the radar, but it's a pretty disorganized storm, so we just have clouds and rain, but no more rain than usual. Curiously, everyone around here is a little surprised we have a named storm so early in the season, but last year the first came around June 9th, so that's not bad. Interesting that after having hurricanes every year since the dawn of time that anyone would be "a little surprised" that they're coming back this season.

A developing side story is whether I should attempt a real carwash.  During the Trip Across, I got the car washed in Ft. Stockton, Texas at one of those gas station washes where you sit in the car and it washes around you.  Since I arrived here  in Miami on May 16th, I've gone for another of those, but haven't been to a real carwash.  Problem is, do you pay that money and get that service done just to be pulling out of the driveway and have rain coming down?  It's not the money, it's the principle.  The rain does a decent job keeping it clean but it doesn't scrub the dirt off.  If you consult the weather.com site for the local forecast, you can see my dilemma, showers predicted for every day of the week.

Alright, so this little adventure is just past the quarter mark and an update is probably in-order. Not too much to report other than classes seem to be going well, had the first round of mid-terms last week (only 2 weeks into session, sick!). One result in and it's "average" and still waiting on the 2nd result. My third class this session only met 8 times and wrapped up this past Saturday with a marathon 8 hour class from 9-5. The tricky part of this class is a take-home exam and 10 page book report due before May 2007. Dorm life has gotten routine which is nice, so everything is working like it should. Yes, this means that the Tivo is fully operational. Hopefully I can update the Flickr site with some new pictures later this week. There are plenty of new and odd things I wouldn't mind capturing. This dorm building sits next to Lake Osceola which is a naturally occurring lake here on campus. One difference between 1996 UM and today is there's a sign that warns of gators in the lake and to always be aware of that. It's a classic sign, especially since there's a walking path next to the lake and the dorm parking lot, etc. I'll also try and get some pictures up of my living situation, so everyone can see that it's not as bad as dorm dayz of olde.