While it may not officially be summer yet (not until later this month), the summer heat has already arrived. And so have the bugs.
We all know what a bother mosquitoes and other insects can be when we’re outside trying to enjoy the summer, be it at the lake, the pool, a baseball game or a picnic.
NC State is here to help. The university’s home page has a fascinating and informative look at what it calls “The Bad Bugs of Summer.” It’s worth checking out.
Last Thursday, Jeffery Braden, dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, switched places with Margaux Novak, a junior English major at NC State. He did everything she would do on a typical Thursday, and she took his schedule. Both wrote about the experience for Technician.
A couple of my favorite notes from Dean Braden’s day:
6:56 a.m. - I get dropped off at the IHOP on Park and Hillsborough, where I go in, order a cup of coffee, fire up my laptop and prepare to open the envelope titled “Detailed Schedule” Margaux handed to me on Monday. The first line of my instructions for this morning says: “Think about going to IHOP for a well-rounded breakfast — and then remind yourself it is not in your price range and that the rent is due in three days.” I close the menu with a mixture of disappointment and relief — disappointment that I won’t get a hot breakfast and relief that I won’t have to “out” myself by ordering from the senior menu.
And at Carmichael…
1:25 p.m. - I am prepared — I have a bathing cap, mask, snorkels, water wings, inflatable Snoopy ring and diving fins on and in place. Kimberly, the photographer from the Technician, is there to capture the spectacle. The instructor comes by and vows that I’ll actually have to wear all that in the pool. Happily, she doesn’t follow through on her threat. We stretch, and then jump in the pool for more stretching and eventually for our workout. During the stretching, I introduce myself to a guy standing in the pool next to me. He asks me to repeat my last name, and then says, “Yeah, I thought so.” I ask, “What do you mean?” He smiles and tells me that he took Psychology 200 (Intro) from me a couple of years ago. We both laugh at the probability that we’d end up in the pool together for class. Since I know a lot of people will ask, let me say I was neither the best nor the worst student in the class — but I was definitely the best AARP member in the pool!
Look for an interview with Dean Braden in the spring issue of NC State magazine.
In case you haven’t heard, there’s a big basketball game at the RBC Center tonight. And, as is tradition, the students who run Technician today published their annual spoof of UNC-Chapel Hill’s student newspaper. This morning’s edition of The Daily Tar Hell caught up with former UNC star “Tiger Hansbobo,” editorialized on tuition increases and reported on a UNC player who just hasn’t been the same since the Presbyterian game.
The spoofs started in the 1950s as an April Fools’ edition that poked fun at NC State issues and people. We wrote about the Technician spoofs in our Fall 2007 issue and collected tidbits of some of the best from those spoofs. We also published a Web feature that has the full text of a handful of stories from 50 years of fake news.
We have added a new tab to the NC State Alumni Association’s Facebook page. “NC State on Facebook” has links that will help you connect to the Facebook pages of NC State colleges, alumni groups, organizations and other university entities. We have dozens of pages listed, but we know there are more out there. If you have suggestions for pages to add, leave them in the comments or send them in an e-mail to alumniblog@gw.ncsu.edu.
This is Spoon on The Late Show with David Letterman in 2007. The band’s drummer is alumnus Jim Eno ’89, who has a degree in electrical engineering and used to design microchips before he became a full-time musician a few years ago.
While it may not officially be summer yet (not until later this month), the summer heat has already arrived. And so have the bugs.
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