The Kosmala Blog

While in Tucson, Ben and I made a day trip to Saguaro National Park.

See more photos of our trip on teamguava.

Last weekend, Ben and I went to Tucson for a fencing meet. Every year there are four (three in Olympic years) national competitions, called North America Cups (or NACs for short), for adult “elite” fencers. (There are additional ones for junior elites, for veteran elites, and for less highly rated fencers. But there are only four for which Ben and I qualify.)

So we took off for the Tucson NAC on Thursday and I fenced on Friday. I didn’t fence particularly poorly, but I also didn’t win particularly much. I made the 75% cut out of the pools, but only just, and then lost my first direct elimination (DE) bout by one touch, despite being ahead for almost the entire bout. Blah.

On Sunday, however, Ben fenced. And he fenced excellently. He went 5-1 in his pool, including pulling off a nice 5-3 win in his very first bout — against Brendan Baby, who is a strong fencer and was the top seed of the pool. Entering the DE table, he was seeded 29th (of 176) and kept up his tricky timing and fast attacks. He won his next two bouts to make the round of 32. (That means there are 32 fencers left in the DE table; the rest have been knocked out.) In the round of 32, the NACs use a format called “repechage,” which essentially means double-elimination. Fencers compete until they’ve lost two bouts or they’ve made the final 8. Ben’s first bout in the 32 was a loss against Ben Ungar, who ended up 3rd. So Ben was knocked “into repechage.” He then fenced to a strong finish against Adam Maczik, and then knocked Cody Mattern out of the tournament 15-11. Cody, by the way, was ranked 4th in the country (now 5th). Adam and Cody both fence at Northwest Fencing Center in Oregon, and Ben eliminated them both in similar style, attacking into their prep and forcing them to make mistake after mistake. Northwest rallied a cheering squad for the Cody bout, but they were largely kept silent as Ben made Cody look silly, hitting him when he paused time and again. After this delicious victory, Ben had to adjust to a completely different style in his next opponent, Adam Watson, who is shorter but attacks long. He didn’t win that bout, though, and was eliminated from repechage in the round of 16. His final placement was 15th, which is his best result at a NAC ever. Yay Ben!

The next day we attempted to fly home. I say “attempted” because it was an awful ordeal. We were flying out of Phoenix and unbeknownst to us, there was a Nascar race there that weekend. That meant that all of US Airways’ flights were oversold. We ran into several broken ticketing machines, incompetency, a surge in people trying to get through security, and what looked like security-personnel-training-day at the airport. They gave away our seats because it took us almost an hour to get through to the gate. So we then flew standby on two more oversold flights (and needless to say didn’t get on them), and had to spend an additional night in Arizona, finally getting home at 3:00 PM the next day. I used to like US Airways enough, but they’ve been getting worse and worse. I now heartily un-endorse them and their now parent company, America West.

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For those of us that grew up on old, classic Nintendo, this is truly an admirable feat. Some guy beat the original Super Mario Brothers in five minutes (video), running straight through, never stopping, and taking both warps. Fantastic.

So a week ago Sunday, Ben and I went to check out another apartment. We had seen a sign out front on the lawn on our way back from looking at apartment #2 and actually called the number on the sign as we sat out front. We arranged a meeting for Sunday and so roused ourself the next morning (we had stayed up late playing Super Mario Kart with some friends) and headed back over to Prospect Park.

The building is a four-plex, like our current abode; not super-sexy from the outside, but in a really good location. About half-way in between the Minneapolis and St. Paul campuses, the location means a fairly easy bike ride to both (although Prospect Park does seem to be uphill from much of the surrounding area…) and a reasonable five- to ten-minute walk to both the 16 bus (for Ben) and the 87 bus (for me). And really, we could walk the whole way if we wanted; it’s less than three miles for both of us.

Rick, the landlord, showed us in and we had a look around. The apartment is slightly bigger than our current place, with a big ol’ dining room (which we haven’t got now) and lots of windows. There are two bedrooms, both about 100 square feet, which is smaller than our current one, but big enough to have both a bedroom and a study/guest room. The kitchen is fine overall; we always need more than what standard kitchens offer for storage and counter space, but this one is comparable to what we have now. Excitingly, the stove is (yay!) gas-powered. Soon, we will end our four-plus years of cooking on electric! The basement has plenty of storage and also has laundry, so we don’t need to truck to a laundromat or anything. The yard is small, and I don’t think there’s probably room (or light) enough for a garden; we’ll have to figure out what to do with our compost. The ceilings are quite high, so the rooms feel extra roomy, and the only thing we were really concerned about was the height of the shower head, which Rick said he’d raise for us (Ben specifically) if we ended up in the apartment. We left, telling Rick we’d get back to him after we discussed it.

Later that day we called back and on Tuesday we signed the lease. Rick said that after we saw the apartment, he showed it twice more and both couples called back on Monday wanting it. Whew! Timing is everything. Our lease starts June 1, so now just the whole rigmarole of setting up utilities and canceling utilities, forwarding mail, packing, moving, unpacking, and figuring out just how to set everything up again so life works smoothly in our new space.

So today’s Kosmala goes by the name of Peter Kosmala. Amazingly, he is related to us! OK, he’s our brother, so we kind of already know him, but he’s a Kosmala none the less!

Pete works in the interesting field of privacy, and recently he did an interview with a public radio station in California. You can give a listen here:

Click me!

They even said Kosmala correctly, and for some reason played some music from the Pirates of the Caribbean soundtrack.

We’re #1! We’re #1!

Hmm, wait a minute…

A major storm hit here locally yesterday and is continuing today and tomorrow. It was supposed to hit in full force in Boston just in time for the marathon, but it really didn’t do much and even the Red Sox managed to get in a noontime game. No, the weather decided to take an early vacation up to Maine, where it slammed into coastal towns, like the ones I live and work in.

Wind gusts over 80 mph were recorded and there were something like 127,000 people that lost power. I unfortunately was among them and we didn’t get our power back til this morning. I got to leave work early since three of the four roads you can use to get out of there were closed due to flooding. So we got to take the fourth one and double back up to Portland. Even when I got home we had no power, so I hammered some nails in the fading light as part of putting together a set of drawers.

The wind was just ridiculous. The front door of my workplace was blown of its hinges, and a 60-foot tall pine tree in the back was completely uprooted and fell over. Light poles down by the back cove in Portland had fallen over like dominoes. It was a pretty impressive display.

I normally enjoy this sort of thing, but having no light in a 49-degree apartment with no heat wasn’t all that enjoyable. Luckily those crack lineworkers at Central Maine Power had it back up today. It probably helped that we share the same power line as a fire station and an elementary school.

So I was driving to work today and I switched on the radio. NPR was doing a story about some woods somewhere. And as I listened, I realized they were talking about Walden Woods in Concord. Apparently they’re planning to down the woods behind the high school to put in fake grass…

Seeing as this blog is called Kosmala, and that we’re but one family of Kosmalas, I thought it might be nice to acknowledge all the other Kosmalas out there. Back in the olden days, before the advent of the Internet, we didn’t really know that there were any other Kosmalas out there. (It’s not a particularly common name; in fact it rates as the 37,623th most common name in the U.S. — not quite as common as Kotlowski, but a little more common than Kosky.)

One day, though, in the early 90’s, I came across a picture in a BMX magazine of a guy called Jeff Kosmala, which I thought was pretty cool. Hey, look, another Kosmala, I thought. I wonder how many are out there…

Then the Internet arrived.

Today’s Kosmala on the Web is Witold Kosmala, who is a professor of mathematics at Appalachian State University in North Carolina. Witold has the distinction of being the most highly Google-ranked individual Kosmala on the web (as of today, anyway). He teaches calculus and real analysis and apparently is a tough but generally well-liked professor. He has published several mathematics books that are used in courses at Iowa State University, Montana State University, and Wayne State University, among others. In addition to his mathematical pursuits, Witold is a professional ski instructor, and recently completed a workshop allowing him to train ski school instructors. And, being multi-talented (not unusual for Kosmalas, of course), he plays violin in local ensembles. He is married to Vanessa Kosmala and is son of Jerzy Kosmala.