Last Bit of Updates

Thursday-Didn’t go into work….I think I mostly worked on schoolwork and walked around a bit.

Friday-Went into work and it was my last day. Just touched up things here and there and made my files better organized. Met with the programmer I’ve been working with to show him the last few things, just to make sure that I wasn’t leaving him with things unfinished (which they weren’t). Then he showed me the FINISHED version of the emotion mirror. Now the game itself didn’t react a wave of “wow cool!” just because I had seen many, many versions of it. The cool thing was that before, it was just a flash file but when he opened it up, a little icon with my drawing came up on the doc(the bar that mac’s have). It was so cool to see a drawing of mine as an icon and at the moment, I felt so proud of the work I had done this summer. This perhaps wasn’t an internship I was expecting to do and maybe perhaps not the most typical route to take(but then again, since when I have I ever done that)-but yes, I am both glad I did this internship for the summer, I did learn quite a bit and proud of the quality and amount of work I accomplished. Went to Roberto’s for lunch to “celebrate” finishing my internship. When I picked up my aunt from the Salk, she decided she wanted Chinese food, so we got that from Double Happiness, which I have commented on before. We got back home, ate our food, watched a movie. My aunt has been on a mission to show me her favorite classics, so we watched “The Way We Were” (cause anything with Barbara Streisand my aunt just loves). It thought it was a bit dull and didn’t care for the story so much.

Saturday-It was a gray, gray day here until the mid-afternoon. We went to the dog beach and had a beach day there. It was fun, I love the dog beach at Coronado! Since the sun wasn’t out though, the water was absolutely freezing! I took more pictures which was fun too, it’s a great place to take photos. We met a couple that had two Carin Terrier’s(my aunt’s dog, Lulu is a Carin Terrier, so whenever there’s others at the beach, conversation is made). We brought lunch to the beach as well-just PB sandwiches and boy were we just the most popular people at the beach. I also met perhaps one of the sweetest dogs I’ve ever met named Amigo. At night, we went out to eat/see a movie with my aunt’s friends. We went to Sammy’s Woodfire Grill which was very tasty-I was so in the mood for pizza. We saw Eat, Pray, Love…acting was good, movie was forgettable. Saw there was Ghirardelli ice cream shop across the street so we went there cause I wanted to-their chocolate ice cream is so good and they don’t have these shops yet in MN. Yummers.

Sunday-Got up early cause I had signed up for a 5k at Solana Beach (about 30 min. away). It was so foggy on the drive over, I could see the road but especially on the highway, that was all I could see. I signed up for this race because it sounded like it was going to be run on the beach and I though “wow, that’s cool and I can’t do that in MN”. Well I was mistaken. Only the aquathon and swimming events took place on the beach…the run was on this boring commercial road and we had to loop it, which I never like doing for races, to me it just makes it seem so much longer. Anyways, ran it, pleased with my time, glad it was over. For lunch, we met up with another group of my aunt’s friends for Dim Sum (Chinese brunch). For those who have never done this before (no worries if you don’t, I didn’t know this existed or what it was until this meal), basically instead of ordering the workers come out with carts of food and you just order what you want. It’s really fun with a big crew of people(which we had). The food was very, very good and it was fun. I want to try this out in MN with some friends at some point. I then took a nap. Woke up, power walked down to Old Town because I woke up wanting to walk. Got back, ate dinner with everyone/watched PBS (what the house does on Sun. nights) and then went to Gelato Vero Caffe to do some more studying/Bachelorette party planning. The tiramisu gelato was top notch.

Monday-My aunt and I were supposed to go to Catalina today and meet up with my aunt and uncle from my dad’s side. Night before we got a call from them, the ferry for the boat had broken so we couldn’t go. So instead we went to Laguna Beach b/c they have 3 art festivals going on/it’s a good place for a day trip that was ½ between San Diego and Malibu. I’ll first talk about the art festivals. They have 3 different ones: one for fine arts, one for crafts and one for in between those two. I believe they are all exclusively for Laguna Beach residents as well…this community bases part of its identity in that they support the arts big time, which is sweet. The fine arts one was very good, I grabbed a lot of business cards to check out some artists websites later. The only two were really lame. Seeing all 3 took a good couple of hours and my brain hurt from seeing so much art by the end. Okay, other part of today, seeing my uncle and aunt, Scott and Jimmy…awkwardddd. I really don’t know how to put words to it, it was just uncomfortable to be around them for the entire day and it made me glad that I had to stay with my aunt this summer instead of them. Restaurants (sorry this is choppy…). Lunch, we ate at Hotel Laguna. Food was good, view was great(right on the beach), service was super duper slow. Dinner-ate at sundried tomato where their specialty was…you guessed it, things with sundried tomatoes. It was DELICIOUS! At night, we went to this thing called Pageant of the Masters. They’ve been doing this show since 1936 and basically they recreate famous paintings or create “living paintings”. It’s actually really amazing, everything they did looked so legit like the painting or sculpture or mosaic they were trying to recreate. The theme was Eat, Drink and Be Merry…so the storyline so to speak(I use that term loosely) revolved around that. I very much enjoyed coming to this-it really just made art history come to life, they had a live orchestra playing, a witty but education dialogue about the pieces, lots of humor and it was just so well executed. It was one of the most unique theater things I’ve ever experienced. I think I easily could have just sat and watched that for 5+ hours.

Tuesday-This was a pretty chill day, I didn’t want to have a jammed pack day. No need to be tired the next day travelling and honestly, I had done pretty much everything I had wanted to before I left. Late morning, we went over to my aunt’s friend’s glass studio, because I wanted to see how they made their glass art. So I got a tour of their studio(which is pretty much their one car garage) and then got to see all the stuff they were getting ready for a craft show. Then after, they taught both my aunt and myself how to cut glass and before you know it, we are all making a few necklace pendants. It was fun though my brain was overwhelmed with all the choices I could make. Not only did I have to think about what I wanted my necklace to look like, but I also had think about color, texture and glitter. After that, went back home and packed. Then in the early evening, I met two more of my aunt’s neighbors because they wanted to meet me before I left. I was told that one of the neighbors did concept art for animation and was going to talk to me about his job, what his does ect. and if I had any questions I could ask. Got over there and as I was looking at his porfolio I begin to realize, “wait a minute….I have seen this stuff online before!” Turns out, the neighbor was no other than Gary Glover, a very well respected and well known concept artist for both gaming and films. WOW! He was such a nice guy and asked to trade e-mails so he could e-mail a few things and said to stay in contact and not hesitate to e-mail him. Such a nice guy and an amazing artist. That was really cool! After, went out to eat with my aunt at El Indio (a Mexican restaurant) and then grabbed some gelato, cause I wanted to make sure I hit up Gelato Vero Caffe before I left. A good last full day in San Diego.

Wednesday-I didn’t leave until 3pm from SD so I had the morning here. Besides just final packing-we went over to the glass studio to pick up our pendants. I’m was pleasantly surprised at how mine turned out. Had lunch at home and then had to leave. I had the best goodbye from Colleen. Her medicine was slightly changed about a week ago and she’s been pretty unresponsive and not talking much. But when I went to say goodbye, her eyes just snapped open and she lifted her head and she started smiling, laughing and talking (and I could even make some words out and understood what she was saying). Man, that was amazing and I was so touched, I know that probably took so much effort for her to do. It was cute too, my aunt was all teary-eyed after seeing that. After that, said the rest of my goodbyes(though more like see you later). Then lastly, dropped off at the airport and with that, my summer in San Diego was over. Crazy.

~Lauren