Catch Up-1st week o' August

Okay, so catch up of what I did the week in between getting back from Prague and the SF trip. That seems like forever ago already, so this will probably be a short recap. I’m so glad I wrote down on paper before I left everything I did, cause honestly….I wouldn’t remember!

Sat., Jul 31st-Okay so I flew back from MN to SD, sick of planes and airports at this point. I wrote something down about time zone differences...the extra 2 hr difference must have really thrown me off or something (actually yes it did…just when it came time to going to bed…so lovely wanting to go to bed at 9pm, but fighting that off and getting up at 5am, joyous). Went to a surprise 40th birthday party for Karen. It was fun, she was indeed surprised. Food was catered from this Iranian restaurant I believe…it was pretty good, especially the cherry rice.

Sun., Aug 1st-Only thing to note: went to listen to music in the park at La Jolla. Got really bad blisters on my pinky toes too from the shoes I was wearing, probably some of the worst blisters I’ve ever had, ouch!

Mon, Aug 2nd-Went to work and was bored out of my mind cause I was done with everything they had asked me to do. Had my last meeting with my boss, she confirmed this, so I just had a few things here and there to clean up and then I could be done. Went running, frustrated cause my leg still hurts from whatever I did to it on the 4th of July run. I haven’t really given it the chance to recover though. Sigh.

Tues, Aug 3rd-Due to lack of work, took a few half days here and there. Today was one of them. My aunt and I drove up along the coast in the northern county of SD, so went through all the beach towns and such(though now they are more commercialized beach towns). It was fun. We had desert before dinner at Pannakin, a coffeehouse. We both got a slice of pie and something to drink. I had a slice of raspberry pie which was very, very good and a chai latte (which was very watery and not that great). We then had dinner at Double Happiness and had honey walnut shrimp-yummers! Then we saw A Midsummer’s Night Dream at the La Jolla Playhouse and it was AWESOME! Especially the set design, reality was set in a Victorian style house but when they went into the forest, everything turned upside, including a grand piano and the chandelier which turned into a tree. It was very, very good. Great theater venue too!

Wed., Aug 4th-I have nothing written for this day so apparently not much happened?

Thurs. Aug 5th-Went to work for like 2 hr. and then tried out Lestat’s coffeehouse cause it looked like a pretty cool place online. The atmosphere was great, it was a perfect blend of electric, artsy and cool. There was even a guy there with a macaw on his shoulder, surfing the web which I found super amusing. My drink was not so awesome though which kinda bummed me out, but eh…it was worth the visit. At night, my aunt planned this huge event for her friends where they ate dinner at the house and then we all went to an outdoor movie theater in Mission Hills called, Cinema Under the Stars because Harold and Maude was playing. I hadn’t seen it before but definitely knew about this movie as it’s just referenced so much in film and animation. Everyone else who went loved the movie…I thought it was meh, okay. I don’t know if was the hype around it or what, but I wasn’t in love with it like everyone else. And why is it that most cult movies that they tend to have the same feel to them?

Fri Aug 6th-Just didn’t go to work today, there was no point. My aunt took the day off too. So all of us from the house went to Mission Beach because my aunt had wanted us to go out to eat at World Famous. Things were okay until we got in the car and I could just tell there was growing tension in the air. Friday is the day that Laurie and Gladys have to work with Colleen and there is some extreme disliking from both sides (I won’t get into it as to why, just that these two ladies don’t like working together). And it only got worse as the outing went on, the tension that is. We got there, were told we had to wait so we went walking down the boardwalk at Mission Beach. Got back went into the restaurant and Colleen said she didn’t want to be there, so we got back into the car and oh boy, that’s when the tension really escalated and we all were trapped in the car in it. One was blaming the other for various things and the other one wasn’t taking that verbal abuse but decided to be passive aggressive in response which just resulted in a lot of passive aggressive comments and arguing with nothing being resolved. During the middle of it, I just put on my sunglasses, just to disassociate myself from the drama and you bet I was glad to get out of that car and go straight to Starbucks to escape that for awhile. While it was not fun to be around that, the whole situation just makes me laugh a bit because there is just so much man bashing that goes on in this house between the workers and my aunt and yet, there’s all this passive aggressive drama, control issues, being overly sensitive, not taking blame issues ect. amongst the women here and yet they all still think that women are perfect compared to men. Yeah right; we both have our issues.

~Lauren

What I Did Like, 2 weeks Ago

Here's all what I did before I left for my family trip...which I may or may not write about later. We'll see. Oh and this was written before I left for the trip too, so that explains that bottom paragrah.

Wednesday-After work, my aunt took me and Anne(one of her friends)to the movie theaters to see Live from the Met, “La Boheme” cause my aunt is into opera and this is one of her favorites. It was a good way to experience opera for the first time cause there were subtitles so one could understand everything. It was also a good opera for me to see because “La Boheme” is based off the musical “Rent” which I know a great deal about. So yeah, good thing to experience. I kind of laughed too because I was the youngest person in the theater by at least a good 40 years.

Thursday-My aunt and I left a tad bit early from work so we could potentially take everyone at the house out but that didn’t happen which was alright, it was nice just to chill at home. Finally finished “The Thornbirds” miniseries-it was good but had a very heavy ending, oh tragedies. We had a very beautiful, colorful sunset this night. Then went to the Gelato Vero Café afterwards because I was itching to go out, so I just drew people there and had a gelato blended drink(Tiramisu Gelato and Espresso), because that is something I can’t get in MN, it was very tasty but probably absolutely horrible for me at the same time.

Friday-Last day of work for 2 weeks. So weird, I can’t believe it’s already time for the family vacation. This summer is just blowing by so fast, I can’t believe it! We drove into La Jolla again after work because there was a shirt I saw on Tuesday and I just kept on thinking about it everyday, so I decided to just go ahead and buy it, happy I did, it’s so cute! After dinner, my foot had finally started feeling better since the 4th of July fun run I did, so I went for a short run and it felt great! Then after I jumped in my aunt’s pool and hot tub….I tell you, there’s nothing much better then going for a run and then jumping into a nice cool pool after and then after that a hot tub. I’m so spoiled out here. Then I packed for my trip back home. Woot.

Saturday-Well had the morning before leaving for my trip back MN and I was not going to waste it. My aunt and I went to the dog beach on Coronado because it’s been one of my silly life dreams ever since I saw Marley and Me. It was AMAZING and so much fun. I love seeing dogs off-leash, running around and playing with each other and to see that plus adding an ocean they could run/swim in, oh it was so cool! I hope we go back again(and I’m sure we will). Then Laurie came back from her week trip out to New Hampshire(where she grew up) and it was her first day back to work and she was incredibly nice and brought us live lobster from her trip for us to eat. She is so nice. Anyways, I had never eaten lobster before, so that was interesting. I liked it better than I thought, I think it would taste amazing in sushi actually. Then I had to be to the airport by 1pm so I could catch my flight. So yes, had a very full morning before flying back to grand old MN. Will be in town for a few days before leaving for a family vacation to Prague. I can’t wait!

And as a side note, I was just thinking about the rest of my summer and until school starts, I realized just how much I’ll be traveling and how the longest I’ll be staying somewhere for the next month or so is while my family is in Prague. Isn’t the crazy? Cause I’ll be back in MN for 3 days, then in Prague for 8 days, then back in MN for like 1 or 2 days, In San Diego for a week(maybe less depending on how my aunt plans our San Fransisco trip), then I’ll be in San Fransisco for 5 days, in San Diego again for a week, then back in MN. Phew! And after that, I’m planning on going out to West Bend with my mom to visit family out there, if it works out for everyone. SO CRAZY! I'll be living my life out of a suitcase for the next month.

~Lauren

Day 21: 3 weeks already? Man time flies by!

Saturday: This was a busy day of meeting lots of new people and also doing a whole lot of eating. Met two of my aunt’s friends at their house (which was the most interesting house I have ever been in, if we go back, I’ll definitely bring a camera. As my aunt said “you’ll never see a house like this again” and she was totally right) and then we went out for lunch at a great restaurant in Hillcrest(didn’t catch the name) and had some yummy Pho soup, oh and it had green tea I actually liked, a first, I usually can’t stand green tea. Then we went back home shortly before we went to a dinner party where I met more of my aunt’s friends. We ate good food and talked, you know, you’re basic dinner party stuff. My aunt has nice friends.

Sunday: Finally found a church out here, called Kaleo Church. Very happy to finally find a church to call home out here. Hrmmmm what else did I do? Had a tasty summer lunch on the grill and……oh yeah I went hiking with my aunt’s friend, Pina that I met at the dinner party the night before! It was so much fun! We went hiking at Torrey Pines which is this “mountain” right by the ocean with all these funky desert plants. It was beautiful! It was great to go hiking with Pina and get to know her more, she’s awesome. Plus she treated me to Roberto’s, this Mexican restaurant right by Torrey Pines. It was both delicious and incredibly inexpensive. We had this crazy burrito thing(she made me try it because it was their specialty), in that it had French fries in it. Definitely not healthy but it was good, happy we split it though! Hoping to hang out with her some more this summer, which I think will definitely happen. Here’s some pictures from the hike.

Monday: NSF refunding site visit started today for the Temporal Dynamics of Learning Center(which my lab is a part of). Basically for me that didn’t mean too much though, more for the heads at my lab. I did have to demo my animation and art I have been doing for my internship the past few weeks for this demo/poster session. Unfortunately, there were 46 of these things going on and the site visitors only had 45 min. to get through (and we had 10 site visitors from NSF come). I had about 4 people talk with me (and I believe all of them saw what I was doing). Most of the people I talked with were nice and liked my work and didn’t ask too many questions besides what I was studying. One guy from NSF I guess told the heads at my lab that if I was looking for a job to contact him (hint animation friends, if you are looking for a job, especially if you’re good at Flash, contact research labs….I’m finding a lot of them desperately want animators working for them but don’t know who to contact). There was one guy who was a total jerk though after he found out I was just the artist, tried to belittle what I do (which I was like, “whatever guy, you are obviously just too cool for me and apparently know everything*rolls eyes*”). Afterwards, my aunt wanted me to show her friend Terri(the one we saw The Lottery with a few weeks ago) my animation stuff (both for work and my youtube account). Well, this show and tell ended up with the majority of my lab watching it and them yet again getting amazed. It was good because from this, I ended up finally being introduced to everyone in the lab, so now they all know who I am. My aunt then dropped the hint that I needed a job after I graduate(she forgot about my grad school plans) and both Marni and Javier(the two heads at my lab) said they are going to look into if they have the money to pay me, but they were fairly certain they do, so it looks like I may possibly have a job working here after I graduate if I so choose(and I may be able to work part-time while I’m at school through the magic of the internet). So I have that now to contemplate….which then lead to me just contemplating about many, many things which I don’t have enough room or energy to write about(basically about my life, the future and reflecting on living out in San Diego). It was a deep night of quiet contemplation.

Tuesday-Day 2 of site visit. Listened to my aunt give her 2 speeches which included a Q&A and at the first one, things got really heated between one of the site visitors and the whole TDLC group. I was glad I was sitting next to Judy, one of the scientists who is a part of the center because she was cracking joke after joke about the NSF guy, it definitely relieved some tension for me. But seriously, things got REALLY tense. The guy pretty much disagreed with what the center was doing and considered it “one of the stupidest things I have ever heard”….no worries though, Javier totally changed this guy’s mind by today and he apologized for his comment and admitted he was wrong. By the time that was over, it was time for lunch. The nice thing about the site visit is that both breakfast and lunch were provided. After that, I went back to my lab but no one was there and I worked for a bit before giving myself a half day. I’m happy I decided to do so, I was able to get my first test for the Genesis class I’m taking Distance Ed., get through 2 more lessons, go for a long walk, and catch up with 3 or 4 people via the phone that I had been meaning to call. Poor people at my lab though, they had to pull a very late night answering questions and getting ready to prepare to talk about those answers the next morning. My aunt was a part of this, she didn’t get home until 3am.

Wednesday-Today was relatively boring compared to the past few days….I went to a normal day of work, designed and built racecars in flash for the intro video of this racing game we’re building, got through another 2 lessons for Genesis(over half way done, yay! Trying like mad to get done before the end of the month), called the last person who I had been meaning to call….yeah definitely a more low-key day than the last few have been.

That's all folks!

~Lauren

EDIT: I should probably note something about the potential job opportunity cause some people have been asking about it and I think I was confusing. I probably shouldn't have mentioned it because as of right now, they haven't officially asked me, it's just an idea thrown at them and they seemed favorable about the idea. But that's all it is right now, an idea, a possibility but not a reality as of yet.

Day 12: All I Did This Weekend

An update...with pictures!

Friday: Work. Left early cause my aunt had to be at the Salk(where she works, the guy who invented the cure for polio built it, a bunch of scientists work there). Met everyone she works with there, it was fun to see how scientists work and how they all interact together. It's cool b/c at 3:30 every day they all take a break from work and have tea together, it was fun to take part in that. After I was a test subject for my aunt to make sure this test she is making is properly working...it is. I may be helping improve the art in it though, yay. Then I babysat for the next door neighbors. All I did was watch Cheaper by the Dozen with them, put them to bed and then waited until the parents came home. Very easy job. And geez did they pay well, I can’t believe what the hourly rate is out here(well at least for the neighborhood I’m living in)!

Saturday: Went shopping (Targets out here don’t compare to the ones in MN at all). Walked to and explored Old Town, it was kinda fun but so touristy, but they do have my favorite Mexican candy there for practically nothing, so I’ll have to walk down again. My aunt had this benefit thing at night, so I just chilled at home.

Oh Old Town, you just can't help yourself, you're so touristy!

Sunday: Went to Balboa Park with everyone in the house. It was really nice, I know I’ll be spending lots of time there once I get my hands on a bike I can borrow (which should be soon). Really worked on my Distance Ed. Classes like doing the test prep., blehhhhhh. Took a nap, apparently I was tired. Got up. Had a birthday dinner for Laurie, one of the workers who is here on the weekends with Colleen. Dinner was delicious-we had grilled shrimp, couscous with kale, grilled vegetables and apple pie for desert. SO GOOD, but I was so full after. Went to the night service of The Rock church out here (apparently it’s this huge church that a lot of people from NWC have told me about), it was pretty good, though perhaps a little to big for my liking and I kind of felt like I was on one of those televangelist shows on Sunday morning, except more contemporary flavor. Liked this church better than the one I went to last week, but I am trying out another one next week I think. My aunt left for Las Vegas too, she’ll be back on Wednesday.

Part of Balboa Park...I'll upload an album or something soon of more of the park, as this doesn't even begin to capture it.

Monday: Another start to the work week. All the programmers were at work, so they are starting to do all the code work and such to make my animations work with the CERT program the scientists in my lab have created. Relieved to know I set up everything perfectly for them, they’re going to do something to fix the code so it can work with my animations better. I’m excited to see when they are done with the coding, gah that’s going to be amazing! Otherwise, just chilling at home for the night, going to really work on getting some coursework done for my DE classes… I just want to be done with them already!

I have another few thoughts floating in my head that I wanted to write about, so I’ll hopefully be getting to those sooner rather than later, because they are more enjoyable to write. I know you all want to know what I’m doing out here, but I just feel like I’m writing a big old list, which is probably kind of boring. Journaling is not really more forte.

~Lauren

Day 8: A Week In Review

Holy cow, I need to start writing about all I’m doing here before I start forgetting…I was trying to remember what I did on Saturday and was having a hard time, so then I was like “I need to write about it before I forget and everything just meshes into together in my MIND!” Anyways, crazy thing-I’ve been here for a week. It doesn’t seem like I’ve been here that long yet it seems like I was in Minnesota months ago. Ah time and trying to perceive it.

Okay but back to the point, the fun stuff I’ve been doing out here. I’ll just go day by day, giving the highlights…yes that would be best.

Saturday: My aunt was a keynote speaker at this talk at UCSD, I tagged along. She is way smart. Then when we were driving back home, we saw a street festival by the beach, decided to have lunch there. It was alright, but my aunt and I decided it wasn’t the best street festival we had been to. After that, had a relaxing movie night. Good way to end Saturday and the week.

Sunday: Tried out a new church, it was okay but I am trying a new one next week. Went to a performance of Bye, Bye, Birdie at a theater in downtown San Diego. We went b/c my aunt’s 10-year old neighbor was in it(so it was a children’s production of it), holy goodness it was AMAZING. We were blown away!

Monday: Crap, what did I even do this day? Well, first day of driving in San Diego. It was pretty easy, traffic here is comparable to the Twin Cities. At work, really started to understand Flash…otherwise…hrm what did I do this day? Apparently nothing terribly exciting…

Tuesday: Work. Then when out to dinner/movie with my aunt and her best friend from the academia world and her friend’s 16-year-old son. Dinner was good-it was at Berta’s in Old Town(I only mention the restaurant so that I remember when I look back cause it was delish). I already wrote a post about the movie, no need to comment…

Wednesday: You guessed…work! Able to design and animate a whole character in a day, really starting to get a handle on Flash, yay! Then went out to eat a fabulous restaurant (The Red Door, Mission Hills) with my aunt and some of her bff’s.

Thursday: Wow no way, I had work again. Able to design/animate a character in half the time it did Wednesday without the glitches I have had previous. Proud b/c I started off the week as a complete novice/beginner at Flash and now feel like I really have a handle on it. I am told that the heads of the lab I work for are going to see if I can get a stipend for the summer because they like the work I am doing. While on a run, one of my aunt’s neighbors stopped me, I have a babysitting job for the summer-win!

Yay, looks like I remembered most of what all went done this week!

~Lauren