I Feel the Earth Move Under my Feet

So, the ground isn't really supposed to move....or so I thought. 

Maybe you haven't heard but today in Los Angeles was an EARTHQUAKE!

The quake was apparently a 5.4 and happened at 11:42 this morning, and here's what I experienced:

Everybody in the city seems to be describing the starting moments in the same way, that it seemed like someone was walking around on the floor above us or that someone was wheeling something very heavy nearby. That's how it started and then the entire building began to sway and rock.  Within seconds, it clicked that an Earthquake was happening.  After a few more short seconds, I followed some people's lead and stood in a doorframe.

Apparently our building was built sometime in the 80s, so its not very old and apparently there are these giant wheels at the foundation deep under the building to absorb the shock.  That is probably why we didn't feel much shaking or rattling.  Still, being on the Fifth floor of a solid steel, marble covered building, and rocking what felt like a few feet back and forth was crazy.  Not necessarily scary, but crazy.  Once it seemed like it wasn't going to be too bad, it was even sort of fun.  

Also because of the wheels, our building kept rolling for what felt like a long time after the quake ended.  When it ended, everybody quickly went down the stairs and went outside.  People in other buildings were coming out, too, and a few fire trucks drove by, sirens blaring.  Initial cell phone calls didn't get through, apparently the city's system was overloaded.  

Everybody said an aftershock could come at any moment, and could even be just as bad as the initial quake, maybe worse, and I guess it can happen anytime from a few minutes to a few days later.  I haven't felt anything, even though I noticed the normal everyday vibrations in the floor once in a while.  We all went back inside, and pretty soon the day was continuing like normal.

Like I said, the quake was sort of fun, and it wasn't quite as bad as I had thought my first earthquake would be.  That being said, the news is reporting that this quake was just a reminder that "The Big One" could come anytime.  This one was probably the biggest quake in about 10 years or so, but apparently there is a 99% chance that the big one will come sometime in the next 30 years.  Sure, 30 years is a long time, but in terms of the Earth's life span, that's nothing.  Hopefully it doesn't happen too soon.  

Anyway, I'm excited to have experienced my first ever earthquake, and now I really have "lived in Los Angeles."  

Oh, Los Angeles.  

Good times.  

Live High, Live Mighty (with a few photos)

Wow. I am so disgustingly blessed. There is so much I want to write about right now, so this could be a long post.

Let's see, I haven't even blogged about last weekend yet.

Here is the abridged version:

Friday night was going to a classy but hip wine bar down near USC's campus with my roommates which was a lot of fun, then IMAX the Dark Knight on Saturday morning which was absolutely mind-blowingly awesome, even the Watchmen trailer was freaking sweet (crew just finished the teaser website for the watchmen movie, and it's sweet, check it out). Let's see, then Saturday night was the GLOW festival celebrating the Grunion Run at Santa Monica. I'll tell you more about it if you ask, here's a picture of one of the cool art installations.  This was a giant fan of water being sprayed like 5 stories high with colorful animations projected onto it.

Monday night Amy and I went to the Arclight in Hollywood to see Mamma Mia. The movie was ridiculous, but of course I loved it. Meryl Streep was awesome and looked like she was having a blast. Amanda Seyfried might just make the list of "My Girls," alongside Idina, Amy Adams, Ashley Brown, Lindsay Lohan (pre-fall), Shoshana Bean and Rachel McAdams. (If anyone remembers any other women I have mentioned as being my girl, please remind me. I think I've remembered them all though.) Amanda Seyfried has the best voice of anyone in the movie, and her acoustic version of "Thank You for the Music" she sings over the final credits is absolutely amazing.

Pierce Brosnan's singing voice isn't perfect, but its very interesting and I don't mind hearing it. He is, however, not all that comfortable looking singing on screen, and when he broke out in song in the movie almost everyone in the theater started to laugh. Still, the movie was definitely a lot of fun, and doesn't take itself too seriously, but is serious when it needs to be. Ian downloaded the soundtrack and gave it to me. It's been pretty awesome.

The arclight was an amazing place to see a movie, and bills itself as the theater for movie lovers. The theater is all assigned seating, the seats are extra wide, the arm rests are double-wide, and there is no late seating. Pretty sweet. There also weren't really any bad seats in the theater. Outside of the theater was the real Bat-pod, on display and it was pretty cool. Inside the lobby was an actual Batman costume from the Dark Knight, 5 clown masks from the bank robbery scene, and a joker costume, as well. Now that stuff was awesome. They also had some of the costumes from Mamma Mia on display, too, which had lots of sequins on them.

Let's see, the rest of the week was fairly low-key. I did, however, come up with a design for my new portfolio website. I've spent a lot of my free time this week and weekend working on the site, and I'm super excited about it. I really do think that it's shaping up to not only be a solid reflection of my work, but a great reflection of my personality and who I am in general, as well. The site is definitely not done yet, and you can't actually view any of my projects besides their preview boxes. I'll be working on the full project views soon.

Even so, feel free to check out what I have up at randlev.com. Check it out and let me know what you think. I'd love to get some feedback and criticism. Good or bad.

Anyway, this weekend has been very awesome. Friday night was a nice relaxing evening, after some In-N-Out, Garrett and I watched the movie Walk Hard. It was very funny and John C. Reilly was pretty outstanding in it. He's got a lot of talent. I wonder why he really hasn't done anything serious since his oscar nomination for Chicago?

Anyway, Saturday afternoon, Ian and Tegan and I went cruising up highway 1 into Malibu. We stopped and ate lunch by the lagoon and then walked along the beach and watched all the surfers catching waves near the pier. Our day was absolutely made when we saw a dog in a wetsuit surfing with his owner. The dog was really good and looked like he was having a lot of fun. Awesome.

We walked back to the car and kept driving north on the Pacific Coast Highway out of the Malibu city limits past Pepperdine University right above the ocean. It was pretty awesome driving along the ocean with the windows down, the sunroof open, and the new Jason Mraz album blasting on the stereo. We were living pretty large. Soon we started passing these huge houses with ornate gates at the driveways right on the ocean. There has to be seriously famous and seriously rich people owning those places, they were crazy.

We eventually decided to stop at this beach that looked cool called Leo Carillo beach, I think, and it turned out to be amazing. There were these huge rock formations along the ocean creating these different little coves and private beaches. There were huge mountains across the highway behind us, and the rocky beach made it feel like we were somewhere like Hawaii or Greece. Since I had recently seen the movie, I did some Mamma Mia "The Winner Takes it All" posing on the rocks, and I think Tegan got a few good pictures. Don't worry, I'll post more pictures from all of this stuff on facebook so you guys can see how cool it was. My facebook break ends tomorrow morning, so maybe tomorrow night I'll load some pics up. (My facebook break has been awesome, and I think from now on I'll only check it when A. I need to to find information of someone's, or B. When I receive an email notification.)

After taking pictures we all got in the car and headed back down the PCH through Malibu back to Westwood, while we may or may not have been listening to the Mamma Mia soundtrack. Last night I had a lot of fun going to the Bigfoot Lodge, a log cabin-themed bar up in Los Feliz (pronounced Loas Fee-liss) to celebrate my coworker, Dave Felton's birthday. It was a lot of fun, even my supervisor, Anette came. Dave Devine, however, was a no show. On friday at work I found out he has a pool at his house and something called an aquathrone. If he was social, maybe he'd invite people over. It's weird to think of Dave as a real grown-up, but I guess if he has his own pool then he must be.

Anyway, we were at the bar just a few minutes too late to catch the subway back to Wilshire and hop on the bus back to Westwood, so Ian and I sort of got stuck in Hollywood and just ended up having to split a $30 taxi. It was stupid and expensive, but whatever.

This morning I pushed myself in an intense run through campus and at the track. It was great, and I'm definitely loving running so often out here. I really am starting to feel like I'm in better shape and able to run further often.

My afternoon and evening was an absolutely amazing cap to my weekend. I took the bus downtown with my D50 camera, and snapped a few shots of Broadway as I walked down to the Mayan. Broadway on Sunday afternoon is definitely a trip and a side of Los Angeles you don't really ever get to see or imagine, with the lobbies of all of these old movie palaces sort of depressingly turned into jewelry stores and plenty of storefronts of people selling all kinds of knick-knacks, clothes, toys, and whatnot. Still, its really interesting and I love walking down it every Sunday on my way to church. 

At church, it was definitely my best overall Mosaic experience yet. I was there early enough to help with plenty of set-up, and had a lot of fun just hanging out with everybody else on the connections team and getting to know some new people. I think I finally am starting to find where I fit there. Again I was on sample duty and handed out dixie cups of Raspberry Mocha to people who looked alone and struck up conversation with them. One guy, Eugene, was interested in finding out how he could get involved and meet people, so I told him about the connections team and stuff and pointed him toward people who could give him more information. Another guy, John, had an amazing amount of energy, and I had a lot of fun talking to he and his even more energetic girlfriend, Nicole. The people at Mosaic really are awesome, and getting to know more and more of them all the time is really showing me how blessed and lucky I am to be a part of that community.

It was almost scary how much the message met me with exactly what I'm dealing with right now and where my heart is and what I'm trying to work on. It was absolutely crazy to be spoken to so personally and I was just struck by how awesome God is. And Erwin McManus didn't even deliver this message.

It turns out this girl named Jess lives in Westwood, too, and she said she was happy to give me a ride home, so I opted to stick around to volunteer and usher for both services, which is something I've never done before but have always wanted to do, especially for the added time of interacting with other people and other volunteers. After the 8 o'clock gathering started, Eddie and Liz and I went across the street to the new Jamaican Restaurant that Mosaic is trying to help out across the street and it was delicious. My jerk chicken had major kick to it, but it was delicious. The service and food was great, and our waiter absolutely could not have been nicer. I'll think we'll be going back every Sunday night now, too, which I could get used to.

After tearing down everything in the Mayan and packing up, Jess and I went out to her car, and I was surprised to see a Pitt sticker on the rear windshield. It turns out she went to Pitt on a softball scholarship. Small world, eh? Well, things got even crazier when she mentioned she used to work at Disney in advertising. She told me it was a blast working there, and that she loved the people she worked with. Although she recently switched jobs, she told me she knows a lot of great people there, and that I should give her my resume and she'll let me know of any internship opportunities. She and I will definitely be talking more in the coming weeks (and hopefully I can get a few more rides home) and I might just have to see what connections I can work.

I don't know, would I come back to LA soon if it meant working at Disney and spending another quarter surrounded by everything and everyone I love at Mosaic? Maybe...just maybe.

Am I beginning to be bitten by the LA bug that I never thought I'd be bitten by. After doubting it for so long, could I really be "an LA guy?" Maybe...just maybe.

Who knows. Ideally it would be awesome to work for Disney in New York, especially to work at Yellow Shoes Creative Group, the branch of Disney Parks and Resorts that does all the advertising for the theme parks and cruise line, which I think has an office in New York.

We'll see. I don't know what the future holds for me. All I know is right now I am feeling very much in love with Los Angeles, and am feeling so disgustingly blessed by God. Like I said, I definitely don't deserve this. He is awesome.

I really do miss everyone, and I am very much looking forward to Fall quarter. It will be amazing. Until then, its looking like summer quarter has not and will not let me down in terms of growth, challenges, and overall awesomeness.

I hope everyone has an amazing week.

Wow, this post was like a novel.

Much love.

Why So Serious?

Ahh, at last Friday is here, and last night the biggest movie of the summer and the year, The Dark Knight, was finally released, and finally, I can take the bat out of the bag.

Yes, of course, the movie I got to see on the Warner Bros. lot on Monday morning was indeed The Dark Knight, and it was freaking awesome. Here's my mini spoiler free review.

Like I said, the movie is just so awesome. It's incredibly intense, especially like the first hour and a half. It's not especially gory, but I'd say most people would agree with me when I say that it could definitely be rated R. Kids should not see this movie. In the days since I saw it, I keep remembering parts of the movie that I had forgotten and thinking, "ohh man, yeah, that part was amazing!" The one cryptic thing I've been telling people is there is A LOT to this movie. A big part of me wants to tag another sentence onto that statement, but I don't want to ruin anything for anyone, so I won't.

As for the performances, Heath Ledger is definitely mind-blowing in his role as the Joker. Really, it is true, he rocked this and can you believe there's legitimate talk of him winning an Oscar? I mean, this is a comic book superhero movie...and someone might win an oscar for it for something besides Special Effects and Sound Mixing!

Christian Bale, Michael Caine, and Morgan Freeman are all great, as well, and my mind continues to have no idea how they got so many huge respected actors to come together to make a Batman movie in the first place with Batman Begins. But then again, I've seen that movie, and it is crazy good, so I guess it makes sense.

Maggie Gyllenhaal is amazing, too, and she just pulls you in and whether you liked Katie Holmes in the first one or not, you will not be disappointed. In fact, seeing the character of Rachel in The Dark Knight, I really don't think Katie Holmes could've pulled off what Maggie had to pull off. Maggie Gyllenhaal, you are awesome.

Of course Aaron Eckhart is great, too, with his wonderfully believable tragedy, but I'd have to say my favorite character in the movie this time around is without a doubt Jim Gordon, as played by Gary Oldman. He does a an awesome job, and I would say he is really the heart of the movie and the glue that holds everything else together.

Basically, everything good you've heard about this movie is true. Its on such a different level than any other superhero comic movie before it. Go see it. Go see it now.


I'm going to the IMAX to see the movie again tomorrow morning at 9am. I know it's crazy, but that was the only time we could get okay seats to the IMAX theater. It will be awesome. The IMAX experience sounds amazing.

Why did I get to see Batman so early? Well, at work I've been doing a bunch of random things for the Dark Knight pretty much nonstop for the last month. In fact, they're not a big deal, but if you go to movietickets.com you can see the wallpaper and "Get movie tickets and Showtimes" header I put together for the site. Over at yahoo.com/movies you can see the wallpaper I put together for that site, too.

The coolest thing I did for the Dark Knight was for the official site. Last week on Thursday night the entire official site for the Joker (which crew made) was "Jokerized" by the joker with drops of blood and one-liners written in red scribbled all over everything. It looked pretty sweet. Well, I got to tag and jokerize all of the pictures in the photo gallery and tag all the wallpapers and movie posters in the downloads section. It was a lot of fun, and I guess that means I am partly the Joker. Cool, huh? Unfortunately the site switched back over to its clean, normal version on Monday night, but you can actually see some of the posters I jokerized over on the Dark Knight gallery at rottentomatoes.com.

Anyway, time to get dressed and head off to work. I just wanted to finally write about how awesome this stuff has been, because its been super sweet.

I predict the movie to be the biggest movie of all time. Well, maybe not, but it will definitely be in the top 5!

. . .

I am secure enough in my masculinity to admit that I do want to see Mamma Mia, as well. What can I say? I love the musical and the movie looks like a lot of fun.

Anyway, I hope everybody has an awesome weekend.

I love you all. Rock on.

Hooray for...Westwood!

So tonight Ian and I rushed home from work to try and see famous people at the Step Brothers premiere. Here is a photo tour of the premiere.

It officially started at 6:30, and we didn't get there until around ten after seven. As we got closer to the Village Theatre, we looked over towards the red carpet and spotted the one and only David Hasselhoff. Unfortunately, he moved quickly and I didn't get a good picture.

Ian and I crossed the street where we met Garrett to try and get a better view of the celebrities.


Here's the first guy I was able to snap a picture of, recently retired New York Giants player Michael Strahan.


After Strahan, Judd Apatow arrived. Judd Apatow directed the 40 Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up and produced many big movies, including Superbad and this movie, Step Brothers.


Mega-star Tom Arnold was the next to grace the red carpet. Anyone else remember the movie The Stupids?


Here's a great shot of my roommate and future Hollywood star Garrett Baker. That may not be an exaggeration, either. I'll know for sure how famous he'll be as soon as he finishes his screenplay, if he lets me read it.


It's crazy the people that come to these premieres. I think it was around now that the son from Married With Children showed up. Then came the one and only Barry Williams, aka Greg Brady. I'd like to have done something popular in my teenage years that I could ride for 40 plus years, too.

Soon after Barry came the person I was probably most surprised and excited to see, the stunning Sonya Walger (thank you imdb) who plays Penny Widmore on LOST.


She looked great and I just wanted so badly to run over and give her a hug and say "I'm so happy for you and Desmond!" Alas, television is not real, and the man she was with was definitely not Desmond Hume. Was that not like the best part of the season finale though? I mean for real. Man I love Lost.

Here's another fun picture of Penny having a good time.


Just then, my new main man Ed Helms showed up in the middle of the street. He wasn't wearing a classy suit this time or anything, so no one recognized him. After I took this picture, he walked right down the sidewalk behind a bunch of oblivious stargazers.


Here's Romany Malco, from the 40 Year Old Virgin, Weeds, and the Love Guru.


Here's Jane Lynch, again from the 40 Year Old Virgin.


As the premiere wound down, I was disappointed that I didn't get there soon enough to see Will Farrell and John C. Reilly. But as I looked back down the red carpet, I spotted the big guys themselves. I did see John C. Reilly's face, but didn't get a good picture of it. The curly haired guy is John C. Reilly, and the guy with glasses on the left is Adam McKay, the director of the movie and co-creator of the site Funny or Die with Will Farrell. You can see him at the beginning of "The Landlord" video. Anyway, here the stars are. Awesome!


Garrett got much better pictures of Will and John C. Reilly, and one of the back of Corey Feldman. I also saw Ted Danson in the distance and saw Jon Heder aka Napoleon Dynamite walk down the street, too. It was pretty much like ten times the number of famous people I had seen until now, and it was very sweet.

All of this happened just like two blocks from my house. How crazy is that? I definitely love Westwood.

All the Stars and Boulevards

So I know its been a long time since my last post. I'm sorry. I guess I just don't have as much motivation to write this quarter. Probably if I lived alone I'd be more likely to write more often. Regardless, here's an update. Enjoy!

Coming home from work last Wednesday night Ian and I walked by the premiere of Meet Dave. We stopped, hoping to look across the street and see someone famous. I looked across the street, and in a classy suit I saw the one and only Ed Helms, aka Andy on the Office. He was talking and posing with Gabrielle Union, star of Meet Dave. It was pretty exciting, and I immediately called Andrew Jarrell to let him know I was looking at Andy. There were guys there handing out tickets to the public to come in and watch the movie. I didn't want a ticket, but it was still cool. I found out the next day that Eddie Murphy didn't even go to the premiere. I guess he had more important things to do.

Here's the pic. Sorry its so blurry, you can still definitely tell its them though. Maybe I need a better stalker lens for a camera.


Tomorrow night the premiere of Step Brothers is happening in the neighborhood. I think Ian and I might try to duck out of work a little early to try and make it back at 6:30 and maybe see Will Farrell or John C. Reilly. Step Brothers looks like it could be very funny.

Saturday a bunch of us DAAP Digital Design kids went to Disneyland for the day. There were five of us, and it was definitely a lot of fun, in fact more fun than I thought it would be. Everybody had a great time, and we hit the park hard. I just knew I had to go on Indy, Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, and Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage, and we did them all. The park was not too crowded, we had to wait an hour or so to ride Finding Nemo, but everything else was just like a half hour wait at the most.


On Splash Mountain (probably my Favorite ride at the Magic Kingdom in Florida, but not quite as good for some reason I can't yet explain out here) we made the mistake of putting Ian and I in the front two seats of the log. With the heaviest people in the front of the boat, every single hill we went down caused a huge splash and lots of water to pour over the sides of the boat onto us. Ian was in the front row and got very wet, and behind him I definitely got the wettest I ever have on Splash Mountain.

Surprisingly, I might say that the best part of the day this time wasn't any specific ride, but it was rather when we went to meet the princesses. In fantasyland at the Princess Fantasy Faire you waited in line to meet 3 princesses. You didn't find out who the princesses were until you walked around the wall to walk over to them. I'm not usually one who takes a lot of time to meet characters at the park, but everybody else with me wanted to, so I was happy to go along.

As we were waiting, I found myself getting excited and nervous. I'm fine meeting the characters in full costume with heads covering their faces and all, but the face characters can sometimes make me nervous, because they can look right at you and talk to you and everything. I was intimidated by the thought of it, especially since they're princesses.


Anyway, we walked around the corner to find Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty and Snow White, the classics. Ian and I were the only two guys in the group, and we told the girls that we had to go up to the princesses first to get our picture taking with each princess, then the girls could come over for a group picture. So that's what we did. The first pictures with Cinderella kind of felt like my first School Dance pictures when you didn't know where to put your hands and how close to stand and all, but they were still really fun. All of the princesses were very nice and fun, but Snow White was by far the greatest. She made Ian and I stand like Princes, and then held our arms. It was pretty magical, and that meeting may have resulted in Snow White overtaking Belle as my favorite Disney woman. I don't know though, Belle still has the complete package.

Expect a bunch of amazing pictures to show up on Facebook very soon. I know Emily's Camera has a bunch of them. I'll post a link as soon as I can.

Here's something big and exciting. This morning, I went to the lot of a certain huge Hollywood movie studio where I was treated to a screening of a certain huge Summer movie, coming out in a little while.

It's super fun to go to the studio lots. Its awesome to have to show your driver's license to the security people and get your name crossed off a list. After we went through the metal detector, my supervisor Anette and I sat on the back of a golf cart and got a ride through the lot over to the screening room. It was classic Hollywood. A few of the soundstage doors were open, but I couldn't really see anything inside. I considered just running into some of the trailers to try and see who might be inside them.

I'm not going to go into any details about the movie right here and now, but let me just say that it was absolutely awesome. I really wish I could talk about it with everyone, but alas, I have to wait. The experience of seeing a movie like this before the general public is pretty surreal and crazy. Although I got to see a smaller movie on the lot back in the winter, this was even more amazing and is definitely an aspect of life and the business out here I could definitely get used to. Awesome.

. . .

So, I'm still working to figure out where I fit here and what my purpose is. There are, however, some things I've been feeling really good about. I've done a much better job than any quarter before at keeping in touch with people. I've made plenty of phone dates with friends and had awesome conversations. It's been amazing to see and know that the relationships that were so awesome and positive for me in Spring quarter don't need to die even though we're thousands of miles apart. Its encouraging and awesome to know that when a strong connection is made through God not even distance can get in the way of that. The love and support that so many of us have given to eachother can and will continue. It's just pretty mind-blowing and awesome.

There have been plenty of struggles and challenges this quarter and I know many more are on the way. I miss Cincinnati and everything and everyone that has made it home over the last three years, but I am getting to know some amazing people and having some amazing experiences out here.

I know the more I force myself to take chances and challenge myself, the more I'll grow. Who knows if I'll ever come back to LA? I don't, but I do know the city still has a lot to teach me. And I definitely want to keep learning.

You're all amazing and I love you.

Rock on.

R.O.C.K. in the U.S.A.

The week before the holiday absolutely flew by. There's a lot I'd like to write about, but that would make for an obscenely long post. I'll do what I can. Call me for details.

First of all, I don't know if I can post here the fact that the movie website I mostly designed at the end of winter quarter last time I was out here on co-op has finally gone live. Over the last few months, the folks at crew took my static design comps and animated them and built out the full website, which actually turned out pretty slick and cool, with some nontraditionally interesting and I think mostly successful navigation. Like I said, I don't know if I can post details about it here on the internet, so if you want the link, just ask me for it and i'll give it to you in a more private way that the man can't see and track as easily. I'm sure its not a big deal, I just don't want to risk being thrown out of town.

Wednesday Night after work I tried to head up to Universal Citywalk to catch night one of "Wicked Wednesdays" a competition that is running every wednesday night until the end of august. Basically it's like American Idol themed to Wicked. Okay, I know I'm a dork. Anyway, using the buses and subway it took about an hour to get there from work, and I only arrived with enough time to see the last two performers. Luckily they were good. It was cheesy but fun. Three of the ten performers got to move on to the final in August, where the winner gets a chance to have a walk-on role in Wicked. Wicked is produced by Universal Pictures, which is where the Universal Studios connection comes in. Anyway, I might go back some week, we'll see.

After the competition ended, I walked down the hill to the subway to come back to Westwood. It again took about an hour and 15 minutes on the subway and bus to make it back, which isn't actually all that terrible. I got home, and Tran (roommate) and Ian (fellow intern) and I went to the Bruin to see Get Smart at 10:30. It was good, but I definitely wasn't in the right mood and atmosphere to watch that movie. I needed to be in a "thursday night watching the office after hanging out and laughing with a big group of people" kind of mood. So it was entertaining, especially the Concert Hall part, but not as great as I had hoped. Maybe I'll re-watch it in a better atmosphere than a fairly empty movie theater at 10:30 at the end of a long Wednesday. Not that the company wasn't wonderful, because it certainly was.

To celebrate the fourth on Friday, a few of us decided to head down to Disneyland and camp outside the gates of the park and mooch off of the fireworks inside Disneyland. Garrett (roommate) and Amy (fellow UC Digital Co-op) went down and picked up Tegan then headed over to Downtown Disney where we had reservations at a classy italian restaurant.

Here's Tegan and Amy at the restaurant making Mouse Ears. Nobody really does that, but I just let them have fun.

After dinner we went over to the Esplanade and parked ourselves right in front of the giant letters at the California Adventure Gate facing back towards Disneyland. Here's Garrett and I excited for the fireworks. I think we was saying "Roooomies" when this picture was taken. Anyway, you can see the main street train station and the monorail beam in the background. Good times.

The fireworks were great, unfortunately they stopped right in the middle of the show. The lights on the train station came back up, and nobody really knew what had happened. We stood around for a while, hoping and waiting, but eventually we decided the fireworks weren't coming and it was time to head home. I later found out it was due to "winds at high elevations." Bummer, eh? I guess its tough to launch a huge fireworks show in the middle of the city of Anaheim. Like I said though, what we saw was great and it made for a wonderful night.

On the drive home up the freeways, it was pretty surreal driving up the highway being able to see fireworks shows going off all around us. Very cool and a nice cap to the day. We got home, and Garrett and I started to watch Batman Begins but only lasted about a half hour before being too tired to watch and having to go to bed.

Yesterday, Garrett and I went down to Long Beach to do some Kayaking in the cove. Garrett and I did a lot of hanging out this weekend, because we were pretty much the only two guys at our apartment all weekend. Phil was there too, but he's super busy and stuff.

Anyway, here's Long Beach. It was pretty cool. It was really windy, so there were a lot of people kite-surfing so that was cool. It was also interesting, there was a huge port up to the north of the beach, and out to the south was a giant oil rig. Here's a picture of the beach with an American flag, fitting for the weekend.

Kayaking was a lot of fun, and so were the Moon Jellies. Kayaking into the cove was pretty easy, with the wind at our backs, but kayaking back was much harder, coming back into the wind. I'm still feeling the burn a little today.

If you want to see more sweet pictures from summer so far, including Disneyland and Long Beach, check out this album on facebook. Also try and check out Garrett's pictures. He took some good ones.

So basically, I'm seeing so far that I'm definitely going to be making some crazy awesome friendships this time out. It was really cool to hang out with Garrett this weekend. He and I have a lot in common and had a lot of fun. Really, all of my roommates are very cool, and I'm just still feeling very blessed by my living situation. I don't have very much room for my stuff, but its a small price to pay.

I'm definitely being challenged to be taking advantage of my time here as much as possible. I know that I'm not supposed to burn myself out on anything, so I'm going to be working to balance all the things I need and want to be doing out here, whether its hanging out with people, volunteering, staying in touch with people, relaxing, having God time, whatever. I want to find that balance.

It's kind of weird, we passed a lot of huge yachts in the cove kayaking and Garrett and I got to talking a bit about dreams. Thinking about my dreams for my life, they are definitely not where they were even just a few years ago, when my greatest dreams were probably to work at Disney and live in New York and other stuff like that. Now, those are still things I might want to do and have interest in, but I think my deep dreams definitely now are moving away from physical things like that. I'd say now my greatest dream is simply to live life and love people. I want to take advantage of everything each day has to offer, and really connect with and love people in the process. I want the quality of my life and my relationships to be my focus.

That's what I want this summer (and my life) to be all about.

Wow, the post got a little deep, eh?

Well, I've talked the talk, now it's time to walk the walk...and maybe write shorter blog posts.

Time to make lunch then head off to mosaic for the evening.

I love you and miss you all.

Rock on.