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.
1 comment:
"live life and love people"
well said.
Post a Comment