the week

So this week ended up being pretty busy but at the same time not that busy. Unfortunately for me, my computer is slowly dying (it's 4 years old this month, actually) and several days earlier this week it was being a real pain to try to do anything with. Also our Internet went out randomly during a time I wanted to blog. Anyway, let it be known that some of the money I'm earning this summer is going to buy myself a solid desktop, a widescreen monitor, and a netbook (or maybe just a superlight laptop). The laptop I'm currently on is going to turn into a fulltime Linux machine, instead of just having it partitioned.

Anyway, the week. Work was good. For my Python work, I finished grabbing all the data from the PDF and putting it in Excel. (This takes a lot more time and a ton of regular expressions than it seems at first glance.) So now I get to start on using Java to make SQL queries to look at data from this database and compare it with the data I found, which is now also in a database. It should be a lot of fun! I have never actually used SQL or databases before so I get to learn a lot. For my other work, I finished the script in Java I was working on this whole last week (I thought it'd take me like 2 days. It ended up taking 5-6. Sigh.). I am excited because everything I've done this summer so far has actually had a legitimate use, is important, and is actually kind of a time schedule. Woohoo! Yay for feeling useful!

After work I have been biking home. I changed up my route on a couple of days, so that sometimes I was riding on a highway (!). There is a super nice bike path on this highway, and there are very few hills. Monday I am trying out a new route one of my roommate's friends (and now one of my friends), John, gave me. He says there shouldn't be that many hills on this one either. 

Tuesday, I visited with John and Meryl for a little bit. Meryl is letting me borrow her ukulele and music for the summer! We chatted for quite a while (I could talk to them for hours!) and then I realized it was past my bedtime (seriously, a 21-year-old should not go to bed before retired people) so I had to leave.

Wednesday, a friend from last summer, Alex, started work again out here, which is awesome. Even more awesome is that he only lives a few streets away from me! So we ended up grabbing a drink at one of the bars here, going to dinner, and going down to the beach. Really fun night.

Thursday is Farmer's Market and Ukulele Day -- it is definitely my most favorite day of the week!! I picked up some DELICIOUS strawberries at the market, and also got some apples, zucchini, and fresh-made kettle corn! It's made in a real kettle! So cool and yummy. Some of the strawberries I took with me to ukulele class. People tend  to bring food to share with everyone else. It was really funny because Meryl also brought strawberries (from the same stand that I got mine, even!) and angel food cake. And someone else brought cookies. So we had a lot of food :) Class was fun. Meryl thinks I am pretty good at ukulele for only having played it for like 2 weeks. I am pretty sure it's all the guitar coming through. Learning on 6 strings and going to 4 makes it pretty easy!

Yesterday was Meryl's birthday. Karen and I went over to help her celebrate and most of their family was there. It was really fun, and I got to meet some interesting people. I felt like a grown-up because I was offered wine. Haha. The things that make you feel grown up! 

I wanted to sleep in this morning but I woke up at 7.45 so no go on that. I might be taking a nap later then ;) Should be a fun day - going down to Hermosa Beach for an Art Walk!