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!

a fairly social day

Today I got to spend a fair amount of time with several different people.

This morning Andrew was super nice and took me to Target to return a bike helmet that I bought before I knew that Karen's sister Connie was lending me hers to use this summer (so nice of her!!). So that was a nice 20$ back on my card (which is good because I've only got like 50$ to last me till Thursday...I think. Hopefully payday is this Thursday?). Then I had a Target coupon, from when I got the helmet in the first place last week, for 50 cents off Poptarts. I went ahead and used that because although they're not the healthiest food (far from it) they are nice treats sometimes and they are really good at filling me up and keeping me full for several hours. So a box of 8 Poptarts ended up costing me 1.02$ (nice...especially because the same box would have cost 2.50$ at Ralph's!). I also took out that 20$ in cash. Around here, cash is always good to have on hand. Some places don't take debit/credit and other places it can be a lot faster for you if you pay in cash.

So then we drove to West L.A. so Andrew could get something he forgot at his grandpa's house. It was a pretty area and I love traveling around so I was happy :)  The L.A. freeway system is cool but crazy and totally different from everything I've ever known so it always takes me a little bit to get used to it again. Driving around here in general is kind of crazy all the time though, not just on the freeways!

Here is something we saw on the freeway--we can't figure out why Pepsi would just have a huge ad that says LOL. Because you laugh out loud when you drink Pepsi? No idea ...

After that we went to this restaurant (it's not nice enough to be called a restaurant though, more like a fast food place but better) called Zankao Chicken. They have really good chicken dishes there. This is what I had:

A quarter of a chicken with hummus, pita bread, and rice, and this super yummy garlic sauce stuff. I don't know what the purple things are, but I think the other bit is tomato. Anyway, I don't really like hummus and I didn't like the purple stuff, but the chicken and pita and garlic sauce and rice were delicious!

So then we headed back to El Segundo... Andrew was again super nice and took me to Ralph's to get groceries that I already ran out of. Who knew I would go through cereal, chicken, and granola bars so quickly?! Also, here is another funny picture from the freeway. Seriously, 341$? Not just, like, 340$? 

Also, if you were ever curious, this is what the place I work at looks like:

And then another friend from work, Chris, and I went for a bike ride / roller skate ride on the Strand. 

At first we were going to try to get up to Venice or Santa Monica (a good hour or two from El Segundo) but he realized he had to be home too soon for us to do that (he lives like an hour away) so we ended up going to Hermosa Beach and back. On the way there we stopped in El Porto and saw my friend Mallory from DePauw -- it's really funny, we almost see each other more in CA than in IN! 

On the way back from Hermosa we stopped again in Manhattan Beach and had ice cream at the Manhattan Beach Creamery. They have super good ice cream there, and now apparently they sell candies and chocolates and all sorts of baked goods, even popcorn and cotton candy! But they sacrified like half their seating for it. Anyway, it was super tasty and gave us the energy to get back to my place where Chris could start heading home from. 

Really fun ride. It was SO pretty today! We could see for miles and miles --- we even saw Catalina Island! And that's pretty rare!

North toward Santa Monica

El Porto

Later in the evening Karen and her best friend Gloria and I went to dinner at Scotty's in Hermosa Beach. We had a great window view of the pier and sunset and I got some nice pictures of the sun going down! Awesome dinner, too. I really enjoy Karen and I have liked all of her friends a great deal as well!

View down Grand Ave. in El Segundo

Sunset pictures from Scotty's

Hermosa Beach, CA