How I spent my summer vacation.
Jul. 18th, 2003 02:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shirenomadFor those who didn't notice, I've been gone all week. Been keeping myself busy, and it's taken me a full day just to wind down.
Took Amtrak up to Silicon Valley Friday. That was an adventure in itself: I spent the morning furiously finishing off the latest leg of my thesis project, intent to send it in before I left. Couldn't figure out why it wasn't working until an hour before my train left. So I patched that up, made a few last code corrections, emailed it all off to my advisor, grabbed my bags, raced to the station, and caught the train with three minutes to spare. And praised God all the way up the coast. (Phew!)
Spent Saturday with my family. Much of that with Grammy (my grandmother). She's my sole remaining grandparent, and after losing two of them within a two month timespan back during freshman year, I've made it a point to appreciate the last one while I've still got her. She's got this cute little device called a Mailbug, which is basically a mini-computer designed solely to handle email. Great idea for the technologically impaired. So I helped her figure out a few features she was still confused about. We also had lunch, chatted about stuff, and tried to keep her hyperactive dog in her own lap (rather than jumping into mine).
Sunday I met a few friends at church in the morning and had lunch with the Nguyens. My family and theirs are pretty close: I went through high school AND college with Monica, Mom's best friends with Mrs. Nguyen, and Mr. Nguyen got me an internship at his company for two summers (he's checking right now to see if he can get me a permanent position now that I've got a diploma... *crosses his fingers*). They just recently started attending our church too. So it was fun catching up with them.
Sunday afternoon was the first reason I picked this weekend to come up: Steve and Aimee, founders of SILWest, are moving to the other coast. So big farewell party at one of the player's houses; food, reminiscing, all that. Going to miss those two.
Second reason came Monday. It's time for an admission: I'm seeing other message boards. ^^; Specifically, the forums for College Roomies From Hell!!! Real fun bunch. About 25 forum members, plus Maritza Campos herself, decided to converge on Sacramento this past weekend, then head south to San Diego for Comic Con Wednesday. I didn't have the time or finances for the second leg, but I gladly dropped by for a couple days to meet all these friends for the first time. Monday was the visit to Six Flags Marine World (last time I was there, the "Six Flags" part wasn't, so it was interesting checking out how much the place had changed). Tuesday was just hang out at the hotel -- got in some swimming, lots of video games, some Freakazoid (one of the attendees had every episode)... And oh yeah, Princess Bride. Three of our number hadn't seen it, including the guest of honor, so we felt the need to rectify that.
That mini-con sort of wore me out toward the end, though... I'm a definite introvert, and although I can handle social occassions just fine normally, that was essentially 48 hours of continual interaction. (With a fairly rowdy bunch, no less.) So as fun as it was, I was glad I didn't sign on for Comic-Con afterward. Instead, they were good enough to drop me back off at Irvine on the way down (the Amtrak station, with my car in long-term parking, is a mere five minutes off the interstate). Which meant five bucks for my share of gas instead of $45 for a train ticket back down. But it also meant fourteen people in three cars, cruising through the baking San Joaquin Valley... urgh...
But anyway, back, caught up on things... now if you'll excuse me... *passes out*
Took Amtrak up to Silicon Valley Friday. That was an adventure in itself: I spent the morning furiously finishing off the latest leg of my thesis project, intent to send it in before I left. Couldn't figure out why it wasn't working until an hour before my train left. So I patched that up, made a few last code corrections, emailed it all off to my advisor, grabbed my bags, raced to the station, and caught the train with three minutes to spare. And praised God all the way up the coast. (Phew!)
Spent Saturday with my family. Much of that with Grammy (my grandmother). She's my sole remaining grandparent, and after losing two of them within a two month timespan back during freshman year, I've made it a point to appreciate the last one while I've still got her. She's got this cute little device called a Mailbug, which is basically a mini-computer designed solely to handle email. Great idea for the technologically impaired. So I helped her figure out a few features she was still confused about. We also had lunch, chatted about stuff, and tried to keep her hyperactive dog in her own lap (rather than jumping into mine).
Sunday I met a few friends at church in the morning and had lunch with the Nguyens. My family and theirs are pretty close: I went through high school AND college with Monica, Mom's best friends with Mrs. Nguyen, and Mr. Nguyen got me an internship at his company for two summers (he's checking right now to see if he can get me a permanent position now that I've got a diploma... *crosses his fingers*). They just recently started attending our church too. So it was fun catching up with them.
Sunday afternoon was the first reason I picked this weekend to come up: Steve and Aimee, founders of SILWest, are moving to the other coast. So big farewell party at one of the player's houses; food, reminiscing, all that. Going to miss those two.
Second reason came Monday. It's time for an admission: I'm seeing other message boards. ^^; Specifically, the forums for College Roomies From Hell!!! Real fun bunch. About 25 forum members, plus Maritza Campos herself, decided to converge on Sacramento this past weekend, then head south to San Diego for Comic Con Wednesday. I didn't have the time or finances for the second leg, but I gladly dropped by for a couple days to meet all these friends for the first time. Monday was the visit to Six Flags Marine World (last time I was there, the "Six Flags" part wasn't, so it was interesting checking out how much the place had changed). Tuesday was just hang out at the hotel -- got in some swimming, lots of video games, some Freakazoid (one of the attendees had every episode)... And oh yeah, Princess Bride. Three of our number hadn't seen it, including the guest of honor, so we felt the need to rectify that.
That mini-con sort of wore me out toward the end, though... I'm a definite introvert, and although I can handle social occassions just fine normally, that was essentially 48 hours of continual interaction. (With a fairly rowdy bunch, no less.) So as fun as it was, I was glad I didn't sign on for Comic-Con afterward. Instead, they were good enough to drop me back off at Irvine on the way down (the Amtrak station, with my car in long-term parking, is a mere five minutes off the interstate). Which meant five bucks for my share of gas instead of $45 for a train ticket back down. But it also meant fourteen people in three cars, cruising through the baking San Joaquin Valley... urgh...
But anyway, back, caught up on things... now if you'll excuse me... *passes out*
