Alright, since I’ve been lame and haven’t had the time (or patience really) to write anything in awhile, I’m going to post a photo journal. Just a bunch of random pics taken in the last month and a half basically.

Mount Wilson Observatory (just outside of Los Angeles/Pasadena) while on my way back to San Francisco.
Our roommate’s pug eating a playing card in my room.

One of the many random photos of sunsets from my room.

The 16th Street Tiled Steps Project (about 5 doors up the street from our place). This was just completed last month (and done entirely with private donations. Roughly $80,000).

Luxor Hotel and Casino at 4:30AM when we drove into Vegas for Michelle’s birthday.

A nice blurry photo of more of the Las Vegas Strip.

A syringe outside our hotel room at St. Tropez.

Crazy rays of sunshine one afternoon.

Driving from San Francisco to Las Vegas takes just over 9 hours. It’s been an interesting and eventful weekend celebrating my sister’s birthday.

Meghan, my sister and I left at around 7PM on Friday and eventually got into Las Vegas at around 4:30AM. We checked into the St. Tropez Hotel and noticed that our hotel room was definitely not up to par (this is the SAME place we stayed at in 2001 that had blood all over the hotel room… I’ll have to find and post that story for those who don’t know about it). There were dried remnants of vomit near one of the beds, the pillows and sheets were stained and dirty (thankfully, not with blood this time) and the place just reaked of cigarette smoke.

We slept for a few hours and awoke to the sound of a cell phone. It was our parents informing us that they were going to drive to Las Vegas for the weekend as well! That was awesome. However, this denied us getting anymore sleep (only 3 hours), so we awoke to straighten up the room and wait for friends. While waiting, we noticed how horrible this place actually was. There were needles in the parking lot, as well as used condoms. Definitely a classy looking place.

Michelle called our parents to complain and they offered to upgrade our accomodations! For Saturday night, our entire group of 11 people would be staying in the Bellagio! That was an amazing hotel and all of our friends were extremely thankful to our parents.

We had a quick blitz around Vegas, checking out various things such as a museum at the Venetian, the swimming pool at the Bellagio and then went out to eat at the Hard Rock Cafe with our parents. Afterwards, we went out on the strip to examine more casinos and drink/gamble away money.

Michelle ended up feeling sick, so she didn’t go out. A few of us checked out the Excalibur and Luxor and then headed back to our hotel to catch up on sleep we missed the previous night.

On our drive back on Sunday, Interstate 15 was shut down since there was an accident about half a mile ahead of us. We must have just missed it. After a half hour of sitting on the freeway, they began to let traffic through. The hold up was a motorcyclist that had somehow crashed.

As we drove by, we noticed things weren’t entirely right. In the middle of the road lay a body partly covered by a blanket. It’s legs and feet were sticking out from underneath in a very contorted position and a motorcycle pulled off to one side of the road. It was a horrid sight.

Besides funerals, this is the closest I have ever experienced to human death. It hits especially close, since that person was also most likely returning from Las Vegas for the weekend and had probably passed by our car not more than 10 minutes before hand. They were probably thinking of the money they had spent this weekend, or how anxious they wanted to get home… crashing probably wasn’t even on their mind. Ugh.

It’s also kind of sobering since I know quite a few friends, as well as my Dad, who ride motorcycles. You can be the most cautious driver/rider in the world, but it only takes one idiot to change everything. Meghan believes that she explicitly remembers the rider and believes it was a female. I haven’t found any news reports on it yet though.

In anycase, we finally made it home at 11PM on Sunday night. This weekend was a lot to deal with, physically and emotionally and it’s good to finally be home. Now to tackle school.

Since it’s International Talk Like A Pirate Day, I thought it is time to celebrate by combining two of my favorite things: Pirates and Haikus!

Avast ye Mateys!
It’s Talk Like A Pirate Day
Let’s plunder booty!

Anyway, I’ll post more on this past weekend in Las Vegas later (class soon).

Yay for modern technology! I just left school and am currently writing this on my laptop as I ride BART to go to the airport.

Anyway, September is going to be an extraordinarily busy month for me. Last weekend, I went on a camping trip with Meghan and friends to a place called Salt Point State Park. It’s a beautiful area along the coast of California, about 100 miles north of San Francisco. We spent a total of 4 days there.

On Saturday, we hiked roughly 8 miles around the park from our campsite, down to the beach and up into the mountains, checking out a variety of geology along the way. 😉 They have a pygmy forest there that is similar to one I’ve seen on a previous geology trip in Mendocino.

Sunday was interesting. We went canoeing on the Russian River, which is evidently a popular area for people to rent canoes in. It’s about a 10 mile canoe trip and we arrived at 10AM and were done by about 5PM. It was a leisurely trip that took the whole day. Before we began, we received an orientation that said about 1 in 5 canoes would flip over. Our group had 5 canoes and 3 of them flipped over. 2 of them within 5 minutes of starting!

We also had an interesting experience in giving some extra beer to a group of ladies who flashed us in return. It was interesting in the sense that they were the ones who offered to do that. We would have probably have given them some extra beer if they had just said hello to us. Regardless, it was a fun time for all involved, despite the moral accountability of some… or lack thereof.

We drove back home on Monday… having lunch at In N Out of course. The weekend was actually framed with In N Out, since we stopped by a new one on the way to our campsite on Friday. So that basically would make it a perfect weekend, no matter what happened.

Dan was on vacation this weekend as well and called me when he was in Lake Tahoe. I gave him some (limited) information on where we were going to camp and invited him along to hang out with us for the weekend. However, we were kind of flying by the seat of our pants and nothing was set in stone. I figured I would just call him when we got to our campsite.

So we get there, only to find out: NO CELL PHONE SERVICE! Crap! A forest ranger directs to an area down the road where there is limited cell phone coverage, so we go there. I leave a message on Dan’s phone (apparently it was garbled due to crappy reception) letting him know where we are. So we wait up the rest of the night for him and he doesn’t show up!

Damn!

Apparently, he ended up camping not more than 20 sites down from us in the same camp ground… looked for us in the morning but couldn’t find us and then took off back to Tahoe. I felt rotten that it didn’t work out. Meghan thought she saw him in a camp farther down when she went for a walk in the morning, but wasn’t entirely positive. And Dan thought he saw Meghan but wasn’t entirely positive either. Ah well!

I’m currently on my way to the airport to fly home this weekend. Nate, Nic and their significant others are going out to Lake Mojave this weekend, where we will partake in some water sports with Nate’s boat (his graduation present)! I haven’t been to the river in so long, so I’m just itching to go. Of course I doubt I’ll get a load of homework that I have to do done, but regardless!

Then next weekend is Michelle’s 21st birthday, which we’ll be celebrating in Las Vegas. So yet another weekend that I won’t be able to get stuff done. But it will be a great weekend, regardless.

Hopefully September doesn’t screw me up for the rest of the semester. It’s kind of a bad start. I’m basically doing everything that I didn’t get a chance to do this summer.

I somewhat enjoy my classes, though I have absolutely no clue what is going on in my Physics class. I understand the concepts of physics quite well. Explain something to me, I’ll be able to explain it back and give examples. But calculating things? Ugh! Math has never been my strong point, and the math in this course is intensive! Plus, since I don’t have a strong grasp on it anyway, I feel behind. (However, I did somehow manage to pull off a B+ in my Calculus II class.)

Hmm… I’m almost to the airport. Time to put away the laptop and actually post this on the site later! Until next time.

It’s almost like an unwritten rule of nature, or a law of physics that no one speaks about. The exact moment school started last Wednesday was the first time that we have seen blue skies in these parts of San Francisco since early June.

And it has been absolutely clear every day since! Not a cloud in the sky. The moment school begins and I no longer have time to take advantage of it, the weather clears up. Wonderful! At the moment, I can see the lights of the Sunset District going all the way out to the ocean (usually they are hidden in fog).

I took a photo this weekend out my bedroom window as the sun was setting. This is seriously the first time there’s been sunlight here in over 2 months. It feels great. 🙂

In other news, my roommate Kasi and I decided to venture into Golden Gate Park last week to verify a rumor. When you think of New York’s Central Park (and maybe Tracy can attest to this), what kind of animals do you think of? A few squirrels? Some pigeons maybe? (Of course there is the occasional alligator, but whatever, Los Angeles has that too. 😛 )

I’m willing to bet there are no BUFFALO in Central Park! However, you can find them in Golden Gate Park! Oh yes my friends. And I have the pictures to prove it.

There is a full on herd of buffalo in Golden Gate Park. It ranks as one of the most awesome things I’ve ever seen. And it’s pretty random. You’re just driving/walking/running through the park and all of the sudden you come across this paddock full of buffalo.

Lastly, I was actually able to knock off two books on my list before school started! East of Eden and The Monkey Wrench Gang. I’m nearly done with A Walk in the Woods, but that might take awhile thanks to the amount of reading I must do for school now.

School begins tomorrow. Since I don’t have “priority registration,” many of the classes that I wanted to take are now full. Ugh! So I have to fight and try to add them.

Regardless, the semester has some HARD classes, but I have a lot of time available to study. The classes I need/want to take this semester are Chemistry II, Physics III, Environmental Solutions and Problems, Swimming, and an independent research class for my senior thesis.

Providing I get into everything I want, I’ll have the following school schedule.

M: 10AM – 10PM
T: 9:30AM – 5PM
W: 10AM – 11AM
Th: 9:30AM – 5PM
F: No Class

So I have one particularly brutal day (at the beginning of the week… go figure), but it has about 3 hours in between each class (3 total classes that day). Sounds good to me! Here’s to hoping I get it.

Part of me kind of wants to not try and take a swim class… then I wouldn’t have to go to school on Wednesdays AT ALL. We’ll see what the next two weeks is like. Perhaps I won’t care much for it and I’ll decide to drop it.

Courtesy of my room mates, I went to Lake Tahoe last weekend. Despite it being relatively close to San Francisco (roughly 3 hours with no traffic), I hadn’t had the chance to go there. The clear blue water and overwhelming size of the lake were amazing things to behold. The water temperature was almost perfect as well! All five of us in the house ended up going. It was basically the first “field trip” that we’ve all done since we have lived together. It was an absolute blast.

After returning Sunday night, I left on Monday and flew back to So Cal for a few days to visit my parents. My sister was also down here, so it was the first time we’ve all been together as a family since last Christmas. Michelle flew back to the Bay Area last night and I’m leaving early tomorrow morning.

Among the things I accomplished on this trip: A surprise visit to the dentist that my Mom had quickly scheduled. Wonderful! Luckily, it was a good report for my teeth. Usually I don’t like going because I feel berated for the fact that I don’t floss as often as the dentist wants me too. I’ve been doing better though and she said there is a definite improvement! Yes!

School starts again next week. This should be my last serious semester of school. If everything works out, I am set to graduate in May! It’s about time. 6 years to complete my undergraduate work is embarrasing. Of course once that is done, I’m going straight into grad school, so no big deal ultimately.

Lastly, in the last week, I’ve added 2 new In N’ Out locations to my list (which hasn’t yet been updated). That includes the In N’ Out near Studio City that Tracy reminded me of in a previous post. That brings the total to 24!

I present to you yet another example of time wasting techniques, perfected by yours truly! Many have heard of the infamous map that lists the locations of all the In-N-Out Burgers that I have ever been to, but few have actually seen it.

How do I remember all of these? I really have no clue. People have reminded me about the time I went somewhere with them or a random thought will appear. Anyway, I decided to map out every location of what I consider one of the most awesome burger joints around.

Enjoy!

I don’t read much during the school year since I feel guilty when I read for pleasure, knowing full well that I have some sort of reading I should be doing instead for classes that I’m taking. That’s why every summer I amass this insanely large reading list.

For example, this is my current reading list of books that I’ve found through various means (friend’s recommendations, reviews, or curiosity of similar subjects):

• The Whole Shebang by Timothy Ferris
• A Walk In The Woods – Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail by Bill Bryson
• The Monkey Wrench Gang by Edward Abbey
• Salam Pax – The Clandestine Diary of an Ordinary Iraqi
• East of Eden by John Steinbeck
• The Math Gene by Keith Devlin
• The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut

So the summer is quickly flying by and you might ask, “How many of those have you finished?” Exactly zero! Oh yes. Maybe that has to do with me reading quite a few of them at the same time. It would be nice to finish at least one by the time school starts in a few weeks. We’ll see how that goes!

Anyway, my apologies for the lack of updates. I’ve been quite busy with the outreach program the past 2 weeks. It’s a lot of fun and we’re taking the kids to a lot of really neat places too, such as Capitola (Santa Cruz), Point Reyes, Menlo Park to see the USGS and mueseums as well.

I have mastered the art of cloning. This will definitely help with the upcoming year.