Alright, looks like everything is back in working order. The photo gallery has finally been restored, using the latest version available. Let’s see how long it lasts this time.

The past two days have been absolutely gorgeous up here. Not a single cloud in the sky, and not too hot either. I took a few pictures today from the small park across the street from my house. I ended up stitching together this (beware 1.4mb!) picture of San Francisco to create a neat little panorama view. Quite awesome I think!

Also, I applied the same method to take a picture of my room now that I’m finally moved back in. This didn’t come out as well as the San Francisco panorama though. All I really need to do in my room is hang some posters up on the wall and everything will be set! If one of the roommates upstairs moves out, then I’ll probably end up taking the room and I can finally get rid of that blasted loft bed. Anyway, pic of the room.

I also discovered an interesting thing while browsing through some random recording archives on my computer. This is an interesting (albeit simple) little chord progression, but I love the way it sounds. I might have to play with that a little more. Anyway, this mp3 is about 500kb. Check it out!

Going over to Berkeley tonight to hang out with my sister and David for a bit. I’ll have to write more about school later (as well as how I made a great fool of myself tumbling down the stairs).

Stay tuned! 🙂

After an enormously tedious 8 hour drive on Monday, I am finally back in San Francisco. I think that I would normally get depressed or saddened by foggy and gloomy days, but when I arrived to find my neighborhood enveloped in fog, it just felt so awesome! It was that perfect kind of weather that is just *perfect* for a fire. Granted, we don’t have any wood for our fireplace at the moment…

Everything is finally unpacked and organized. My room is kind of small for the amount of stuff that I have though. However, it still has a nice, small dorm type of feel to it. It actually looks lived in, especially compared to the baren and uninviting place it was before I left for my internship. One of our roommates upstairs may be moving out in about a month, and his room is a bit bigger, with an awesome view of the ocean too! I might try to snag that. It’s about $140 extra a month, which isn’t too bad in the scheme of things.

I was also able to land a job at school! I’ll be working on the outreach program for the geosciences department, helping high school students with various research projects. I’ll also be maintaining their webpage for them as well. That stuff is right up my alley and should be relatively simple to do.

First day of classes was today too. It’s going to be a brutal schedule. I’ll be on campus for nearly 8 hours a day for 3 days a week. Despite those huge hours, I still will be going to school the other two days as well! Yes! School every single day. This is going to be brutal. The schedule that seems to be set in stone at the moment is: Sedimentology & Stratigraphy, Structural Geology, Mineralogy and Violent Oceans & Atmosphere. I will be having an enormous amount of field trips to go on for these classes, so I’ll have relatively few free weekends this semester. We’ll just have to see how it pans out!

Dan and I went on a short camping trip to the Sierras this weekend. That was a blast. We did quite a bit of off roading in his newly aquired Jeep. We discovered some interesting things on these expeditions, such as the Inyo Craters. I’ll try to post some pictures soon, once I get my gallery back online.

It is the most wonderful feeling in the world to randomly be working on your website, only to realize some jackass has decided to take out his frustrations of being a socially inept computer nerd who will never talk to a girl in real life on your website. Ah yes. It has happened again! This time with the latest version of gallery. To whomever has done this, I wish nothing but death upon you. Finding out the IP address is a fairly simple task as well, so the webhost will be contacted.

In other news. I started putting up photos from Nic and Kristen’s wedding. You can check that stuff out here. More will hopefully be going up soon.

Hung out with some old friends from high school that I haven’t seen in over two years. Kellie and Matt. That was fun, catching up on old times, especially since Matt and I had first met around third grade! Completely crazy.

Dan and I depart tomorrow (tonight?) evening for the Sierras. What a nice way to relax and end the summer. I’m looking forward to it.

EDIT – 3:11 AM – After playing around with the gallery for that past 2 and a half hours and nothing seeming to work, I have disabled the gallery section. I really can’t do anything until I am on a decent internet connection. Unfortunately, that won’t be until next week when I am back up in San Francisco. Ugh. Screw these immature “hackers”.

I am now officially done with my internship. The past 13 or so weeks have been an amazing learning experience that absolutely flew by. Participating in actual research is tedious, but fun. I really can’t wait for grad school. Then again, we’ll see how I feel about it after two more years of college. 😉

Last week was just incredibly busy. It started off with a memorial service for Dr. Mehegan. There were quite a few students there that I remember in some of his classes over two years ago. It was obvious by the large number of people there that he had a huge impact on so many people’s lives.

The rest of the week was basically working all day and then hanging out with friend’s at night. Got to hang out with my newfound friend Brandee again! That was definitely fun and nice to finally get out of the apartment and actually do some stuff. On Thursday night we went to a bar in Hollywood. There have been a few posts where I explain how crazy San Francisco is and what a small world it is up there. I’m beginning to think it isn’t so much San Francisco as it is me!

Towards the end of the night I saw a girl walk by and thought she looked extremely familiar. I remembered from where… I used to work with her up in San Francisco! Now, 3 months later and 450 miles away, I see her in a bar randomly. That was the craziest thing ever.

On Friday, as I was about to leave work and go back to the apartment to pack up everything, Phil called. It turns out he is visiting California for a week (he currently has an internship in New York) and was driving through LA. We ended up hanging out and checking out the Getty Center, which is massive. There was quite a lot of neat art there though (and even some interesting geology stuff! All the stones there are made of travertine and taken from the same rock quarry that was used to build the Colliseum in Rome). I also got to meet his girlfriend Liz. She is quite a rad person as well. They ended up staying the night at my apartment before they continued their drive up the coast to San Francisco.

Moved back here on Saturday and have just been pretty much lazing around at the moment. It is quickly dawning on me that I have an disgusting amount of stuff to do before I leave. I need to repack most of my things, think about which things I want to leave behind and take, reserve a U-Haul truck to drive up north on Monday, drop off some keys and parking passes to UCLA, tear down a deck at our house, since I promised my dad I would do that and also pack for a camping trip Dan and I are going on this weekend. Ah! The camping trip to the Sierras will be a nice way to end the summer and is almost reminescent of last year where we left right before school started.

A few posts ago I was complaining how I didn’t get to exchange contact information with some of my fellow interns from the field trip. Thanks to the wonders of the internet, that doesn’t matter! On Tuesday night, I got to hang out with my new found friend, Brandee. It was definitely a blast! She is one of those crazy people you meet who just has an amazingly charismatic personality. It’s kind of sad I meet awesome people right before I leave to go back up north, but I think we’ll stay in touch. Anyway, you are definitely rad! 🙂

Leaving for Las Vegas shortly for Nic and Kristen’s wedding. I can’t believe the wedding date is almost here. Time flies. This will definitely be an interesting weekend to say the least. I’ll be back on Sunday.

Ouch. I just found out that one of my favorite professors of all time, Dr. James Mehegan of Riverside Community College, passed away of a heart attack last week, doing what he loved the most: kayaking. It is because of him that I am a geology major, and he has had such a huge impact on my life.

Last week as I left for my SCEC trip and driving up coast near Santa Barbara, I was reminded of a similar trip that I had made long ago in his class and made a mental note to write him an email when I returned. Too late now I suppose. 🙁

You will be missed Jim. Thanks for everything.

Some of the prettiest areas I have ever seen in my life are along California’s central coast. There are just so many pristine areas, as well as scenic views. I love driving up the 1/101 freeways on the way up north.

I got to do part of that drive again this week as SCEC hosted a field trip for all of the interns. It was a fun group of people to spend the week with. We started out on Tuesday by doing presentations of our summer research projects. The highlight on Wednesday was a trip to the Hearst Castle (which is just absurd on so many levels!). On Thursday, we visited Parkfield and a new project that is under construction, named the San Andreas Fault Observatory at Depth. Friday involved a trip to Wallace Creek on the Carrizo Plains and then back home to Southern California.

Also met a lot of interesting people on this trip. Though as luck would have it, we didn’t have a chance to exchange contact info. There are quite a few that I would love to keep in contact with. All of the interns will be getting together at the end of September in Palm Springs, for the annual SCEC meeting though, so that will be a fun chance to see everyone again.

Finally getting a chance to go hiking tomorrow with a few friends. Nothing too rigorous. It will be nice to finally get a chance to do that this summer! Only 2 more weeks of this internship left, and 3 more weeks until I head back up to San Francisco. I am quite excited.

Last interesting bit of info: I was doing a search on google for “Rockbandit” and came across something interesting. I wrote a quick little review after seeing Angie Mattson back in June. Evidentially, my comments are now a testimonial on her reviews page. That is quite flattering. Thanks Angie. 🙂

Alright, gotta get ready for a barbeque tonight with the gang.

This week, all the interns for S.C.E.C. are going on a geology field trip to San Simeon. Along the way, we will be checking out the sights and sounds of the San Andreas Fault, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo. Expected to return on Friday night. This will be quite fun. It will also be the first geology trip I’ve ever been on where we stay in hotels! I’m so used to the whole camping thing. I miss it!Tomorrow, I deliver a presentation at USC on what I’ve been working on this summer. It’s roughly a 10 minute talk using Powerpoint. I started working on it yesterday and still have a bit to do. I need to crank out the rest of it tonight, that way I have something to talk about tomorrow. Sadly, the results are lacking. The reflection phases we’re looking for in seismograms are not there. That is a bummer. Despite this though, I have learned so much and it’s definitely been a fascinating summer.

In other news, my braces are now completely off! Oh yes! Pictures will follow soon.

Nic and Kristen’s wedding is in two weeks too. Eek! So much to do before then.

Awesome! The top braces were taken off today, as well as some of the bottom braces. They are leaving some on for another week to get a tooth back into alignment. Then as of next week they will all be removed! The only thing that remains to do is to whiten them a bit and then fix my chipped tooth!

I am so damn happy. 🙂

Drove back to Redlands today since I have an orthodontist appointment tomorrow. I am supposed to get my braces off! I highly doubt that is going to happen though since it seems like there are a few spots that need to line up ever so slightly. We’ll see what they say.

I saw Tsunami Bomb this weekend on Friday and Saturday night. They put on a great show! I ended up bringing my digital camera to the show on Friday and took 127 pictures! I didn’t realize I had taken so many. After sorting through them and removing the out of focus shots and pictures of the back of people’s heads, I uploaded them to the gallery. Check them out!

Some highlights:

And lastly, Em and I after the show:

All in all, it was an awesome experience. As I’ve said on numerous other occasions, they are probably the nicest group of people I’ve ever met. I wish them luck on their upcoming tour. They are great!

Anyway, until next time!