Live Free, Or Die

One of the more aggressive state mottos, isn’t it? I am proud to say it belongs to the state of my second home, New Hampshire. This also became the motto for the weekend.
Not only is the motto quite aggressive, so is the summer weather, which I happily got a nice dose of this past weekend. I left cozy LA and headed east for my granddad’s 90th birthday. Alex and I left LAX at noon on Friday and arrived in muggy Boston at 11:30 pm. Summers smell and sound different in NH. First of all, crickets don’t care what time of day it is, they will chirp whenever they darn well please. I assume they do this because of the heat, the humidity, and their pig-headedness. As for smell, it sometimes reminds me of a paper bag of fresh peas on a hot day. While perhaps this is not the description most people would lend to the east coast, it is the first thing that came to mind for me.
Alexis rented her first car so that we could make the couple hour drive up to Lake Sunapee, NH. Despite the late hour air conditioning was a must. The further north we drove, the more frequent we encountered flashes of lighting. I took this as nature signaling to us that we were drawing closer to our destination. Nature was inevitably right.
Saturday was devoted to exploring the lake and finding ways to cool off. We boated around the lake for a few hours then docked for lunch. Being a completely land bound creature I found it very amusing that we boated to lunch. At about 3 we tied up the boat and headed back to the house. Dissatisfied to have left the water so soon, Lutz, Alexis and I went right back to the lake but this time with kayaks! Lutz, being a much more proficient kayaker, powered ahead in straight lines while Alexis and I followed in straight but short and very angled lines. Going in one direction was not our forte. While on the water I had the privilege to witness a boat get pulled over by the water police (not their official name). No life jackets? Live free or die! Wake in the no wake zone? Live free or die!
Picture of the lake and Alexis:




We paddled all the way out to the inhabited island on the lake and back. Why someone would want to live on an island so that they must boat everywhere beats me. We pulled out of the water just before a thunderstorm struck. These storms are truly impressive. The lightening was frighteningly frequent and we could see the actual bolt every time. Although I was in the house by the time the lightening started, I felt unsafe holding my metal soda can.
The stormy view from the house, it turned out much more blue than it seemed in person:


The next day was entirely devoted to my granddad’s birthday. We ate at Simon Pearce, naturally, which is by far my granddad’s favorite restaurant. He is well known there by all the staff and has been eating there for an uncountable number of years. Lunch was amazing and about 4 times larger than it needed to be. Lunch went long, as birthday lunches should, so that Alexis and I were scheduled to have dinner with our granddad only a few hours later. In the few hours in between we decided on a trip to Woodstock, VT. Not the best idea really. While Woodstock was undeniably cute, it was also a Sunday after 5pm. Not much of anything in either New Hampshire or Vermont is open on Sunday after 5. We drove to Hanover after that. It was nice to visit Dartmouth, even if for so short a time, I had felt odd being so near without going to campus. Dinner followed.
Monday was our last day. In the morning my dad, Alexis and I went for a walk.


A cool rock discovered on the walk:


Mt. Sunapee:


Then after dropping Christine’s mom off at the bus stop, we headed into New London, another small town that I will liken to Woodstock. Happily it was Monday before 5 so we actually got the chance to go into some shops. It was all very cute and small. Then we went to get some super fresh produce from the locals of New Hampshire. By we I mean Alexis and Christine shopped while I stood outside and took pictures of the Monarchs and flowers.


There was more boating in the afternoon and more picture taking.
Then dinner with dad, Lutz, Christine, and Alexis. In case you do not know, Lutz and Christine are very good family friends. A lot like family. Lutz is also my dad’s business partner. Now you do know, and more interesting dinner conversation you will be pressed to find. I cannot even begin to relay all the things we discussed.
After dinner Alexis and I drove to Boston to stay the night there before our very early flight home. This brought a close to our “live free or die” spree as soon as we passed by “Massachusetts welcomes you.” How friendly.

Descanso Gardens

The roses are in full bloom in Pasadena.











Rebecca and I visited the Descanso Gardens in Pasadena on Monday. Rebecca informed me that Pasadena is where the old money of LA lives. Keep in mind that old in California is not the kind of old you would find in Europe. We both agreed that it made no sense for those people to have chosen Pasadena to inhabit back in the day when they could have chosen the coast. The Descanso Gardens are on the property of a one Mr. E. Manchester Boddy, publisher of the Los Angeles Daily News, who purchased the land in 1937 and built a 22 room mansion in addition to the beautiful gardens. Now anyone willing to make the drive to Pasadena may enjoy the beautiful respite from LA city life.
I suggested to my friends, Rebecca and Anna, that we go to the gardens on Monday so as to continue my very slow exploration of all things Los Angeles. Sadly, Anna could not make it, but Rebecca and I had a fine time and many a one-word conversation.

Pond!


Rabbit!


Fish!


Hottt....


Throughout our wanderings we discussed the sorts of things you would expect a couple of friends having an afternoon completely planned out for chatting and relaxing to discuss: places we would like to travel, relationship issues, the kind of house we would like to live in if we can one day afford a house, and several other good things. We came across a small maze intended for little children and decided to wind our way to the center and have a sit on the tiny benches awaiting us there.


In addition to mini benches there were also mini railroads tracks complete with mini railroad sign, either that or I am a true giant.


After we got thoroughly turned around and lost in the lilac garden, which is the smallest garden there I might add, but in the corner so easy to get disoriented in, we found the Japanese garden.


In the Japanese garden I found vandalized bamboo. What? Yes, graffiti-ed bamboo. Disappointing isn't it? Who carves stupid stuff into beautiful plants? I feel the same way about graffiti over murals. Why would you do that? There are just some people I may never understand.


Please enjoy some more pictures taken at the gardens, no grafitti please:

Saturday at the Archive

I find that in the past few days I have been far too efficient at the archive. I have organized and formatted a hundred something scans, entered information on countless images in the database, and written up a guide for any future ASIFA intern. I have worn myself out. I am now sitting at the archive watching little blue lines snake across the screens on either side of me. The database and the intern guide sit open on the computer directly in front of me while Steve’s laptop, conveniently located at my right hand, is happily burning backups. With all of this going on at once you might wonder why it is I am writing a blog post. Good question. I am just a tad bored. Just a bit. I am a bit hungry too come to think of it. And sleepy.
I am happy that I have gotten so much work done but now I don’t really know what to do. That isn’t true at all. I know exactly what I can do because there is always more to do at the archive. I just don’t have the motivation to do it right now since most of what I have left for myself is pretty mindless and repetitive. Not good for Gemmas when hungry or sleepy.
Okay I just got some food so now I feel qualified to make the decision of how long I will stay at the archive tonight. Last night I stayed very late at the archive, which I did all the time in the winter but find it harder and harder to do this summer. This resulted in an invitation to Bob’s Big Boy. I had never been there so I was intrigued. While we were unlucky with the fact that the parking lot was packed with a whole bunch of people milling about looking at each other’s cars, we were quite fortunate in the booth we were seated at. We were shown to the booth that Steve referred to as the Beatle booth. It is the booth that The Beatles ate at when they were at Bob’s Big Boy. I ordered waffles because they are not served at the Coral until midnight and that is too late. After several hours went by I also got a cup of coffee to fight off tiredness. I am sorry to say that I was not very conversational before that. However, after some seat shifting I ended up sitting next to JD who seems to never be at a loss for words. I like people like that because I am not very good at starting conversations. I would say JD is a natural since he was constantly asking me questions and keeping my attention engaged. JD told me to hurry up and graduate so that I could come back and be on the crew of his million-dollar movie. Before that can happen though, JD will have to hurry up and find a million dollars. Overall it was a fun night.
I have just finished turning a bunch of tifs into jpegs for the database so I think it is time to head out and save the entering of the jpegs into the database for Tuesday. Perhaps I will think of something else I can do as well seeing as this next week is basically my last at the archive this summer.

Google Goes to the City

Bright and early on Wednesday morning at 9:03 I walked down to have breakfast a whole half hour before we were supposed to leave. I was quite proud of myself until the hotel decided they stopped serving breakfast at 9:00 and I had missed it by 3 minutes. That was upsetting and left my stomach all empty. I had been planning on this day being far superior to its predecessor so this was a disappointing start to the day. Oh! I completely forgot to tell you all about the new additions that they are making to Google Earth that we learned about on Tuesday. The only problem is we were sworn to Google secrecy to not write about it or talk about it. So that's a problem. . . I felt pretty cool being shown stuff they had only just begun to develop. While I had previously thought that Google Earth was just this thing to go look at if you had extra time, I think it is going to be way cooler now. It involves pictures and it's almost like you can go on a mini vacation from your own desk.
Okay, back to breakfast in Cupertino.
Fortunately my friend Tim was kind enough to let me eat some of his scrambled eggs and half of his croissant. We are such a nice team. I love us. I think that in the end we are a pretty social team, just within ourselves and not with others. As far as I know we were the only team with a lab so that we could all work near each other. That is basically the only reason I stuck with the project. The fact that it was a pretty social working environment made the hours somewhat bearable. Someone told me that one of the other teams didn't even really know eachother before they won and came to Google. That can't be true. . . but it just might be. Well we were slightly more social on Wednesday because we had a guy from the Purdue team sitting with us. Although he was really just sitting with our team leader who was so darn sketchy the whole trip. I hope she reads this.
After not having breakfast everyone got into the bus Google had gotten us for the day. The bus also came with Eugene, our driver, and Vera, our red-jacketed tour guide. We took 280 up to San Francisco so that we could see how beautiful Northern California is instead of how populated it is. While Vera talked to us about the history of San Francisco and such, Jess and Jen did Yoon-Ki and Danny's hair. They looked lovely.



Here is Tim having his chin scratched by Jen. Don't ask. I had to include it though to convey the whole experience.


I was very happy to hear Vera explain to the group that San Francisco is supposed to have miserably gray weather in the summer. You see, the Arctic water in the Pacific is very cold while the inland California temperatures are very hot. So then some magic happens and fog appears and is drawn inland where it encouters the mountains and comes to a stop because it is too heavy to get over. This leaves San Francisco in a perpetual state of fog in the summer. But weather is nice and sunny come September and October just in time for me to leave California for the soon to be snowy New Hampshire.


(Treasure Island, Bay Bridge, Fog)

We were taken through Chinatown and Union Square before being dropped off at Pier 39 where we had the unique opportunity to watch half of our team imitate the sea lions and frighten other tourists.



While most of the team dawdled, Mandy and I took our tour of Pier 39 and Fisherman's Wharf into our own hands and headed straight for the bread factory. Yes, the bread factory, or as some say colloquially: the bakery. We looked thorugh the window and watched the bread maker (or baker) create crab shaped bread. Our mouths watering we walked inside to see how much a turtle shaped loaf costed. Too much. Luckily there were free samples which we gladly helped ourselves to.
We then boarded a ferry bound for Sausalito, that place across the bay I never had any desire to visit. The ferry ride was great. I love boats and being on the water. It also offered me a chance to take tons of pictures of my team, the city, and Alcatraz. I will share some with you.


(Tim, Steph, and Aiden a Google worker from the Boulder office, he is a fun guy)


(Jess, Mandy, and Yoon-Ki)


(Jen requests that Mandy make a normal face in a picture so Yoon-Ki obliges by tickling Mandy)


(Mandy, having missed breakfast too, slowly eats her Snickers bar one peanut at a time)


(Yoon-Ki enjoys the fresh bay air and ponders. . . but who knows what)


(Danny gives us a quizzical look even though we are the ones confused as to why he is not sitting with us)


(a big boat I once took pictures of in high school for photography class, none of those picutres turned out as desired)




(Alcatraz)


(The Golden Gate Bridge, sail boat, and fog)

Once we docked in Sausalito we were given some more free time before lunch. Everyone dispersed and naturally most of the Dartmouth team found its way into a small toy store where we played with the puppets, read the kids books, and relived the joy of being a child in a shop full of colors. Lunch was a successful ordeal, despite a few team members' annoying habit of doing seriously obnoxious and oh so poorly executed foreign accents. By this point we had gathered 2 people from outside the Dartmouth team to sit with us. And so, on the last day, we began to socialize. As mentioned by one of my teammates, this is the safe way to go because you never know how the people you socialize with will turn out, so if you do it on the last day and they turn out to be creepy, at least it is the last day. Sadly not all Dartmouth students (our lovely team leader) took this advice and attracted creepy people nonetheless, or was perhaps creepy herself.
After lunch we headed to the Golden Gate Bridge while most of the bus continued to ignore Vera who was having a difficult time giving us a tour over all the raised voices. I felt bad for Vera, and I felt bad for the whole bus because they missed a ton of very interesting stories about San Francisco. We stopped to be tourists and take pictures of the Golden Gate Bridge. These are the last photos I took that day so I hope you enjoy them.


(Tim and Jen)




(Mandy feels the need to stand above everyone else)

Next stop was Haight Ashbury by way of Golden Gate Park. I love Golden Gate Park. Anyone who has the chance to go there most certainly should, and make sure you go to the Japanese tea garden. Haight Ashbury was fun enough, but everyone was getting tired by this point. Mandy, Yoon-ki, and I made the standard circuit of Haight Ashbury by stopping in the thrift stores that were too expensive (thrift indeed), the used bookstore, Amoeba, and finally the coffee shop next to Amoeba. No purchases were made and by 5:30 we were ready to head over to AT&T park, which I still want to call Pac Bell park.
So far this summer I have watched an excessive amount of baseball than I do usually. It is always on at the Foley house and I have now been to two Dodger games and a Giants game. Now before you ask, I was not at the game where Bonds broke the home run record. Thank goodness. No wonder that guy hits so many home runs at home though, AT&T park is the smallest baseball diamond ever! The game was not all the interesting for me since I had no real interest in either of the teams (they were playing the Washington Nationals). However the Google group did succeed in catching a foul ball; it landed literally right at Aiden's feet after bouncing off some poor guy's head. We also succeeded in getting heckled by very mean Giants fans who told us to go to LA or home when some of us attempted to start the wave. Apparently the wave cannot be done in San Francisco. I'm still not certain why they thought it prudent to tell us to go to LA. While I was too lazy myself to try to do the wave, I was still offended when our group was very rudely yelled at to go home by a woman in a hideous highlighter orange sweatshirt. I think she should have reconsidered yelling at us while wearing such a horrible sweater. Aiden first kindly informed the woman that if she wanted to flip Google the bird she was more than welcome to, then he snapped a picture of her doing just that. I don't much like Giants fans.
Overall I would say our trip into the city was a lot of fun. There is a bunch I have missed out I am sure but I only have so much patience and my attention span is only so long when writing. After the long bus ride back to Cupertino, a few of us decided to continue to be social and go to the hot tub with other members of the Google group. What this really means is that Danny and I stayed by the hot tub and chatted while the rest who had gone down frolicked in the pool. I don't think we like to sit still very much.
So ends my adventure at Google. I hope Dartmouth did not make too bad of an impression seeing as I need a job somewhere after I graduate next year.

The Tempest and More

I haven't posted any illustrations in a while! Sorry! Here are some more.
I now give you illustrations by Edmund Dulac from Shakespeare's The Tempest. For those of you who have known me for a while, you will know that I have a great love for Shakespeare and a liking for fairies and butterflies. This has lead to a natural liking of The Tempest and A Midsummer Night's Dream. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the archive had illustrations of The Tempest. These are some of my favorites from the whole group I will eventually get through showing you.
This first one is of Stefano offering a drink to Caliban as the Jester, Trinculo, looks on. I have decided to share this with you first of all because of how beautiful the sky is in this illustration, just as a real stormy sky is not just an expanse of gray, neither is this one. I also wanted to post this illustration because it is one of my favorite parts of the play seeing as it is one of the only bits of comedic relief from what can be a somewhat dark play, despite the young love. Sadly, this illustration is not very humorous, except for maybe the look on Trinculo's face.


Now for the gorgeous fairy and spirit illustrations, there is a lot of blue in this one. I think the fact that there just seems to be a blue wash over every part of the illustration really accentuates the magical feeling.


I like the sense of movement caused by an invisible wind in this one conveyed by the water, hair and clothes.


This is an illustration of Ariel. Ariel is so elegant, which contrasts nicely with the wild flowers the spirit is smelling.


These next two are by Florence Harrison from Elfin Song. This continues in the fairy vein.


I like the feeling of sadness and loneliness in this none. I really like the human figures in these next three (all by Harrison, but the last two are from Poems of Rosetti).




These next two are by Kay Nielson from Arabian Nights. Nielsen first made these illustrations in 1921, but from what I can tell they were not published due to money issues. But they were found and finally printed in 1975. Thank goodness because they are brilliant. I had a really tough time deciding which ones to include. Not only is the main part of the illustration enchanting but the borders are just as lovely. That is why I included this first one. I love the clouds that edge the picture.


This one is just great! Passion just oozes out of every part of this. It is reflected in their embrace, their clothes, and their ignorance of the fire raging around them. I also really like the smoke because all of the colors are separated and it works so well.