That day got a mind of it's own.

I just got back from my first time of flying-somewhere-on-company-funds-just-so-I-can-run-tests-on-the-wifi. Tonight it was from Long Beach to San Francisco and back - yes, on the same plane. So I was in San Francisco for about twenty-five minutes. And now I'm back in Carlsbad. And I didn't know I would be doing all of that until eleven this morning.

I'm exhausted but happy and the main thought that keeps coming to my mind is that there's just something about walking down from a plane on steps or an outdoor ramp instead of a jetway that just makes one feel so damn important. I like it.

Goodnight.

Oh deary, deary me.

All of a sudden, it's about to be Wednesday in my second week of my internship. And my head is buzzing with thoughts but unfortunately not with the kind of thoughts that usually flow so easily into blog entries, but I'll do my best.

I presented some of my work to my supervisor today and I was told I was doing a great job! I'm not sure whether today I can call myself any kind of a data analyst, but I think at the end of the summer, I will be able to say a bit of that, which is very, very exciting!

And other things are going well, too. I spent the long weekend hanging out with my cousins here while my aunt and uncle went to a wedding. It was a weekend of meals out, naps in between (for me), and many, many X-Men films (we had to watch a bunch of the old ones to be ready for the new one, you see ((which I thought was good!)) and then when we came home from the theater, one of the ones we hadn't watched was on TV...). I also got to hang out with the little Watson, their (if I remember correctly) Pomeranian-Chihuahua mix. I will never own a dog so small, but I have to say, he's growing on me a little.

And today I did possibly the craziest thing yet - I went to a boxing class at the gym by my work. It was a great class - but I honestly - HONESTLY am having trouble convincing the muscles in my fingers to type this right now. I had no idea my hands could be so tired.

So, I close my eyes and see spreadsheets right now and my hands ache from being balled up inside huge gloves, but I'm excited to get back to my office tomorrow. And that's just a great thing.

At the same time, though, I watch the news at night and I feel like the world there can't possibly be the same one that I am going to work in, the one where I go grocery shopping and walk around the neighborhood. I think the events that are happening (Santa Barbara is foremost in my mind, but the rest of the globe as well) are only about as tragic and frequent as they always are, but when you pay attention, it rattles you inside.

"Of things beyond my ken."

So I had my first day today - and it began with hours and hours of orientation. Security briefing, HR orientation, IT orientation, badges here, scan passport there, this that and the other, don't carry secure documents down the hall unless they are covered by a folder - and then finally, I had my little badge with my name and employee number that gets me into all buildings, had an account on the company intranet, and - well, I met my team.

When I write this out here, it's different than when I explain my day in person. When I was on the phone with friends earlier, I explained in a bit more detail. The interesting thing is that I'm not actually sure just how much I'm allowed to tell. We got these huge and tedious security briefings because the company itself does provide services for the Department of Defense, and most of the security protocols only apply to you if you happen to be working with documents or equipment relating to that, which I will not be during my internship. But still, you're in the building, you have the badge - it feels a bit different than any other work I've had before.

But once I shook off the strange feeling the security stuff left with me, I met my people. I'm working on the very young but exciting project of airplane wifi (look it up! "Exede In The Air"). Not something completely new (we've all seen GoGo in Flight advertised on planes before... competition!), but this company (ViaSat, if I haven't mentioned the name before) has some new ideas for how to do it right.

So, I met the people working on this project and within five minutes, I had a fairly great realization about why I think they hired me. Not necessarily because I can do calculus and linear algebra - but rather that studying math has given my brain certain skills and patterns of thinking, abstract and problem solving abilities - and that's what they want. That brain with those skills on this project. And I'd rather be hired for that than for my ability to solve differential equations. :) Not only that, but they are already telling me to be creative, to "follow my nose", if you will. And the company is very laid back and very productive at the same time -- that may seem like a contradiction, but it really boils down to this: "Do whatever you need to do in order to do your best work." So, how does this look? Employees going surfing during their lunch break or out to the beach volleyball courts next to the work buildings. Some people come in at 4 a.m. and leave at noon, some don't show up until 11 a.m. and stay as long as they can. Some men wear shorts and t-shirts, some where suits (okay, that also varies by department) and everyone is on a first-name basis, but not in an awkward way.

Basically, a good first day. I'm excited to go back tomorrow and not spend the whole day fighting my way into the computer system (so much administrative stuff yesterday!). And - I'm excited to meet these people and work more.

I'm the first intern on my project. Next week another will come, and a month after that, another. But for now, just me. That's kind of fun. :)

A series of literary events.

Today has been an interesting day. I spent the morning filling out an enormous packet of forms for my new job (which starts on Monday!!) and included such required bits of information as beneficiaries - i.e. who my pay should go to if I happen to shuffle off my mortal coil in the course of a 10-week internship -- and such typically American waivers like "if I use the barbecues on the work site and burn myself, I won't sue the company". Hah.

However, I also spent a good deal of today trying to figure out which new computer to buy. It's already been a while since I had realized that I needed to buy a new computer - first, it was just mildly annoying things: declining battery life, heating up while trying to watch movies, loud fan noises when running lots of data in Excel, etc. But then the problems started to get more severe. Fifty percent of the time, my "e" key does not work. I can no longer click-and-drag (just take a second to think of how many things you do with click-and-drag. Moving emails into folders. Songs into playlists. Arranging windows on your computer screen. !!!!) The fan sounds and the heat from the computer are starting to get ridiculous, and even the employee at the Apple store when I took my computer in a few months ago (to see if they agreed with me in that it was time to put the laptop out to pasture) ran a few tests and her eyebrows disappeared into her hairline as she saw how poorly it performed. She handed it gingerly back to me and said something along the lines of, "I'm surprise it's still running now..."

So, I've slogged along in this manner for the last few months, delaying and delaying in getting a new machine. But it's getting ridiculous. So, after debating lots of models, I picked one and spent about a half hour on the phone today with a computer rep at the store discussing the pros and cons of various models and "specs", as they call them. And I had the strangest thing happen.

It reminded me of a book called Otherland ( by Tad Williams) -- a science fiction book in which many things happen but one key or signature element of the book is The Net. Basically, the Net is just an extension of the internet we have today, but with some advancements. People hook themselves up to the net - not just so that they look through a screen, but rather all of your senses can be hooked in so that when you are online, you are "in" the Net - you can walk down the aisles of a virtual-reality shopping center, talk to other people who are also online (or your "sims" ((like an avatar)) can talk to each other, the projection you make of yourself online). Anyways, because so many people spend so much time in this VR (virtual reality) in the book, doing things like playing games, going shopping, doing research, etc, they come into contact with machines quite a lot of the time. If Amazon decided to build a VR store in this VR mall and my sim walked into it, I could talk to the VR store's manager and ask to buy a coffee pot but in all likelihood, the store manager will not be another real person's sim, but rather a computer program that is designed to sell things from Amazon to people who come to this store, much like a webpage (except it could talk in VR. Science fiction- what can I say.). The point is, given the chance of ending up talking to computer programs that may be quite sophisticated and look like the sims of real people online, the one question that is considered slightly rude but is required to be answered honestly in this VR in Otherland is the question "Are you a program?"

And I wanted to ask that of the person on the other end of the phone this morning.

He was a tech expert to be sure, answered questions (comprehended full sentences, if you will) but his intonation, word choice, use of computer buzz words and marketing terms -- I honestly - after a half hour of conversation - could not tell if I had been talking to a human or not. I mean, it must have been. Our technology isn't that good yet. Or is it?

So, that was the first thing today that made me feel like a book I'd read was extremely relevant. The second time happened just a few minutes ago.

I did end up getting a computer today and right now, it's sitting a few feet away from me. Yes, I am still typing on the machine that my dearest friend Erin has christened "Lappy McFail-Suck". I was instructed today on how I can use my external hard drive (where I have all my computer back-ups) to bring over the old data that I want onto the new machine. However, you can't really go through and select every piece of data you want to bring. For example, you can choose to bring over your Applications, but if you want any Applications at all, you need to bring all of them. With documents you can be a bit more selective, so the people at the store today suggested that I clean up my old machine as best I can and then make one last backup so that the transfer is relatively smooth and I don't have to root through too much old stuff on the new computer.

Good idea, I thought. So, I did the classic things to clear up your hard drive - delete unnecessary videos, music, clear the downloads folder and the trash, and then I thought I'd look and see how much space I'd freed up. I see how much space is taken up by Music, Documents, Backups, Videos.... Other. I have 55 Gigabytes worth of Other. What the hell is Other??? I have such enormous amounts of it compared to my documents and other things - where does it come from? And will it zoom over through the cable and contaminate my new computer as soon as they're connected?

In the middle of this freak-out (ca. 20 minutes ago), I was reminded inescapably of a passage in The Amber Spyglass (Philip Pullman), the third book in the trilogy that includes The Golden Compass and The Subtle Knife. As the title implies, there's a certain knife involved in these books - a knife that has the ability to cut a hole in the air, a hole that is a window between one world and another (worlds that developed differently than our own). Fantastic series, I definitely recommend it. But in the third book, something happens to that knife and one of the characters is insisting on using it and another asks him (I paraphrase): "You know what you want to do with the knife. But do you know what the knife does on it's own? It has intentions, too." (the idea being that a knife so complex is not like a hammer, where really, all it does is whack in nails but if the knife slicing the reality between worlds, a lot more could be happening than the characters realize - and in fact, there is. Go read the books.)

And I just thought -- I can't see what's going on inside my computer! I can't see what interactions it has with websites on the minuscule level! I, in fact, do not know most of what my computer is doing. And the result is piles and piles of Other. I have all kinds of plans for the new computer, reminiscent of New Year's Resolutions. I will keep the Other at bay, as best I can. When I dare to open the computer and start using it, that is.

Don't worry. It'll be soon.

May 1

I just got done having a lovely, lovely two hour coffee date with Diana, my – let me see if I can do these relations correctly – first cousin once removed’s wife. I’m sitting in a café in the Sunset district of San Francisco and spent last night at Patrick and Diana’s house, the house where I lived during my internship last summer, almost a year ago, as we realized last night at dinner. The two kids, Samuel and Athena, are a year older than they were then (which makes sense). I’ve been to Budapest and back, my dad’s job is no longer his “new” job, and everyone has lived almost a whole year since I was here. Pretty crazy to realize how time flies.

Samuel has gone from being focused on both chess and baseball to now really only focusing on baseball – and for a 2^nd grader, he’s pretty damn good at it. Athena is regaling me with stories about her favorite characters from Frozen, laughing at me when I said the moose was my favorite character ((this was a tactful choice of mine - had I picked one of the classic favorite characters, I'm sure she would have told me that my choice was wrong, but when I said the moose - well, she just had no idea what to say to that, and simply concluded that I am silly)), and being as sneaky as ever as she beat me at Candyland (thrice), Crazy Eights (twice), and war (once, where she declared that she had won because I insisted it was bedtime, and she considered that forfeit on my part). She insisted that it had been a thousand years since I lived there, but refused to believe that that meant we were both over a thousand years old now. I missed the two of them. And their parents, too.

We (Diana and I) walked them to school this morning and I was hit by waves of memories from my elementary school days. Since I’ve been tutoring kids in Santa Cruz at the high school level, I’ve thought about my own high school quite frequently of late. Sometimes I arrive to tutor just after school ends for the day and the bell rings and I’m surrounded by a throng of hormonal, growth-spurt-y, drama-obsessed, finding-themselves-teenagers, and it can be so overwhelming! It’s a wonder we all survive it. This morning, I got to see the much younger end of the spectrum .The kindergarten classroom with different colored patches on the carpet that form a big design, the chairs whose seats barely rise above my knees, and the piles of coloring and painting materials in the corner. And I watched Samuel wander through the playground, through the milling crowds and prepare himself for the day to start. Sometimes, when I think about it from where I’m standing, being a parent seems like it might be the scariest thing I’ll ever do. But the older I get, the more sure I am it’s going to happen.

Well, that’s quite a lot of thoughts for one morning. In addition to all of that, I have also finally taken that enormous German exam I mentioned. Five hours inside the Goethe Institut last Thursday – and they said I would most likely have my results on Monday or Tuesday this week.  As it is already Thursday, you can imagine my apprehension and impatience to find out!

The exam itself ended up being quite fun. I had a nice conversation with the two women who were working at the Institute when I arrived (as you might imagine) about 35 minutes early. It was fun to speak/write German all day long, and for part of it, with actual German people. Studying has been (apart from the incredible helpfulness of C by correcting various complicated sentences I sent her way to test my skill at adjective endings and fancy structures) a very solitary activity. But in the final part of the exam, the speaking part, I was partnered with one of the other test-takers, an older Gentleman who hadn’t spoken much during the breaks of the exam. I wasn’t quite sure what his story was. We received our topics that we were suppose do discuss (one topic each to present individually, then one topic to discuss with each other as the evaluators listened) and presented our individual topics. Then, it was time to discuss the last topic, which happened to be basically “You have an eight hour layover in between two long flights in a foreign city. What do you do during this time?” We turned to each other to start to discuss and after we introduced ourselves, it turned out that he was from Hungary and as I was just in Budapest, we chose that to be this “foreign city” and spent the whole time discussing our favorite parts of the city and he gave us (both me and the examiners) a virtual tour of the city. So much unexpected fun at the end of hours of testing.