A Southern California Day

So, I woke up this morning at around 7:30 -- the latest I've slept in a while. I'm one of those folks who keeps waking up at 6 out of habit even on the weekends. But I got to sleep in and I went out into the kitchen to make my coffee and toast and joke with my two host sisters - as some of my Facebook friends know, we had a fun night of face painting the other night which ended with me somehow getting a really bushy painted mustache -- pitch black, obviously, as befits my complexion.

After breakfast, I changed into more suitable clothes and was picked up by a fellow intern to go and play soccer at a local park. Now, even the "just for fun" teams around here are incredibly serious about soccer - everyone has cleats, they even have proper referees running around, as well as matching jerseys. This bunch of misfits that I was with is nothing like that. Our skill levels range from the two people who play actively while they are at college to the rest of us, who "played in middle school" - which basically means we know which end of the field to aim at.

Also, these non-professional serious teams always take up the soccer fields, so we play in a baseball outfield with goals that are made of two water bottles precariously balanced on the grass -- today at least both goals were the same size, but I don't think they were really totally aligned on the different sides of the field. We didn't care.  We were 12 people today, six on six, and the teams were quite well matched. As a result, of course, in spite of the generous amount of sunscreen I put on my nearly translucent skin, I still managed to end up rather pink in the face but I think I can just blame it on the sweat that made the sun screen run away. Still, we had a blast and though I have yet to score a goal in one of these games (I've been on the winning team all the times we've played ((twice)) and have played on basically the same team) today I had a few good moments of defense (where I play by default, though I enjoy forward as well) and one assist.  Who knows if any of us will care about soccer in three months - or even on Monday when the World Cup is over- but it doesn't matter! It's a great way to spend a Saturday morning.

After that, we headed to another intern's house to barbecue and watch the professionals in the Brazil-Netherlands game. This house was classic California - a ping pong table on the open porch, beautiful open design, and a plum, a peach, a nectarine, and a lemon tree. Plus cherry tomatoes in the garden. I don't know how these people ever go to work in the morning. Especially because this little one is wandering around.

Her name is Ivy.

Alright. Now I have a bit of work to do - I was asked to join another project this week which is exciting, but first, as a good friend of mine says, I need to "put an upper bound on my ignorance". This project/problem involves so many things I've never worked with before that I really have quite a lot of catching up to do. Still, I like learning. Here I come, Information Theory, Data Compression, and C++!