Yes, that's right. I lied to you. I said I would not have Internet until August 2 or 3 and now I am sitting here typing a blog entry.
Sorry, the truth is, whether I have Internet or not, I am ignoring all of you this week. I will not answer my phone, I will not text you back, I'm not replying to your e-mails, I'm not commenting on your Facebook photos. Nothing. This week is time for me to get away and clear my head of all the craziness that comes with having to keep up with so many people at once.
Anyhow, for your enjoyment while I'm gone, I would like to outline the first day of my vacation so far.
I was up until 1AM last night, talking to people and completing Round 1A of Google Code Jam. I didn't get through it. I solved one small set and that's it. I had a good grasp on the third problem but my math in C++ was just not precise enough to do what I needed it to. I was also kind of close on the second one, but just unable to solve it.
So, I had another opportunity. Today at noon Round 1B happened. Actually, it's not even over yet. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
I woke up at 7:30 this morning and got ready to leave because we were planning to be in Charleston by noon so I could be at Panera Bread to compete in this other round. We're driving down our road (the one we live on) and Mom says, "1:00, right, Lauren?"
"Noon," I reply. We're all quiet for a minute. And then the parents erupt into panic. We go and get my GPS from my car (we're not far away from home) and for the next hour we utilize every resource we can to figure out where I can be that has wireless access by 12:00. I text about 10 of my friends looking for a friend's number who lives in Summerville, where we'll be in about 3 hours. While waiting for their responses, we're mapping, GPSsing, 1800GOOG411ing...considering crashing in hotel lobbies, trying to find Panera Breads...it's chaos. Finally my friend from Summerville texts back and tells us there's a McDonald's with wireless just outside of Summerville. I set my GPS and we drive there (we can all finally breathe).
I sign on. And then they charge me for wireless. Whatever. $3.00 for two hours, I can deal. Much better than Starbucks or something. And I sit down with CNN in the background and a screaming baby across from me and begin to figure out these problems.
After about 45 minutes of working on a problem and looking at all the problems, I have decided that I can't solve any of them. They're hard, really hard. Last night's were much easier. These are tedious and mathematical and I don't have the capacity to figure them out, not without some friends to help me out and/or more time than two hours. I can talk about them more after the time is actually over, but not now.
* sigh *
Oh well. GCJ 2009 anyone?
But seriously, from now until August 3, I am purging my brain of all things code-related. I look forward to reading books, ignoring my phone/computer, getting a suntan, and overall just getting out of the typical. It'll be fun and really good for me.
My family will be here to pick me up soon, so I'm out! Enjoy your week.
Saturday, July 26, 2008
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
summer
Since I left Virginia Tech, my life has degraded into pretty much sitting in front of Facebook clicking refresh, refresh, refresh until something interesting shows up.
Okay, not really, but I have spent several evenings doing approximately that. Things are boring around here. In the mornings I wake up, get dressed, and go to the Y with Victoria for a bit over an hour, then I come home, take a shower, eat lunch, and attempt to figure out what to do with my afternoon. I've been catching up with family and friends some over lunch, and I've been going to Bible study on Tuesdays at UNCC. I also went to The Cheesecake Factory with UNCC people on Saturday where I ate a 1009 calorie slice of Dulce De Leche cheesecake. 1009. That's, like, 1/2 of recommended daily intake, and probably way more than half of what I generally eat in a day. Oh well. I enjoyed it. And I've been working hard at the Y.
I've practiced piano some, read a little, fixed a few computers, debugged some code for friends. I registered for the GRE and am starting to think about graduate school--I saw Dr. Hodges on Sunday and am working through scheduling a Clemson visit with him. I really think that is where I belong, but I want to consider my options carefully as well. I know there will come a point in my Ph.D. work where I wonder why I'm where I'm at, and at that point I want to be able to know for sure that I made the best decision.
I guess I just need to start calling my friends and asking them to do stuff with me. I feel a bit disconnected from all my social groups right now: school people are at home, UNCC people are busy with their program ending, I don't fit with a lot of my old church friends any more. But that's okay; I'll get it figured out.
Google Code Jam Round 1 Friday night, then leaving for the beach Saturday morning. Yay. It'll be nice to have a week away. I hope to get a lot of reading done.
I'm ready for the semester to begin. This is going to be an intense but good year :)
Okay, not really, but I have spent several evenings doing approximately that. Things are boring around here. In the mornings I wake up, get dressed, and go to the Y with Victoria for a bit over an hour, then I come home, take a shower, eat lunch, and attempt to figure out what to do with my afternoon. I've been catching up with family and friends some over lunch, and I've been going to Bible study on Tuesdays at UNCC. I also went to The Cheesecake Factory with UNCC people on Saturday where I ate a 1009 calorie slice of Dulce De Leche cheesecake. 1009. That's, like, 1/2 of recommended daily intake, and probably way more than half of what I generally eat in a day. Oh well. I enjoyed it. And I've been working hard at the Y.
I've practiced piano some, read a little, fixed a few computers, debugged some code for friends. I registered for the GRE and am starting to think about graduate school--I saw Dr. Hodges on Sunday and am working through scheduling a Clemson visit with him. I really think that is where I belong, but I want to consider my options carefully as well. I know there will come a point in my Ph.D. work where I wonder why I'm where I'm at, and at that point I want to be able to know for sure that I made the best decision.
I guess I just need to start calling my friends and asking them to do stuff with me. I feel a bit disconnected from all my social groups right now: school people are at home, UNCC people are busy with their program ending, I don't fit with a lot of my old church friends any more. But that's okay; I'll get it figured out.
Google Code Jam Round 1 Friday night, then leaving for the beach Saturday morning. Yay. It'll be nice to have a week away. I hope to get a lot of reading done.
I'm ready for the semester to begin. This is going to be an intense but good year :)
Sunday, July 20, 2008
things I appreciate about home: the post-VT edition
Every time I come home from a new place I compile a list (even if only mentally) of things that that place made me appreciate about home. So here is the post-Newman Hall at Virgina Tech edition of that list.
- air conditioning
- a shower where I don't almost die trying to shave my legs, and I don't have to wait for 30 minutes for the water to get warm in
- carpet
- clean kitchen (ie no bugs)
- bookshelves (there was NO space for books in my room)
- living space in general
- free laundry
- there is not a construction site in our backyard that turns on equipment at 7:40 every morning
- a variety of food (ie not D2!)
- a piano downstairs
- house furniture, like sofas and stuff (I only had bed and desk)
- real closets
- a shoe rack
mmm, I love home :D
- air conditioning
- a shower where I don't almost die trying to shave my legs, and I don't have to wait for 30 minutes for the water to get warm in
- carpet
- clean kitchen (ie no bugs)
- bookshelves (there was NO space for books in my room)
- living space in general
- free laundry
- there is not a construction site in our backyard that turns on equipment at 7:40 every morning
- a variety of food (ie not D2!)
- a piano downstairs
- house furniture, like sofas and stuff (I only had bed and desk)
- real closets
- a shoe rack
mmm, I love home :D
Thursday, July 17, 2008
reflection on a couple things Google
1) Google Lively
Soo Been, my roommate from VT, told me about this when it launched, and I just got around to checking it out yesterday. Pretty much, it's avatar based chat. You have an avatar that you design, and then you choose rooms to go into--but they're like real rooms. They look dimensional. You can walk in them, put furniture in them, sit on the chairs. When you type, text bubbles come above your head. It grabs words out of your text to show your character's emotion (type ROFL sometime, you'll see what I mean). You can also choose to interact with other characters with actions and not only words: right click and you can kiss, kick, slap, dance with, etc. someone.
I'm not a chat-roomer. I instant message my friends and don't have time to actually "chat" with people I don't know. But, from a HCI/virtual humans/virtual environments standpoint, I think it's really interesting. Here are some observations:
- Navigation is difficult in the rooms. Click and drag to move works okay, but the mouse was just not designed for dimensionality. This is a known problem that a lot of people are working on.
- The avatars are quite, well, lively. Motions are overexaggerated, and I think that's interesting. A "haha" typed in my chat bubble made my character bend at the waist laughing for at least 10 seconds. I wonder why the creators chose to do that. So that others were less likely to miss the cue? To promote a less serious chat environment?
- There is limited choice of avatars. I had two representations of female characters to choose from (although I could customize them a good bit). I'm guessing that's because it's fairly new.
- It's amazing what proximity can communicate. In a chat room, if you sign in and observe, it's hard to follow who is talking to who. In the Lively rooms, several times, someone would say "hi" to me, and I wouldn't be sure if they were talking to me, but then they moved their avatar closer to me and turned towards me and said "hi", it was immediately evident that they were speaking to me. Cliques formed in the rooms based on where people were standing. If I was sitting apart from the group, someone usually came into my area to ask if everything was all right. People would walk up and introduce themselves a lot as well.
- There are gender differences. In every room I visited, there were many more male users than female users (judging by screennames and avatars). But when I did come in, many times the guys paid more attention to me than to the other males in the room.
- For a two-person action (dancing, kissing, handshake), the consent of the second party was not required. So, if someone chooses to kiss me, my character kisses back, whether I wanted to kiss or not. I imagine this would make for some interesting social dynamic sometimes.
- How do people respond to actions towards their character? At one point, several characters came up to me and started kicking and punching me. Of course I didn't take it too seriously, but still, I wasn't very happy to have three avatars beating me up. I walked away from where they were and sat down so that they couldn't hit me any more. I wonder how others respond. I also wonder if having the possibility for violent action will serve to encourage cyberbullying and that kind of thing.
- How do people represent themselves in their avatar? Do they more or less look like themselves, or do they choose to look totally different?
- How do people use their avatars to interact with their virtual environment? What comes intuitively to them? What do they wish they could do, but they can't? How high is immersion?
2) Google Code Jam
Well, I made it through the qualifying round for Google Code Jam. Me and about 7000 others will be fighting for $10,000, 10 lunches at Google, and a whole bunch of cool points ;)
The first problem (the one I solved to qualify) was fairly straightforward; I solved it within two hours and not working on it all of that time. The second problem was within my reach, but some of my logic is wrong and I can't figure it out. After competition, I saw Chad's code (who also qualified) and he took a much better approach. I overcomplicated things by a lot. The third problem was way over my head. I could have worked for two weeks and never solved it.
Lessons learned:
- Use good variable names. REALLY. When you're trying to work quickly you don't want to have to remember whether you were using i or j for your loop iterator. Put in the couple extra keystrokes and make something readable.
- Debug little by little.
- Make sure you understand the problem first. The second problem kept confusing me, and I wrote bad code because I was misreading it over and over again.
- Plan first. It's tempting to immediately code but it's important to draw a few pictures, write a few formulas, etc.
What's cool about this competition is that I can go download everyone else's source now. I look forward to learning from it. I doubt I'll make it through the next round on the 25th, but I'm going to try my very best!
Well, that's it for now. If you want to track my work, my screenname on Code Jam is laurenelizabeth and my Lively screenname is lcairco. So...see you around!
Soo Been, my roommate from VT, told me about this when it launched, and I just got around to checking it out yesterday. Pretty much, it's avatar based chat. You have an avatar that you design, and then you choose rooms to go into--but they're like real rooms. They look dimensional. You can walk in them, put furniture in them, sit on the chairs. When you type, text bubbles come above your head. It grabs words out of your text to show your character's emotion (type ROFL sometime, you'll see what I mean). You can also choose to interact with other characters with actions and not only words: right click and you can kiss, kick, slap, dance with, etc. someone.
I'm not a chat-roomer. I instant message my friends and don't have time to actually "chat" with people I don't know. But, from a HCI/virtual humans/virtual environments standpoint, I think it's really interesting. Here are some observations:
- Navigation is difficult in the rooms. Click and drag to move works okay, but the mouse was just not designed for dimensionality. This is a known problem that a lot of people are working on.
- The avatars are quite, well, lively. Motions are overexaggerated, and I think that's interesting. A "haha" typed in my chat bubble made my character bend at the waist laughing for at least 10 seconds. I wonder why the creators chose to do that. So that others were less likely to miss the cue? To promote a less serious chat environment?
- There is limited choice of avatars. I had two representations of female characters to choose from (although I could customize them a good bit). I'm guessing that's because it's fairly new.
- It's amazing what proximity can communicate. In a chat room, if you sign in and observe, it's hard to follow who is talking to who. In the Lively rooms, several times, someone would say "hi" to me, and I wouldn't be sure if they were talking to me, but then they moved their avatar closer to me and turned towards me and said "hi", it was immediately evident that they were speaking to me. Cliques formed in the rooms based on where people were standing. If I was sitting apart from the group, someone usually came into my area to ask if everything was all right. People would walk up and introduce themselves a lot as well.
- There are gender differences. In every room I visited, there were many more male users than female users (judging by screennames and avatars). But when I did come in, many times the guys paid more attention to me than to the other males in the room.
- For a two-person action (dancing, kissing, handshake), the consent of the second party was not required. So, if someone chooses to kiss me, my character kisses back, whether I wanted to kiss or not. I imagine this would make for some interesting social dynamic sometimes.
- How do people respond to actions towards their character? At one point, several characters came up to me and started kicking and punching me. Of course I didn't take it too seriously, but still, I wasn't very happy to have three avatars beating me up. I walked away from where they were and sat down so that they couldn't hit me any more. I wonder how others respond. I also wonder if having the possibility for violent action will serve to encourage cyberbullying and that kind of thing.
- How do people represent themselves in their avatar? Do they more or less look like themselves, or do they choose to look totally different?
- How do people use their avatars to interact with their virtual environment? What comes intuitively to them? What do they wish they could do, but they can't? How high is immersion?
2) Google Code Jam
Well, I made it through the qualifying round for Google Code Jam. Me and about 7000 others will be fighting for $10,000, 10 lunches at Google, and a whole bunch of cool points ;)
The first problem (the one I solved to qualify) was fairly straightforward; I solved it within two hours and not working on it all of that time. The second problem was within my reach, but some of my logic is wrong and I can't figure it out. After competition, I saw Chad's code (who also qualified) and he took a much better approach. I overcomplicated things by a lot. The third problem was way over my head. I could have worked for two weeks and never solved it.
Lessons learned:
- Use good variable names. REALLY. When you're trying to work quickly you don't want to have to remember whether you were using i or j for your loop iterator. Put in the couple extra keystrokes and make something readable.
- Debug little by little.
- Make sure you understand the problem first. The second problem kept confusing me, and I wrote bad code because I was misreading it over and over again.
- Plan first. It's tempting to immediately code but it's important to draw a few pictures, write a few formulas, etc.
What's cool about this competition is that I can go download everyone else's source now. I look forward to learning from it. I doubt I'll make it through the next round on the 25th, but I'm going to try my very best!
Well, that's it for now. If you want to track my work, my screenname on Code Jam is laurenelizabeth and my Lively screenname is lcairco. So...see you around!
Sunday, July 13, 2008
home sweet home
Home finally! I miss Blacksburg and everyone there, but I am so happy to be here with my family and to have a bit of time to chill out. Today was Victoria's (my middle sister) 18th birthday so we celebrated that. Actually, both my sisters and I returned from trips this week, so it's kind of a special time for our family. This is the first time we've been all together in over a month.
The last week of REU was especially memorable. After an incredible weekend in DC our adventures continued for our final four days. There was an ongoing battle between Meeks/Tim and Soo Been/me for various possessions that spanned the entire week, and that was a lot of fun craziness involving stealing keys, kidnapping basses, Nerf weaponry, photoshop deceit, and IM negotiations. It ended in a ceasefire until next time.
Other activities included making/eating dirt cake, a surprise water balloon fight, card games, a dressy dinner & movie, building a raft out of water bottles and sailing it, and early morning goodbye breakfast.
I miss everyone. Somehow life's not the same when I'm not running down the halls hiding from someone attacking me with a Nerf gun every night...
Anyhow. So this summer culminated in 3016 lines of code, a bunch of new friendships, and a whole bunch of fun. I feel like I've grown up a lot over this summer. I've learned a lot technically and personally. It's been good.
As for the remainder of the summer, here is my TDL:
- Google Code Jam qualifying round, July 16
- Beach with my family last week of July
- Prepare presentation for SLC conference
- Go to SLC conference
- Decide which grad schools I am going to apply for
- Tie up loose ends of the summer project
- Finish Invention 13 (Bach) on piano
- Begin Danzas Espanolas, 2:Orientale on piano
- Buy a laptop
Probably some other stuff too. That's just off the top of my head.
Well...more later!
The last week of REU was especially memorable. After an incredible weekend in DC our adventures continued for our final four days. There was an ongoing battle between Meeks/Tim and Soo Been/me for various possessions that spanned the entire week, and that was a lot of fun craziness involving stealing keys, kidnapping basses, Nerf weaponry, photoshop deceit, and IM negotiations. It ended in a ceasefire until next time.
Other activities included making/eating dirt cake, a surprise water balloon fight, card games, a dressy dinner & movie, building a raft out of water bottles and sailing it, and early morning goodbye breakfast.
I miss everyone. Somehow life's not the same when I'm not running down the halls hiding from someone attacking me with a Nerf gun every night...
Anyhow. So this summer culminated in 3016 lines of code, a bunch of new friendships, and a whole bunch of fun. I feel like I've grown up a lot over this summer. I've learned a lot technically and personally. It's been good.
As for the remainder of the summer, here is my TDL:
- Google Code Jam qualifying round, July 16
- Beach with my family last week of July
- Prepare presentation for SLC conference
- Go to SLC conference
- Decide which grad schools I am going to apply for
- Tie up loose ends of the summer project
- Finish Invention 13 (Bach) on piano
- Begin Danzas Espanolas, 2:Orientale on piano
- Buy a laptop
Probably some other stuff too. That's just off the top of my head.
Well...more later!
Saturday, July 12, 2008
dear facebook & facebook advertisers:
This morning in my newsfeed I find you boasting of your highly targeted ad system, and then glance to my left where the typical ad is placed to find taglines such as:
How I Got Skinny
21 and Overweight?
T-shirt for Math Geeks
Out of Shape at 21?
Single? Meet 5 Guys in 5 Minutes!
Awesome. Thanks for those highly targeted ads. But actually, I thought you might be interested to know that I am perfectly happy loving math, being single, and wearing my average-sized jeans.
However, on my off-days, I feel like you're taunting me. And I'm sure a lot of other people do too. I know it's just marketing for all you advertisers, but still, it attacks points of weakness for a lot of people and it's just not cool. We don't appreciate it, and you insult our intelligence when you assert that clicking on a link and ordering a product will fix our lives. Nothing's that simple. (Btw, losing 37 pounds in a month is unhealthy, if not impossible, for the vast majority of people. That would be called anorexia/bulimia, not some crazy diet plan.)
Okay, I'm done ranting.
How I Got Skinny
21 and Overweight?
T-shirt for Math Geeks
Out of Shape at 21?
Single? Meet 5 Guys in 5 Minutes!
Awesome. Thanks for those highly targeted ads. But actually, I thought you might be interested to know that I am perfectly happy loving math, being single, and wearing my average-sized jeans.
However, on my off-days, I feel like you're taunting me. And I'm sure a lot of other people do too. I know it's just marketing for all you advertisers, but still, it attacks points of weakness for a lot of people and it's just not cool. We don't appreciate it, and you insult our intelligence when you assert that clicking on a link and ordering a product will fix our lives. Nothing's that simple. (Btw, losing 37 pounds in a month is unhealthy, if not impossible, for the vast majority of people. That would be called anorexia/bulimia, not some crazy diet plan.)
Okay, I'm done ranting.
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Sunday, July 6, 2008
unforgettable
I just wanted to outline my day on the 4th. I've never laughed so hard in my entire life, I don't think.
So we drove into College Park on the 3rd and slept until about 8AM, when we got up and ate breakfast at our hotel. We decided that we would eat an early lunch around here and then pack a picnic dinner to eat in the city so that we could get a good spot to see the fireworks at 9:15 that evening.
There was a 60% chance of rain.
So, we went on our quest to find groceries. First, we went to "My Organic Market," which is completely windpowered and had tasty food. Yay. However, since they're into saving the planet, they did not have ziploc bags, which are necessary for putting peanut butter and jelly in your pocketbook. So, we GPSsed it and found that there is a Safeway. We drove in that direction.
Well, when we got to the Safeway, it was not a Safeway; instead, it was a Bestway, which is a Latino market. This was quite funny. But the food was really cool-looking so we bought some. We also found some "Awesome!" brand ziploc bags, but alas, there were no umbrellas. So, we went over to the Rite Aid to buy umbrellas. And chocolate. And card games to entertain us while we were waiting on the fireworks.
So far so good.
After that, we headed into the city on the Metro. The station we went to has a "Kiss and Ride" parking lot that we find amusing.
So we get off at the Capitol South stop and try to go to the Library of Congress, and it's closed. So we take pictures there, take pictures at the capitol, eat Snoopy bars (which I forgot existed), continue to head towards the national mall...and there are all these tents there! The first one we see is for "Vegetarianism." We continue to wander around and figure out that we're in the middle of a Hare Krishna festival tent outreach thing. But they let us try on saris and gave us vegetarian food and books about their religion. I've always wanted to wear a sari, and now I have. *checks off of life to-do list *
After that we continued to wander around the mall. We tried to get into the national gallery but it was closed. After that we decided that most everything was probably closed since it was the 4th and we wandered around in the Smithsonian Folklife festival, where they covered the random topics of Texas, Bhutan, and NASA. There was some pretty cool stuff there.
We were going to visit the monuments/memorials but found most of them were blocked off. So, we just headed down toward Lincoln Memorial where we had decided to sit and wait for the fireworks. There were a whole lot of people there, and by this time, probability had won and the rain had started. We hung out under cover of the Lincoln Memorial until the rain subsided, then sat down at the bottom of the steps there, spreading out our plastic bags and the sheet we brought to sit on.
We ate dinner and started playing Uno, and then...start feeling rain drops. It's getting faster, not slower. We have nowhere to go, so we form a tight huddle and make an umbrella dome where we're way too close and all getting wet anyhow and laughing so hard. It rained for so long and the entire time we were laughing and trying to take pictures and hoping it will stop soon. Soo Been starts trying to grab the ankles of the people walking by us, because that's all we can see. She succeeds in touching one guy's leg. hahaha.
Finally it did. We did damage evaluation. Victoria's purse is soaked all the way through, the blanket is completely wet, we're wet, the ground's wet, everyone's wet. But we survived!!!
Still dripping wet, two high-school age guys approach us, one explaining to us that the other does not have a 4th of July date, and the dateless one expressing what a horrible idea this is. We take a picture with him.
The fireworks were incredible. We watched them, got our things together, and began to leave. People are wading in the Reflection Pool. And they're not getting arrested. This is a golden opportunity. We step into the edge of the reflection pool and take pictures of us jumping out of it. We don't get arrested either, only warned by a kind bypasser that we should put peroxide on any open wounds since we will get infected by the goose poop in the pool. We get out of the pool. We walk forever to the L'enfant station, which I call the "Elephant" station or the "Infant" station. We get back to my car.
It's late now. We GPS a Seven Eleven to get peroxide. GPS leads us to a nonexistent Seven Eleven. We GPS another Seven Eleven and find it. No peroxide; there's only Neosporin. We'll settle. I'm completely disoriented. I GPS the hotel, so I think. I start driving and we end up on a freeway where traffic is crazy and drivers are inconsiderate and we almost die like three times. I say, "I know our hotel wasn't this far away." I hand the GPS to Soo Been, and she discovers that our hotel is on Baltimore Avenue while I chose Maryland Avenue...which is the location of the Elephant station. Oh. That's where we're going.
GPS finds us. We get back to the hotel without dying.
The end.
Best, craziest, fourth of July ever.
So we drove into College Park on the 3rd and slept until about 8AM, when we got up and ate breakfast at our hotel. We decided that we would eat an early lunch around here and then pack a picnic dinner to eat in the city so that we could get a good spot to see the fireworks at 9:15 that evening.
There was a 60% chance of rain.
So, we went on our quest to find groceries. First, we went to "My Organic Market," which is completely windpowered and had tasty food. Yay. However, since they're into saving the planet, they did not have ziploc bags, which are necessary for putting peanut butter and jelly in your pocketbook. So, we GPSsed it and found that there is a Safeway. We drove in that direction.
Well, when we got to the Safeway, it was not a Safeway; instead, it was a Bestway, which is a Latino market. This was quite funny. But the food was really cool-looking so we bought some. We also found some "Awesome!" brand ziploc bags, but alas, there were no umbrellas. So, we went over to the Rite Aid to buy umbrellas. And chocolate. And card games to entertain us while we were waiting on the fireworks.
So far so good.
After that, we headed into the city on the Metro. The station we went to has a "Kiss and Ride" parking lot that we find amusing.
So we get off at the Capitol South stop and try to go to the Library of Congress, and it's closed. So we take pictures there, take pictures at the capitol, eat Snoopy bars (which I forgot existed), continue to head towards the national mall...and there are all these tents there! The first one we see is for "Vegetarianism." We continue to wander around and figure out that we're in the middle of a Hare Krishna festival tent outreach thing. But they let us try on saris and gave us vegetarian food and books about their religion. I've always wanted to wear a sari, and now I have. *checks off of life to-do list *
After that we continued to wander around the mall. We tried to get into the national gallery but it was closed. After that we decided that most everything was probably closed since it was the 4th and we wandered around in the Smithsonian Folklife festival, where they covered the random topics of Texas, Bhutan, and NASA. There was some pretty cool stuff there.
We were going to visit the monuments/memorials but found most of them were blocked off. So, we just headed down toward Lincoln Memorial where we had decided to sit and wait for the fireworks. There were a whole lot of people there, and by this time, probability had won and the rain had started. We hung out under cover of the Lincoln Memorial until the rain subsided, then sat down at the bottom of the steps there, spreading out our plastic bags and the sheet we brought to sit on.
We ate dinner and started playing Uno, and then...start feeling rain drops. It's getting faster, not slower. We have nowhere to go, so we form a tight huddle and make an umbrella dome where we're way too close and all getting wet anyhow and laughing so hard. It rained for so long and the entire time we were laughing and trying to take pictures and hoping it will stop soon. Soo Been starts trying to grab the ankles of the people walking by us, because that's all we can see. She succeeds in touching one guy's leg. hahaha.
Finally it did. We did damage evaluation. Victoria's purse is soaked all the way through, the blanket is completely wet, we're wet, the ground's wet, everyone's wet. But we survived!!!
Still dripping wet, two high-school age guys approach us, one explaining to us that the other does not have a 4th of July date, and the dateless one expressing what a horrible idea this is. We take a picture with him.
The fireworks were incredible. We watched them, got our things together, and began to leave. People are wading in the Reflection Pool. And they're not getting arrested. This is a golden opportunity. We step into the edge of the reflection pool and take pictures of us jumping out of it. We don't get arrested either, only warned by a kind bypasser that we should put peroxide on any open wounds since we will get infected by the goose poop in the pool. We get out of the pool. We walk forever to the L'enfant station, which I call the "Elephant" station or the "Infant" station. We get back to my car.
It's late now. We GPS a Seven Eleven to get peroxide. GPS leads us to a nonexistent Seven Eleven. We GPS another Seven Eleven and find it. No peroxide; there's only Neosporin. We'll settle. I'm completely disoriented. I GPS the hotel, so I think. I start driving and we end up on a freeway where traffic is crazy and drivers are inconsiderate and we almost die like three times. I say, "I know our hotel wasn't this far away." I hand the GPS to Soo Been, and she discovers that our hotel is on Baltimore Avenue while I chose Maryland Avenue...which is the location of the Elephant station. Oh. That's where we're going.
GPS finds us. We get back to the hotel without dying.
The end.
Best, craziest, fourth of July ever.
Friday, July 4, 2008
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