Richmond's Own (but unowned) Website

 
 
Today, we went out to Loyola Marymount University to pick up my nephew from a summer program. It’s been quite a while since I’ve been there – much of it still looks the same! Though there are parts that are new – either newly built or renovated. Listened to some podcasts on the way there (and took a nap), and there was a lot of traffic on the way back. Also got trained this morning on how to use the website admin backend for the website I’m going to be working on.

Not much else news today, time for some #worldslongestmarathon, a reflection on my senior year of high school –

  •  #worldslongestmarathon day 70 - lots of homework. ALOT of homework
    This was coming after our championship weekend (5th for another year…), and the week before winter break – a lot of homework! If I remember correctly, we had our IB History IA’s due, there may have been a Math IA, and was it possible that we had to do our TOK essays? (or was that second semester? Time kind of meshes together…)
  •  #worldslongestmarathon 71 - my british accent isn't that great. and analyzing 10 quotes in 50 minutes makes my hand hurt!!!!
    There were several times in English class when I would try reading things aloud in a “British” accent (only to the people around me in our little corner, not the whole class) – I know when I was in London this summer, I realized how wayyy off I was in senior year – I guess I realized it a bit then too. And we had to do quote analysis that day as well – that much writing can sure hurt a hand (though 2 hours to do 9 quotes, 1 long essay, and 2 short essays in a college final hurts more!)
  •  #worldslongestmarathon 72 -homeroom class makes a "santa doesn't do drugs" poster for class competition....
    For our door decorating contest for Christmas, our IB class continued our red ribbon week poster theme to a “Santa Doesn’t Do Drugs” poster…I suppose what’s better than a Christmas poster with a message? While we didn’t win, it was an entertaining poster to make, full of IB inside jokes…
  •  #worldslongestmarathon day 73 - woah, what a strange english essay! and i had a headache...i think i need to sleep more
    Self explanatory – not sure what the essay was, might have been a story, or poetry. I have a feeling it was “Their Eyes Were Watching God” by Zora Heale Hurston.  Yes, I could sleep, but there’s only 1 more day until winter break!

  •  #worldslongestmarathon day 74 - gave mr alvo his gift - i think he was surprised! i like surprise gifts =) history quiz, english potluck!
    Ah, surprise gifts. As Mr. Alvo had been talking about how cold it had been in his office, we arranged the gifts to look like a blanket roll and a space heater. And when he unwrapped it, you could see it wasn’t quite what he was expecting. Though after urging him to open the box, he was surprised to find a game – and threw the blanket behind him into the pit. (I imagine that I had a rather shocked face with that) as I said something akin to you really don’t want to throw away the blanket – rolled inside was a gift card to accompany it. Better than a snuggie I suppose.

  •  I think i may reintroduce the dates to the #worldslongestmarathon - or ib senior year. day 74 is 12.11.09. no more updates until january!
    Good bye, 2009, see you in 2010!

 
That's supposed to be like one of those "before and after" titles - though I had to cheat with the word birthday.

Today was a pretty fun day. Got some info on the website job, and started playing around a bit with the admin stuff, learning how to do some different functions, and finding some problems that I need to bring up with some people. Getting some additional (and more formal) training tomorrow.

Also got to see an old high school friend today – had lunch over around Hong Kong Plaza (had a chicken steak) (and lasted quite a while!) and got some cold drinks. It was a lot of fun, and a great opportunity to catch up and talk and spend time with him. Talked about summer experiences, went for a ride (with me singing my 80s songs), passed by Rincon. It was great, glad I had the opportunity to do that.

Not a whole lot more to my day, so a new feature for you today!

My news roundup for the day:

Dow Jones plunges over 500 points – I got a text on this via CNN’s Twitter account – at first I thought it was a typo, then I heard it on news radio. Scary news.  - http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/money_co/2011/08/stock-markets-plunge-in-worst-day-since-depths-of-financial-crisis-.html

FAA shutdown will be coming to an end – yay! Feeling much better about flying to school now. - http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/congress-agrees-on-stopgap-for-faa-workers/2011/08/04/gIQA9n7uuI_story.html

NASA had a big announcement at 2pm EST today (according to their tweet this morning), liquid water may have been discovered on Mars! - http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/05/science/space/05mars.html (sorry if this is using up one of your 20 articles per month on NYTimes)

“Goodnight Moons?” Earth may have had 2 moons (that along with the Trojan asteroid discovered a few weeks ago) - http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/Space/earth-moons-merged-theory/story?id=14233752

Happy Birthday, Mr. President! - http://bit.ly/mOrlVI (AP, hosted on Google – link was too long)

 
Today was pretty good, love Bagel Wednesdays in the office! Had an onion bagel today – tried the honey flavored cream cheese too, which was pretty good (not sure it really goes well with an onion bagel though). Workwise, I got some good feedback from yesterday’s research, and today was a continuation of that, adding more. It’s harder on the second day though, all the easy leads were taken on the first day, and you have to dig deeper now. Though that’s a fun challenge, and it makes it more rewarding when you’re able to find something! Sent in my info on my two topics and got some more good feedback. Would have gone for frozen yogurt today too with some office people, but I had to leave to catch the train before I could go – oh well, next time perhaps.

On the way back, there was a light out, or they were doing construction, and there were either police or Edison people directing traffic. I got off the bus early, and walked up from Sunset Boulevard to Hollywood Boulevard to catch the subway across from the El Capitan. Interesting to see how much can change within the space of a block or two, from where “real Californians” are to the touristy areas, and looking at how glitzy stuff is (or isn’t) – it’s amazing how fast areas can change. But it was quite crowded, Hollywood Boulevard was actually blocked off in front of the El Capitan, could be filming, but I think it might have been some Disney related premiere (premieres happen on Wednesdays, right?) – but it was a little faster (I think) walking and catching the subway than going on the bus to the other stop I usually get on the subway. The Hollywood Boulevard station was quite nice too! And it was somewhat obvious seeing who the tourists were using the subway as opposed to regular commuters (a bit like in London actually – or any big city probably.)

Some fun YouTube commercials I’ve been watching – love the fun quirkiness of the songs!

Twix Cops Singing (which is always shown before Conan when watching episodes online, and is apt to get stuck in my head)
2 GE Commercials with singing workers
 
Today was a good day – moved on to a new project from the game app, onto real TV! Today was doing some research for a tv pilot – I’m really in the thick of it now (somewhat at least) – working on tv! Sounds cool! But between this and London, this sure has turned out to be an amazing summer.

Transport wise, I’m starting to (re)settle into a routine. Nap on the first train into Union Station, because I can’t miss the stop since it’s the final stop! The rest of the commute is generally listening to a host of podcasts (mostly news or NPR), as well as on the way home. Today on the way back I was lucky enough to catch a 302 bus instead of a 2 – an express bus! The 302 doesn’t stop at the bus stop that I use, but I was lucky because there was a red light when I got there and the driver was kind enough to open the door for me and another person (and after telling us that she wasn’t supposed these “little stops”). But it was nice! There were seats for everyone to sit and no one had to stand, it wasn’t as crowded, and the AC worked (even on the chilly side a bit), and it didn’t stop very often, which was practically as fast as driving a car (not that driving along Sunset is much better, but it is significantly faster than the local bus) – and got back fast enough that I was able to make my connection and get on a (very crowded) train that got home 30 minutes earlier!

Some news items – interesting to see the public’s response to the DC sausage making with the debt ceiling – I’ve got an interesting analogy about “compromise” involving baked potatoes and hamburger – you should probably contact me about that though if you want to hear! Also sad to find out Congress hasn’t resolved the FAA renewal before their recess. I’m not sure how much is affected, what is and what is not (note to self: look into this!) but I’m not so excited about the prospect of flying back to school. It would also be interesting to see if Ithaca flights are amongst the subsidized flights or not – though I need to look that up too.

Good news on the website work front, time to start rolling up my sleeves and digging in!

 
Happy August all! I’m glad I’m able to type up this blog – we didn’t have electricity for a while today (and last night too – though it came on in the morning for a while. I wasn’t actually here for most of today’s outage – but it was still out when I came home from interning).

And a Happy Monday to everyone too – another work week starts. The morning commute today was pretty good, except the bus in the morning was quite hot, and only one person opened a window! Summer sure is here now! But the relief of AC in the office building felt quite soothing.

Today’s work was continuing last week’s work on viral marketing research. I got to play with the actual product today (not completed yet though), which was pretty fun too! Excited to see it when it’s finished! I could hear different people around the office playing it actually. Put all of my research into a little word doc presentation (headings, table of contents), went over it a couple times with the person who’s been supervising my work the past week, and sent it off - I think it will probably get forwarded on to the marketing team that’s working on this project. I appreciate that what I’m doing is not merely busywork, but looking up things that may actually be used, or spark a good idea in someone else.

Some stuff on Thomas the Tank Engine again (the railway series, not that tv stuff!). Looking out for copies of The Island of Sodor: It’s People, History and Railways by Rev. W Awdry and Sodor: reading Between the Lines by Christopher Awdry – 2 companion books to the railway series. Both out of print books which show the fictional history of the island and trains, including how it was affected by real world events like the nationalization and later privatization of British Railways (see, there’s real cultural and historical connections there! Not in the tv show though!) A more adult history of Thomas if you will. Except being out of print and relatively rare means all the ones I can find are 200+ dollars (or pounds, in which case it’s even more!) Though I have found some Christopher Awdry stories written for Thomas annuals (I think it’s like a magazine?) which I think take place in the original prime railway series universe (now I feel like I’m talking about Star Trek series!), but anyways, there are some people who have narrated them, so it’ll be cool to listen to some new short stories – like bedtime stories all over again!

Today I found the Media news section on the Huffington Post website – news about news! Or the news industry rather (and larger media industry). Some very interesting articles, about tv hosts, news contracts and the like, it’d be interesting to read to get some more info and viewpoints on the tv industry.

Last, work days means less time for tv (whether on real tv or hulu) – I’m behind on episodes of Conan and Late Night with Jimmy Fallon – I have no idea how I watched all of this last year, along with a host of other shows too. But it’s a scary realization about the “real world” and how time will be different than it is in college. (It always seems easier – no homework with a job! – well usually – But plenty of other things to worry about I suppose).  But some nights it’s tv show or sleep? Sleep usually wins out. Oh well, life goes on…

 
Today was the annual welcome reception event for new Cornell students in the LA area. It was great seeing all the new faces, and it was quite interesting for me to see the event from “the other side,” after being at school for a year.  I had a great time sharing my experience with the new students, as well as learning about t them and what they’re expecting this year. I wish I had more time to talk to people though! It was also a longer drive, out past the 405, but traffic was relatively light today.
But after spending a few hours with people who’ve just finished their senior year of high school, I thought I’d go back and revisit my year with the #worldslongestmarthon hashtag on Twitter I used during my senior year. I’ll give a couple reflections and additional details where I can – I realize now that a lot of what I wrote was not very specific and detailed, and isn’t very conducive to sparking a memory. But I can try!

  • #worldslongestmarathon - day 59. 8.5 hours of school + 8 hours of band. fun day!!! 5 SWEEPS IN BAND!!!!! love doing hw @ midnight.... 
  • So this was some time in November I believe – don’t remember the competition – might have been at the school that doesn’t have its own football field, and has to share with the district. (Forgot the name, and not sure if that’s even the right one). But there was an incredible feeling when we won. It might sound a little corny, but when they announced our name, I could envision a movie moment, where the music would crescendo and swell at that moment to the grand heroic theme! Take note Hollywood – someone needs to pitch a real marching band movie (not just drumline!)

  • #worldslongestmarathon the big day 60. not really big. just really tired from band last night. hope todays spanish test was ok.
  • Evidently it was a Tuesday night competition the night before, thus a late night doing homework.

  • #worldslongestmarathon day 61 - sleepy, physics test, iba meeting, and more stuff. fun fun fun! too many clubs, hahaha
  • Not sure what other clubs were meeting – besides IBA, I was involved in NHS and Math Club heavily, but our meetings were on other days usually. Maybe it was a Science Olympiad meeting. Not sure there.

  • #worldslongestmarathon 62 - interesting day...not much to speak of. did some national honor society stuff - thanksgiving soon!!
  • There’s NHS. Not much to speak of apparently.

  • #worldslongestmarathon 63 - long band practice, christmas music, and the first episode of The Wong Show!!!!
  • I love playing Christmas music in band! Always makes me happy. I was super excited when we received our Christmas music. I think Kathryna or somebody might have laughed at me! But it’s all good fun. Not sure about The Wong Show – besides being an interesting pun, that might have been our “hot seat” thing in English, where I was the host of a talk show like thing, and other students portrayed characters from different books/stories we read, and have to answer questions in character.

  • #worldslongestmarathon day 64 - college interview! spanish test and presentation! learned about radios!
  • Not sure what college that was – might have been Brown, but I’m not certain. We learned about radios in IB Physics, we spent a good amount of time learning about radios, and how they worked (especially AM radios, and the mathematics behind the wave functions).

  • #worldslongestmarathon 65 sleeeeeeeeeepy!!! short day! band practice!!
  • Just what it says – but looks like it was a Wednesday extra practice in the run up to champs (whereas practices were generally Monday only, we had extras in the weeks before champs).

  • #worldslongestmarathon day 66 - really empty, since most people went to see the play. but i read a chapter of hw stuff!!!...in 4 hours...
  • There was a trip by the English classes to see a play – I think it was Shakespeare. I’m not sure why I didn’t go, but there were a few of us who stayed, and mostly had study hall periods, since a lot of my classes had the same students from IB.

  • #worldslongestmarathon day 67 - HARD spanish culture test...surprise english essay...getting ready for extended essay tomorrow!
  • Surprise! Not sure what the English essay was. But I remember Spanish culture tests! Each week in AP Spanish, we’d study the culture of a Spanish speaking country, and every so often we’d be tested on them (5 or 6 at a time?) – and I remember that they were rather difficult!

  • #worldslongestmarathon day 68 - interesting day...i liked the physics movie about radio. and sung last year's field show at lunch. Yup
  • We watched a video in physics about the history of radio – with Tesla, Edison, and some of the early businesses and corporations. Besides talking about the science and physics of radio, I believe it also talked about the politics of radio, with the patents and money and whatnot, which I found quite interesting as well. As for last year’s field show, that would have been Heartbeat – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIa9weoA6XM - not sure who was singing though. Me…Kevin was probably there, maybe Trevor and Victor…some others too maybe. Or if this was a Monday and we had a band club meeting, that’s possible too.

  • #worldslongestmarathon day 69. fun fun, last morning band practice ever on the field! can't wait to go to san diego!
  • Last morning band practice. Getting to school before 7am for band was tiring, but besides getting satisfaction from our performance and practices (most of the time), sometimes we were treated to beautiful sunrises.  And champs were in San Diego that year! It was great to see some alumni from UCSD come seeus when we went down there for band champs!
So that brings us up to about 1 week before winter break in 2009, when I get more time, I’ll continue with those reflections and notes.

PS – Happy Birthday Harry Potter!

 
  We spent most of the day with at my uncle’s house (I had to drive on the freeway – yay?) with my cousins, and my other aunt came, so more cousins. It was a lot of fun – some time in the pool which was fun. I have one cousin who’s about to go into 2nd grade, and he has a great imagination! And he was a lot of fun, we all had quite a water fight in the pool, but he made up all of these little games right away with dive sticks, and shooting zombies and what not. Which I thought was great. I mean I still have a pretty cool imagination (running around like a spy perhaps? Singing this music? ), but what young kids think of never ceases to amaze me. Seems like a terrible thing to lose – not that we lose it, but soon the “real world” hits us, and what becomes important to us changes. Tis life. But I feel like a lot of times we look at kids and marvel at their imagination thinking “I used to be like that.” Is there something that says we can no longer be like that, that we cannot see the world with new wide opened eyes, to see things in new ways, to not be bound by social norms and expectations, to create purely from our mind? Go forth and imaginate!

 
Today was pretty lax, but doing a lot of things! A lot of following the debt ceiling debate – interesting to watch the @BarackObama twitter feed post the Republican Members of Congress’s twitter accounts as the day went on. Also spent some time working on the website, though I need to do a lot on the input fields still. Also started practicing my clarinet! Did some work on scales. Think I found a good fast/technical piece, though that’s going to require a bit of time put in during the next 3 weeks – but I signed up for an audition slot for CU Winds, so that should motivate me! Also swam some laps, and had corned beef for dinner!

Though I spent a lot of time tonight putting subtitles on our Roehampton Fulbright Summer Institute – it’s only taken me 2 weeks to do it. No idea how the other groups did their subtitles in 2 days! So hopefully people on this side of the pond will have an easier time understanding the accents!
On another note, now that I’m doing these every day, I think I’d like to take the time and not always write a “what I did today” but something else – maybe reflective, current events, creative, or something. Perhaps. Stories in a serialized format? Making up fake inspirational quotes? Who knows, the possibilities are endless, as long as you have a pen and paper. Or a digital word processor.
 
Quick rundown of today – Had a meeting for a potential job this coming school year, worked on some secret website programming, getting pretty immersed in the news bubble with the ongoing debt ceiling debates, catching up on some Conan, Jimmy Fallon, Good Eats, and Mythbusters, shopping at 99 Ranch with my dad, and some swimming. Busy day!
Picture
Well, Microsoft Paint can be surprisingly versatile sometimes!
Anyways, as I’ve gotten back into the LA Public Transportation system, I can’t help but compare it to the London Public Transport (note the difference in words!), and their public system, transport for London. I suppose some of these feelings of frustration and whatnot are recognizable as symptoms of reverse culture shock. Writing usually helps me.  So here we go!
  • Request stops – I quite enjoyed flagging busses in London. First of all, it’s fun when you’re waiting a while for a bus to flag it down – there’s something satisfying about that! Here in LA, however, while you don’t need to flag a bus (which is good if you’re prone to forgetting to flag, or say, reading a paper when a bus comes by), it means whenever people are waiting at the bus stop, the bus stops, even if none of the people need that particular bus. Which means wasted time when buses stop and don’t pick up/drop off any passengers. And can be very frustrating when you need to make a train connection!
  • Strange people – I thought on London transport, there were some very interesting characters – like the girl swearing at her boyfriend(?) on the train from Waterloo one night. There were others as well. The one thing in LA was the man with a large boombox radio (like in the 80s) – there are strange people on the LA buses, some on the subways, not as much on the Metrolink, but they are rarely entertaining, unlike some of the people in London.
  • Frequency – transport in LA is NOT frequent. Usually anyways. Buses may be the same – depends on the time of day; the busiest parts of the day in London had 8-12 minutes between buses on the routes we took, which is about the same for here. However, subways here I usually have to wait up to 10 minutes – it was so convenient when tubes ran every 3 minutes or less – so convenient! There were only a couple times in London where we had to wait more than 3 minutes – there’s a lot of downtime here between trains. That makes it hard to when I try to make a connection – when 10 minutes can make a huge difference in my connection. And then there’s the Metrolink line that goes by my house. I loved that Southwest Trains at Barnes came every 10 minutes or less during rush hour, and even then, at least every 20-30 minutes (and less really late at night). But here, there are like 4 trains that go into the city in the morning at half hour intervals, and 4 trains that come back in the afternoon/evening at half hour intervals. First, that makes it very frustrating when you miss one by a couple minutes and need to wait the extra half hour. Also, it’s very inflexible; especially in determining what times I need to leave my internship from. I’ve done my share of running to trains here (as in London – amazing race style!).
  • Mind the Gap – While I miss the message on London tubes, I realized you don’t hear it here because there’s no need – there is no gap! (See, it’s not all bashing on the LA Public Transit system!) At subway stations in the LA Metro, the platforms are all even with trains, and the stations all have elevators. In fact, I saw a man in a wheelchair get onto the subway this Monday, and it seemed quite easy for him. So for the physically disabled, the LA Metro system seems quite accessible – more so than in London. The tube there only had certain stations which were handicap accessible, and even at those stations, they needed to go to certain parts of the platform which were raised to train level.
  • The System Layout – This probably has to do more with what I do, but most of the area where I am travelling isn’t covered by subway or train. While buses are there, subways and trains are much quicker and would cut down on the hour bus ride I take. The trains and subway are laid out in a somewhat backwards “C” shape, with nothing in the middle of the C – which is exactly where I need to travel! Very frustrating. Unlike the London trains, we never even took a bus in central (except once to Parliament I guess), because the tube went everywhere! Anywhere we needed to go was a 10-15 minute walk from a tube station, it was very convenient. I suppose part of it is that the LA system is newer (and is more accessible), but is much smaller as well.
  • Wheelchairs – It must be quite hard for anyone in a wheelchair to get on a bus. First, the placement of the wheelchairs are different, here they come in the front door, while on London buses, they come in the back door (leading to a wider back door on buses in London, and a narrower back door in LA – which took me by surprise on the first day back, I never noticed that). Though I have heard stories about people in London not moving their buggies (strollers) or other things out of the way for wheelchair people. However, in LA on Monday, there was one man who got on with a wheelchair. The bus driver stopped, pressed a button for the elevator thing in the front, and other passengers vacated their seats, and helped put the seats in the upright position to make it easier for the man in the wheelchair – I was surprised by how readily everyone helped to accommodate the man in the wheelchair. It would have been interesting to see what would have happened in the same situation in London.
  • Riding with others – I realized after a while here how much I miss riding public transport with my Fulbright Summer Participant friends in London – we had some great times on public transport. It’s quite different when you travel alone, with an iPod and book for company.
  • Maps - This probably made me the most frustrated. It should NOT take 1-2 hours to plan a trip for 5 miles in LA. But it did. Trying to look at buses, and not knowing how often they run, and the bus system has so many choices and possible routes for transfers, so there’s a lot of research on which is the best route, with the most likely connections, etc. Unlike London with the tube, where we could usually be safe in knowing there’d be one in a few minutes, and just see the tube system map and figure out a route, instead of a much more complicated bus map. It saves so much time in planning – it’s much easier to just say “Charing Cross is the closest tube stop” and follow the lines to get there, instead of saying “there’s a bus stop at Olympic and East Century Park,” there are a million ways you can get there, but the most direct one will take the longest because of the transfer, or you could use the LA and Santa Monica bus systems, or you could use the LA system only but walk between this stop and that stop and transfer, etc….Plus, the map at practically every London bus stop of the immediate area, and all the buses in that area was VERY HELPFUL, especially for being a visitor, and not knowing where the routes went – the maps were very helpful. Here, I only know a few lines, and the other ones, I’m completely lost. Which makes it very hard when I need to find an alternate route, getting on a bus not sure where it goes. I have no idea how tourists take public transit here. Oh, they probably don’t. (Hey LA, invest in making it easier to navigate the bus system when you’re at a bus stop, and maybe you’ll get more tourists to use it – and get larger revenues! Or maybe they’ve thought of that already.)
  • Oyster Cards – We have cards too. But it was nice that all public transport (including outlaying areas, like Putney) used Oysters, so we could use them for all transit. Unlike here, where Metrolink and LA Metro are different systems. While I can use Metrolink tickets as Metro passes, it doesn’t work on everything, unlike the Oyster Card.
  • Marquees – The marquees at some bus stops in London were very helpful in showing how long until the next bus. VERY helpful! And it was nice to have marquees in the tube and trains showing the upcoming stops and other information. Though to be fair, it’s much easier to understand the conductors on the LA subway and Metrolink trains, unlike the garbled Peanuts’ teacher talk that happens in London.
  • Newspapers – I miss the free newspapers in London – Metro and the Evening Standard. Full newspapers, mind you, not just little 8 page pamphlets, but like 40-60 pages of information. Granted, they weren’t very great papers (fish n chip papers!), but it was something to read, and something up to date to listen to. Day old podcasts covering the news and iPod songs don’t always satisfy me – I wish we had a morning and afternoon free paper here to read!
And a bit off topic, but 2 things I strangely miss. First, the orange squash/mystery juice from the canteen – not the best stuff, but I feel like on hot summer days, it might be refreshing. Maybe. And our little Vodaphone service Nokia phones – with T9 texting! Ah, that was quite nostalgic, bringing back memories of…4 years ago. But I kind of enjoyed using the old T9 keyboard – didn’t spend as much time texting (well a lot of time typing – but not long conversations) like now. And while I think texting is great, it was nice to not be constantly texting there, and being to enjoy where I was and what I was doing.

 
Another quick blog entry. I was going to type up my list of differences in public transportation between LA and London, but alas, it’s late again tonight, so that’ll have to wait until tomorrow.

Another 5:30 morning – though it was nice to be able to watch Chuck Todd at 6am. Got into the office a bit before 9 – I was lucky and caught the 7:37 Red Line! Today was mostly doing research for a viral marketing campaign, based off some of the information I got yesterday. It’s pretty cool being able to contribute to this project. Had some good talks with Aaron about movies today – Back to the Future!  So after a productive day, headed home. Missed the 5:30 train by a few minutes, so I ended up on the 6:05 train. I waited in the waiting area of Union Station for a while, and there was an Asian couple in a (not really professional) photoshoot, with some Asian photographers. And there was the point the photographer made them kiss while holding hands in the seats, cute, but they looked really awkward!

Fell asleep on the train after listening to my NPR podcasts – woke up thinking I missed my stop, but I was just in time, waking up about 5 minutes before my spot. Back to news about the debt limit and everything else in the Washington debate right now. And a pseudo relaxing night as well. More stuff to do tomorrow!