4th of July Holiday Week

This was definitely a play week. I only worked Monday and Tuesday. Monday I had a design review for my project. I had a block diagram and task list prepared for the weekly Spacecraft Team Meeting. Everyone seemed to like the design and I got a lot of positive feedback.
Tuesday Rich and some other JPL geeks went rock climbing at Hanger18 in Upland which is about 40 minutes from Pasadena. We had a really great time, Rich has been climbing for a while now and I was able to keep up for the most part.
Wednesday a handful of us went to Universal Studios. This was tons of fun! Being my first theme park experience I have no complaints. We got discount tickets through JPL and spent the whole day there. The weather was great and the rides were awesome. Probably my favorite was the Jurassic Park ride and the Mummy ride. There was also a studio tour bus that went around all the stages and sets that were used to make blockbuster movies. I managed to snag a video from part of the tour.
Thursday I drove to Phoenix to visit Alan, his girlfriend, daughter and his brother's family. It was very hot but relaxing from the fast pace the past few weeks have been. We pretty much just spent the 4th chilling out and having a few drinks.

I spend Saturday driving back to Pasadena then later that afternoon we went to Hollywood and saw Wall-E at the El Capitan theater on Hollywood blvd. We spotted Natalie Portman while we were there! She went to the same Wall-E showing we were at. After the flick I asked her if I could get a picture with her and she kindly declined. Regardless, it was fun! Outside the theater they had 1/3 scale models of the Mars Exploration Rovers and Sojourner. There was also a big NASA/JPL display with a history of spacecraft and the Phoenix lander.

Sunday a couple of us Catholics here at Caltech ventured over to the San Gabriel Mission. This was the 4th mission of the 21 in California and founded in 1771. It's about a 10 minute drive from campus. Mass was great, we almost ended up at a Spanish mass in a chapel which was at the same time as the English one. The English one ended up being in the actual mission church, it was really beautiful! Hopefully we get to go to more this summer.

I know this post is a little late, I've actually been writing it for a couple of days now. :)

As always, more pics on PicasaWeb
http://picasaweb.google.com/dan.isla/California2008

Also check out the Photo Map!
http://picasaweb.google.com/dan.isla/California2008/photo#map