WALL·E and Famil·E

Finally, I'm getting around to letting you know about my weekend. It was great and as I mentioned I got to do a little more exploring.

First of all, as I'm sure you've figured out by now, it was a big weekend at work. There was a lot of buzz around Pixar last week and over the weekend since WALL·E opened on Friday. We were all very pleased that it brought in the 3rd largest opening weekend of all the Pixar films, $63,087,526! Monday we had a small party on the front patio at Pixar with the directors and producers to celebrate the great weekend numbers, and Disney even sent cookies for the entire company to congratulate us.

But, the coolest part about WALL·E opening this weekend was that the interns got our very own screening of it in the Pixar theater on Thursday night. As I mentioned a couple weeks ago, we were allowed to invite two guests to watch it with us. I had a couple people get back to me and say they were interested, but it was Jessica's parents, Arnie and Elsie, who were able to make it to town to enjoy the screening with me. They were able to stop in Emeryville on their way back to Idaho from LA for about 24 hours. It wasn't a lot of time, but I did get to spend a lot of it with them.

So, on Thursday, before the screening Pixar threw the interns a small welcoming party with Pizza and a few cheesy games to help us get to know each other a little better. After we were done with dinner we had just about 30 minutes before the screening was supposed to start. The plan was that mom & dad would arrive at the San Francisco airport, ride the public transit over to Emeryville and then check into their hotel before meeting me at Pixar for the movie. Unfortunately, their flight was delayed out of LA and they barely made it to Pixar in time for the screening to start and they didn't have time to stop by the hotel. But at least they made it safely and we were all able to see the entire movie.

I really enjoyed WALL·E and I think it may be my favorite Pixar movie so far. I was amazed by the details of the graphics, but I was also very impressed by the quality of the characters and how they developed through the film. It was a lot of fun to sit through the final credits and look for all the people that I've met and gotten to know that worked on it. After it was done, we headed to their hotel and were able to spend a couple hours just talking together.

On Friday we scheduled for them to come to Pixar at 11:00 for lunch and a tour. That morning I had my first "triage check" which is essentially me showing the section of Toy Story that I've been working on to the rest of my team and seeing if it was complete enough, or if there were some changes I still need to make. It went really well and I got done just in time to meet mom & dad in the atrium. I gave them a full tour of the atrium and the other areas that vistors can see, including a large display of original WALL·E artwork. Since they are considered immediate family, I was able to show them my office which was special too.

We ate lunch at Cafe Luxo in the atrium and had a relaxing afternoon. After a while we decided we still had time for them to see my apartment before that had to head to the airport so we caught an Emery-Go-Round bus and stopped by my place. After that we headed back to their hotel where they grabbed their bags and were off to the Oakland airport to fly home.

Although the trip was short, it was a lot of fun to get to spend some alone time with them since I really haven't had a chance to do that very much since Jess and I got married. I get to see them for another short amount of time at the end of the summer when I stop in Idaho on my way back to RI.

After they left, I rushed back to Pixar to meet one of my Brown friends who is working in Silicone Valley (an hour+ drive away). He was super excited about getting to see Pixar and it wa fun to give him and a friend of his he brought along the tour also. It wasn't as meticulous, but they really liked getting to see the inside of the campus and the atrium area of the main building. I worked a little more that night cause I wanted to get some stuff done. But, it was nice to have several visitors and I like getting to share my experience, in person, with family and friends.

Saturday was another very relaxing day, which was a nice change from a fast paced, busy week. After church on Sunday I wasn't sure what I was going to see, but while I was eating lunch I decided to head over to the beach again and just spend some time on the sand. The first time I visited the beach I only had my tennis shoes and I didn't want to get sand in them so I didn't really walk out in the sand at all. This time I remembered to grab some flip flops so when I arrived at the beach (by Muni rail), I was very excited to take of my shoes and enjoy the sand on my bare feet.

After I got down to the water front I saw these funny shaped completely clear things along the line where the sand turns from dry to wet. At first I assumed they were jelly fish, but they weren't shaped like the jellyfish that I had seen and I couldn't see any tentacles. Well, after walking around several hundred of them, I found a few specimens that made it a little easier to verify that they were jellyfish of some sort. I got some pictures of them that you can check out in the photo album. I'm still not sure what kind they were, but I know they weren't the very common "Moon Jellyfish".

After walking a couple miles on the beach, I rode another train back towards downtown and caught a BART back over to the East Bay. It was a nice and relaxing day even though I traveled quite a bit. The only anoying part was that the BART trains I rode in both directions were way overloaded, and completely packed with people. I found out I'm essentially too short to hold on to the hand rails on the ceiling of the train cars.

Well, this is much longer tha I anticipated, but I hope you enjoyed my account of the last several days. I still have no idea what I will be doing for the 4th of July. My team gets half of tomorrow off and the whole company gets Friday off. So, I hope to find something fun to do, but we will see. I hope you have a great holiday weekend with friends, family, or by yourself like me.