Another reason I'm glad that my dissertation is done

Last night I went downtown to watch fireworks with three other interns:
That's me, J.J., E.N., and not pictured is D.T. (she's behind the camera). There are 19 interns in my class, and only four of us ended up going out together to celebrate last night. I had assumed we'd be a bigger group, but some people had other plans, and a couple of others were out of town. However, I was absolutely appalled to find out that at least two interns were WORKING ON THEIR DISSERTATIONS instead of coming out to see fireworks. About half of my intern class has not defended yet, and weekends really are the only time they have to work, given our busy schedules. And since we are not all totally exhausted from internship yet, this weekend was a good time to work on dissertations. I am *so* glad that I defended before I started internship.

So the fireworks display over San Diego Bay was pretty cool-- there were barges in several different places on the bay, and they were all lighting off the same fireworks at the exact same time. From where we were, we could see the displays from 3 barges-- one really close by, and two in the distance. I took these two videos during the show, and if you look down toward the bottom and to the left hand side, you can see the simultaneous fireworks launching off of the three barges:






Afterward we decided not to fight traffic, and instead stuck around downtown for a while and got ice cream sundaes at the Ghirardelli shop, which was a great way to finish our July 4th celebration.

It's back to work tomorrow, and later this week I promise to provide a nice post about VA bureaucracy. I'm fairly certain that it will make you all feel better about your workplaces. For those of you back home in the psych department: by comparison with VA bureaucracy, our persnickety Mr. gph shows minimal regard for paperwork and regulations. Seriously.