easy friday

Easy day today. Showed up at work about 9:00, went to a small seminar by a French lady doing extremely-multi-step drug synthesis. It wasn't extremely rewarding for me; the value would have been in displaying the thought process that one must use in synthesizing drugs... I got some of this, but was having such a hard time catching up with the many individual reactions and getting over the language barrier, that I just didn't get much out of it. Ryan expressed similar concerns, so it's not just me!
I then had two hours of work, lunch, another three hours of work, then Amgen threw a barbecue to welcome the interns, even though it's either two or four weeks into the internship (half of the crew arrived two weeks before I and some others did). Excellent food: salad, ribs, chicken drumsticks, hamburgers, sausages, hot dogs, chicken filets, asian noodles, sweet potato salad, black bean salad, brownies and ice cream. Plus a selection of beer, wine, and other drinks. And I finally got to meet lots of the other random people that I see in the halls of Amgen. Nearly every person here is nice and sociable.
Some notable persons:
Ryan Brown (NOT Ryan White, my supervisor) from Santa Clara - works directly next to me in lab. Was planning on doing grad school at Harvard now, but got married in his first few months of grad school, and couldn't get back up to speed after being busy with marriage business. So he's taking a year off. Just started with Amgen a month ago. I get along with him well.
Sean - with an accent so I assume he's local. He programs the methods for the high-throughput screening facility on the 4th floor. Talked to him a bit about applications of computer science in chemistry.
...other people that I don't want to go into!

And the weather is really crazy here! Today started rather cool, but looking mostly clear. Then it rained a little bit. Then it cleared up. Lunch was punctuated by moments of intense light as the sun broke through the mist and clouds. Then it cooled down again. Then it warmed up again. Then we had the barbecue. In the middle of the barbecue it cooled down again and wind picked up. Then it got really cold and everyone went inside...

Got some slide film today to take some nice pictures of the area.

That's all for now