Night Thundershowers

I was supposed to go out with a friend tonight, but decided against it since the weather was quite nasty out and was getting worse as I was calling to cancel. So I decided to just stay in and read.

It was so nice to hear* the rain and feel that rush when the thunder clapped in the distance, a weird balance between calm and wild. I forgot how peaceful it is to just sit and take in the sounds of a storm while you read, or even if you're just sitting and thinking.

*Changed from "here" to "hear."Explanation: numbers good, words BAD!!

First Day at Work

Well, I have to say that there's nothing like a good change of scenery to make someone feel better. Wow...

Well, it's not my own office, but it's an office size cubicle which is fine and makes me equally as happy. It's like a nice den for me to stay in if I want and then pop my head out of occasionally. The people are also really great and I've met a couple other new hires as well, and they're really lax about lunchtime, it's pretty much whenever to whenever and I can eat at my desk and play with my new computer if I want! They trust me with liquids! Hooray!

Now all I have to do is bring the rest of my crap with me and we'll be cool. My desk is awful bland without my bamboo plant. :-(

Wait, it's Saturday...already?!

Whoa, that week off went by WAY too quickly, I barely had any time to enjoy it. Well, I'm lying when I say that, but you know what I mean. *evil grin*

It's been great, but Tuesday will be back to reality for me. However, it'll be a brand new, really cool, more highly paid reality. So it's totally worth going back too.

Now I just have to wait until the new checks start rolling in. $$$$

The Numbers Game

Let's just say that some guys that complain about never getting any girls' numbers obviously aren't asking any of these girls or aren't being aggressive enough.

I went to have dinner with my friend and her boyfriend is a bouncer at the place we were eating at, so we figured we'd play some pool and hang out with her boyfriend when he wasn't checking ID's. So as we're playing pool, a friend of his, who's also a bouncer, strides over without a care in the world and asks me if it'd be OK to play pool with me.

See boys, it's not that hard, actually talking to women works. Let that be a lesson to the meeker of you out there, you do get rewarded for sticking your neck out sometimes.

Now let's just see if this brazen one actually calls me after fetching my number that night...

Sleeping, Visiting and Cleaning...oh my!

The wonderful thing that a week off from work allows you to do is not only catch up on your sleep that you've been dearly missing ever since you started your 9-5, but it also allows you to catch up with people that you haven't seen for a while. Oh yeah, and cleaning of course, I apparently have a light blue carpet, yes it's been that long since I've vacuumed, leave me alone!

So yeah, catching up on my sleep has been great at first, but I feel that my body is growing too accustomed to the regular, long sleep cycles it's been enjoying. I'm going to have to whip it back into the 6 hour a night cycles during the work week that it's thrived on ever since college, so I'll practice going to bed after all the cool shows of [adult swim] are over with and angrily waking up at 7AM the next day.

But it's been awesome catching up with my friends at either lunches or dinners and not having to worry about waking up so early the next day. And even with the week off, I still haven't had a chance to catch up with all my buddies, but thankfully we have Monday off for Memorial Day, so I'll be able to catch up with my one that I haven't been able too.

Final Mentee Presentations :-O

So Monday was spent sleeping in until 11 and then meeting with the lovely kids that I mentor to prepare them for their final presentation. It's through a program that is to help encourage architecture, engineering and construction fields with high school kids from the local areas and every year they have to prepare a final presentation to show what they've been doing all this time to their teachers and parents.

My kids were great (and yes, I use the term "my kids" because it's just easier to say than "the kids that I mentor"), but were concerned about getting up and speaking to about 100 or so people, so we rehearsed what they would say and the actual slides that would be showing up behind them as they spoke.

So the next day (Tuesday) was when the actual presentations were given and I have to say that I'm very proud of my kids, especially by how they presented themselves to the audience. They were well dressed and ready to talk to the audience. But what I found interesting is that sometimes the most talkative and outgoing students one-on-one end up being the most nervous and timid when it comes to speaking to a group of people.

Obviously it's very nerve racking and I think that they still did a great job in conveying to the audience what a structural engineer does and what type of structural engineering we performed for the project. The project was to design the framing for a typical ski lodge and so they had to explain what types of loading to use, the types of materials used in construction and how they would end up getting put together. So I was very proud of them and wish them the best of luck for the future.

Upcoming Week Off

My last day at my current job will be this Friday and I don't start working at the new job until the 29th of May, so that means I have a week vacation! w00t

So the plans so far are on Friday I'm heading down to New York to meet up with a friend of mine and have fun getting free drinks and just roaming about the borough of Manhattan which is always fun.

As for the rest of the week, with the weather permitting I'm probably going to get some sun at my beach (which is conveniently 10 blocks away, roughly) and maybe get in some good midday hiking at either Westwoods or Sleeping Giant. I also see many lunches in my future with my other non-9-5er friends. It'll be a trip to hang out with these people during the day! Whoa, new concept.

YAY, I finally got paid!

That's right, the week and a half living as a non-working college student have ended! Let the eating out at restaurants and buying food BEGIN!

Well, that went well...

Surprisingly it did, actually. I was expecting a knock down, drag out fight or at least something like that, but no, it was great. He was "shocked" and visibly taken aback, so of course I felt guilty but then regained my stance when I remembered why I left in the first place.

So all was well, my last day is Friday and I'll get a separate paycheck that day from Wednesday with extra personal time that I didn't use and then I have the next week or so off.

The only thing is that I told the new people I could start working on June 4th, but now I can probably just call them up and tell them I could start right after Memorial Day. I don't think it'll be a problem, so that should be cool.

Resignation Day

Tomorrow morning will be the day that I hand over a nice, type-written letter of resignation to the old boss, giving him about 3 weeks notice that I'll be moving on to greener pastures. Knowing my boss (well, how much can you really know a person, really...) this should go well, but I imagine anything could happen.

We're talking anywhere from it going very well and him being chummy chummy with me, or the entire opposite of him handing over my last paycheck and telling me to "get the f*ck out."

I'll be sure to rant and rave about what does happen tomorrow morning, but I'm leaning towards it going OK.

I GOT THE JOB!!

Oh my God!!

So after my meeting today, that got moved up to lunch time, I was offered the position of Senior Engineer with Thornton Tomasetti in New Haven! I'll also be making what I should have been making already which ends up being about 30% more than I'm making now!

I start working June 4th and it couldn't come at a sooner time.

Thanks for all the help that you guys gave me, I appreciate all the advice that I received and I owe you all. Thank you so much!

Turkey!

Look what we found in the woods of Westwoods!

GOBBLE GOBBLE!!

Final Iteration of Interview Outfit

With the help of my sister (who is awesome) we picked out this great outfit for me:

• dark gray tweed trousers (has a black weaving to is)
• light blue collared shirt
• black blazer on top
• black belt
• my black Guess slingbacks

Pictures to follow!

Saturday Hiking

Well, me and some friends decided that we all needed to get into shape and that the cheapest way to do it is schedule some type of walking adventure every Saturday or so.

So this past Saturday we ventured into the Westwood Trails of Guilford, CT. Now I've been here previously on a much more difficult trail, so I figured I valued my safety and wanted to try the moderate ones, you know the one's where we wouldn't be literally repelling off of things and hiking up rock faces all after being told we were going for a "light hike." *grumble*

It was such a gorgeous day out, perfect temperature of around 55-60 F and we got to see so much of the woods. Just a wonderful hike all together. We did get a little lost, but with the wonders of modern technology a bunch of city slickers were able to find their ways back by calling up friends and having them check the map online to get us out of there. It was actually kind of fun in a way, but I will definitely be bringing a compass and a map next time. However, I did remember the rule that "moss always grows on the north side of a tree" which actually did help us out.

I love the feeling of getting back into shape again, it was so nice to be able to keep up with everyone and just enjoying the feeling of working out. It's been a while, so I'm glad my body is getting back up to speed.

Interview Wardrobe

Well, I've decided that I have enough clothes at home to actually construct a suit that will be just fine and dandy for my interview on next Tuesday. I'm a cheap person, everyone knows this (or you should by now) and it is the spring right now hence there's not a damned suit anywhere to be found that's somewhat decent to wear for an interview. So I'm going with a gorgeous black blazer, white collared undershirt and gray tailored trousers with black heels. That black/gray combination is a good one and I think it'll compliment me nicely without me having to spend $200.

And the thing is, I'd spend the money if I found something that I liked, but I haven't! It's May and the next time suits will be out is probably August in order to get ready for the fall. Then I'll buy a nice suit because the stores will actually have more than one rack's worth of them.

I also refuse to buy a girlie, 3/4 sleeve length blazer. That's not even a suit! Why do you clothing people even bother making those things! It defeats the purpose of a suit! I may as well wear a frickin' cardigan and call it a day.

*grumbles*