I’m not sure where I would be right now if I didn’t have my internship. I don’t have any interest in medicine, and my family is full of doctors or nurses, I don’t need to intern to help my resume or supply me with methamphetamine. I haven’t stepped into a library of my own accord for at least three years, and until they start stocking porn (no, Yoli, Ah! My Goddess doesn’t count) (Love Hina would), I have no intention of doing so. I don’t like being in the sun, much less being in the sun picking up trash, I’m not intimidating enough to watch over middle school kids, and I refuse to wear a cup when watching over elementary school kids.

So it’s a good thing I did happen upon the internship, and was invited back for a second year. The office is air-conditioned (sometimes too much so), there’s rarely manual labor involved, I get Internet access, and sometimes I get to tour the city on a site visit. The only things that would make this job better are either illegal or involve cleaning up a mess afterward. Some are both.

Things are pretty much the same this time around in terms of what I’m doing. I don’t have immediate access to the cool acoustical software I used last year, and I haven’t gone on any site visits yet, but I’ve got all summer. And to make the days go by easier, there are two interns around my age right next to me: a female going to college, and a male going into his senior year. They both got the internship through some organization that gives out internships to a select number of applicants. They work Monday to Thursday for six hours, take a leadership/ethics/sex class on Friday, and get paid. I work an extra hour+.25 longer, and have to work instead of taking a sex class, but I get paid more 😀 .

Not that I really use the money. I replaced my dead shell of a MP3 player with a new one, and while it’s fine, it doesn’t give me the “omfg i love this mp3 player soooo much, i’m going to carry it around in plain sight, fall asleep, and get it stolennnnn!” feeling. I’m still trying to resist the temptation of the iPod, but I may just upgrade next year. We’ll see what new things come out by then.

And I got a new computer! Though to say that I got it wouldn’t be totally correct…more like my father almost randomly brought home a new computer. An awfully good one, too…in fact even scarily good. But if it lets me play Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines with load times less than my previous computer’s two minutes each (and being forced to go through three of them every quest), and then I’m nothing but happy.

Indeed, I’ve been happening across a lot of things lately, as I’ve also been winning raffles. I’ve only won one before, which was a decent computer from my prep school. But it seems that while I’ve an uncanny ability to have things fall my way (scholarship->internship combo, to say the least), so does my girlfriend. And when combined…it’s like we’re past five dots. So, before I’m shunted into a Realm…

The hopes and dreams of countless Stuy Robotics team members who spent ten, twenty, even thirty dollars during their team party’s raffle for an iPod Mini…those hopes and dreams were ruined when the mini was won. It was won for three dollars, but most importantly it was won by someone not even on the Robotics team. Me. If you need a pure, real, hands-shaking-for-a-minute-afterward rush, you need look no further than crushing the hopes and dreams of an entire Stuy Robotics team. Like when I won the computer, the drawing was slow and nerve-breaking. Hopes and dreams were crushed handfuls at a time, as they called out the individual digits one by one. Brilliantly devious. The hopes and dreams were highest towards the end, so I savored the moment and devoured them as quickly as I could while receiving my prize. I was irked by not winning the tool set or emergency water in a pink fanny pack, but the mini was my consolation prize, and I received heckling as a complimentary (and obligatory) gift.

Team member: “You’d better watch your back.”
Me: “You’d better not watch your back.”
Team member: “…why not?”
Me: “Cause when I’m fucking you up the ass, it’s best to just close your eyes and shut everything out.”

Yea. No more heckling after that. I just shared the news with my girlfriend (who had left early but put also bid on the mini), and then gave her the mini as an early birthday present not long after. That’s gonna be a tough bar for me to beat.

But I came close. While checking blogs, my girlfriend found out that Cold Stone ice cream was giving away a year’s worth of ice cream as part of a new flavor promotion. We were going out anyway, so she convinced me to stop by and try our luck. The raffle drawing was slow and meticulous, but like the slow and meticulous drawings in the past, it had the same result. I won, though my girlfriend was actually the first to realize it. I got a boolet of certificates for free ice cream, twice a month for a year. Seeing a serving of their ice cream probably has more fat than I have on my entire body…I could definitely use it. I split the book with her, because if she didn’t enter the raffle too, who knows who would have been picked? And, you know, I’m nice. *protectors of modesty bust into the room, guns blazing*

In others news, there’s a lot of road trip mileage going on nowadays. I had to drop off my brother at baby CTY this Sunday, which was more boring than anything else. We got there obscenely early like we always do, and we always end up having massive downtime before the opening ceremony. I didn’t exactly have nostalgia, because I barely remember anything about baby CTY…I was more tired than anything else. I slept straight through the majority of the 4 and 5 hour rides to and from Chestertown, Maryland.

And I’ll be taking seven hour rides this Friday and Saturday. I’m going to the RIT Careers & College program, where I can learn about a variety of careers, but with a strong emphasis on vocational goals and engineering. I’m using this as a major chance to find out more about the computer science field, because everyone my mother has talked to says that it’s crap. Low pay, not enough jobs, long hours…ditto for architecture, my secondary option for a major. But at least the trip will be fun, because it’s overnight and my girlfriend is coming with me. No pun intended.

All in all…it’s been good. Hot, though that’s not always a bad thing. And it’s nice to be able to eat Quiznos every day for lunch again and be paid to read Telgard, even despite its data loss.