After forcing my poor parents to drive me to PDX late at night, surviving an overnight flight next to the cutest quietest baby of all time, and bouncing around on three different forms of public transportation, I am again curled up on my futon in cozy Noyes 113. I came back early to finish some stressful projects — mostly the C++ lab that none of us finished before the break and the subsequent programming assignment I haven’t yet glanced at. It is such a beautiful day, though, I can’t bear to consign myself to the dark obscurity of the sci vis lab just yet. At the same time, I’m too travel smelly to engage in social activity (aka, discover the identities of the handful of students left on campus).

I suppose I can recount my summer internship developments. I’ve been putting off writing about it, because I really don’t like web-publishing about subjects I’m sincerely anxious about, but I’m starting to come to terms with most all of the possible outcomes (and I know some people out there are curious). So. I had a phone interview with Microsoft last week. I felt ok about it, but not spectacular. It’s really hard because while I have the skills and experience to manage a team, I don’t really use Microsoft products and most of my enthusiasm right now is geared towards open-source projects. I felt like I censored myself a little too much. Anyway, my suspicians were correct and there don’t seem to be any positions they want to hire me for.

Two seconds before receiving that news, however, I received an email from the AdSense people at Google requesting a short phone interview. I chatted with them and they sent me this questionnaire to complete. Depending on how I score there something will happen. Who knows? I’m letting myself get a little excited about this one, because I won’t have to censor myself or dig very deep to communicate my enthusiasm for Google and its products. We’ll see.

Additionally, I’ve been in contact with the Daily Astorian (hey, Astoria is free), a family friend who is a technical manager for Gap in San Francisco, and my high school principal’s son who is a project manager in Seattle. If all of THESE possibilities somehow fall through, I figure I can design and sell webpages to a few more businesses, get my bartending license, and build my portfolio while banking my tips. What’s really exciting is that all of these opportunities are all happening on the West Coast!

Ok, I think I’ll finish up that Google worksheet while snacking on sweet potato chips. Then when the sky is less cheery I’ll trudge across campus to the big scary chemistry building where I’ll program to my little heart’s content. I just started working out sudoku puzzles the other day, and if I have time I’d like to write a couple algorithms to solve them and then see which methods are faster. You know, because I’m a total nerd.

I met up with Luke the other day. He rode his bike over and we walked a bit downtown, just wandered and talked. He’s leaving on Friday to attend a natural building school for a few weeks, then he is going to help Renia out on a dairy farm for a bit, so it was really nice to see him before he took off. He is so refreshing. While everybody at Vassar is stressed out about performing well on midterms, he’s working as a carpenter and getting paid to transport other people’s sailboats (aka, sail around). I’m not saying it’s the lifestyle for me, but he wouldn’t consider working for less than $20/hr and he seems as happy as ever. It’s a nice reminder that there are lots of ways to tackle life, and jumping through academic hoops is only one of them. Plus, he gives the greatest hugs in the world.

Other than Luke, Astoria is just as gray as ever. I’ve mostly been sitting around the house reading novels and pondering my C++ book (I should do more programming and less pondering, though). I’ve walked downtown a few times to see people (in a spontaneous small town way) and throw rocks into the river.

The Astoria High School dance team is competing at State this weekend. The girls who were freshmen when I was a senior are now seniors–and all of them made the All-State team (that’s really really impressive for those of you who don’t know)! Unfortunately, they are classified in the 3A Large division this year, so the 12 of them have to compete against 50-person teams. They’re not likely to take first place against those kinds of odds, but I’m sure they’ll do really well. They took first last year in 3A Small when Kari was captain. Mom’s in Portland cheering them on, so Dad and I are on our own for dinner tonight. I’m going to go harass him until he quits playing WoW and takes me to the fish store.

I was almost bored yesterday afternoon after I showered and hugged a series of friends goodbye. Very nearly bored. Then Alex showed up! He invited me to grab my things and go to the mall with Roxy and Joanna, an offer I took up. We ran around and tried on clothes and bought marked-down Valentine’s chocolates and went out to real food. That was especially convenient, since the dining center has been out of everything fancier than raw broccoli for the past few days.

After shopping we drove out to Maia’s Restaurant, a neat artsy little place on Route 55 that has live music on Fridays and Saturdays. Roxy and her housemate Sam are friends with the band that was playing, so we hung out and listened to them for the duration of their set (which ended up being 3 hours). Have I mentioned Taylor Brown (the band/group) before? Taylor went to high school with Seth and Claire, and the group plays and writes excellent folk/blues music, so this isn’t the first time a group of friends has swept me away to listen to them. Listening to Taylor Brown in a private corner of this fun restaurant turned out to be a beautiful way to transition out of a stressful week and into spring break.

At some point last night Alex, Joanna, and I realized that we were all flying out of JFK within 2 hours of each other today. We planned to taxi, train, and bus together. After being evicted from the dorms at 9am, our plan was to enjoy a casual breakfast at Babycakes and head out around 12pm for the 12:33 train. This changed when we met our friend Arianna at Babycakes. She is flying to Morocco today with an international studies class, and they chartered a bus to JFK leaving at…12pm! After breakfast we followed her to the meeting point and weaseled our way onto the bus for the measly sum of $15!!! For half the cost of the taxi+train+bus we rode in a plush bus directly to our destination.

Because the bus ride cut so much time off the transit, we had way more time than we originally bargained for. The three of us sat in the international terminal together for an hour just watching people. We left Alex and the Delta terminal around 3:30 for his 5pm flight. I chatted with Joanna for another couple hours here in the JetBlue terminal, but her plane to SFO just boarded. I’ve got another hour until I board, but I have nothing to complain about. Things seem to be working out pretty well, and I’m almost home!

I turned in my 10-page paper. Deposited my pay checks. Officially declared my computer science minor. Spring break is here.

My room happens to be a disaster area, but that’s ok. I’ll clean it all up this afternoon and pack for going home. Alex is flying out of JFK just a couple hours before me, so I’ll have company on the trip to the airport. I have to be out of my dorm room at 9am, so leaving early isn’t a problem. It’s either waiting in some lounge on campus or waiting at the airport, and the JetBlue terminal has free wireless.

It feels so good to be through with the pressure of midterms. I’m actually looking forward to curling up with a novel or two, my C++ textbook, the Django rideboard project (which is progressing nicely), and various other productive tasks. Working is so much more pleasant when it’s voluntary.

With two oral presentations looming, I am falling ill. I held off all symptoms through the entirety of an especially terrible flu season, but now that I need my voice my throat is closing up. I should have seen it coming.

But I’m too excited to be down about it! Spring break is in a matter of days! I feel a little guilty getting on the airplane like this — I didn’t even go to the gym this morning because, while I feel ok, I don’t want to spread these speech-impairing germs. But I get to go home! Vassar is pleasant and all, but after the snow everything has been damp and muddy. I can’t wait for a beautiful Astoria day, to just ride my bike into the middle of nowhere and then come home to delicious warm meals and a private bathroom! Small luxuries.

Hopefully while I’m on the West Coast I can extend my internship search by actually dropping by places and speaking to people. Alex and I were talking about the New York Times website redesign the other day and it gave me the idea to check out different newspapers’ websites. I found the Oregonian to be one of the most inaccessable. Look at that terrible content-less front page forcing you to choose between The Oregonian and Oregon Live! There is a general lack of consistency, overcrowded pages, and confusing graphics. The fact that it is split between two different webpages is just confusing, and neither the design nor the content offers any support.

Something like Mark Boulton’s clean, beautiful grid layout is a much more elegant solution. You can squeeze lots of information on a page without cluttering it beyond usability. While none of the othe websites I looked at were nearly as problematic as the Oregonian’s, it could not hurt to write up a cover letter addressed to the web divisions of a few newspapers. Legitimate web publishing wouldn’t be a bad summer job.