Erin McElvaney

The last week at IBM was replete with interviews, followups from interviews in Armonk, and more 'lasts' than I could handle.

Tuesday I had a few firsts and lasts.  I went rock climbing (first time in san jose, that is) with pat, tony, diana a, and kevin.  The gym there rents shoes, too, which was nice.  Maybe the columbia gym could learn a thing or two?
After rock climbing, I went to Britannia Arms to witness the weekly Tuesday night trivia that I'd missed out on all summer.  Eh, I wasn't missing much.  There were too many of us at the table to actually communicate, I didn't know any of the answers, and we didn't happen to win.  But it was fun all the same.   I also watched the movie Amelie, you know, the french one?  Then I was inclined to speak in french after it was over, which confused me momentarily.  It was pretty good, actually, despite the really sweaty picture on the cover..

Thursday we had a farewell party thrown by the extreme blue folks in the clubhouse at our apartment complex.  Everyone was a bit tired and worn, so it wasn't terribly upbeat.  They sang happy birthday to me again which was fun, and even had my name on the cake since I was the only August birthday :) yay birthdays.  I was voted 'most likely to rearrange everyone else's plans to suit her birthday wishes.'  How true.   We received 'diplomas' for 'graduating' from EB along with a framed group picture (and a star with our superlative on it).  The upside was that we were able to throw kevin in the pool with his clothes on, and that he was a really good sport about it.  The bad news was that then other people got thrown in, who probably didn't want to be..

Thursday night I missed my first party, feeling too antisocial to make it over there. 
Those who went had a good time, I hear.

Friday was a hectic day organizing all the photos from our gallery on our intranet at work onto a CD and aggregating everyone's future/permanent contact information from them to burn with the pictures.  Everyone took home a CD to remember EB by.  We even have a mailing list, thanks to Nick K.

Friday night, Dave Cheney (one of the tech staff) threw a party at his house in San Jose for everyone to have one last goodbye.  It was a pretty good time.  Pictures will be uploaded at a later date after I buy a compact flash reader.  :( 

It was sad saying goodbye to so many people that I've seen almost every day for the past three months.  I don't really like goodbyes.  I was excited to come home and it's nice to be home, but boy is it busy around here.  I have a ton of stuff to unpack, and then repack immediately to move into my apartment next week.  I got home Sunday after a ridiculously long plane ride.  (By ridiculously long I mean the usual coast-to-coast-with-one-layover ride, which was about 9 hours total in airport and transit time)  Mom made me a birthday cake mmmm and I got to have another happy birthday sung by my family this time, and Jessica bought me some chopsticks with fork ends and little faces on them.. they are creepy.   Mom got me moose lights :). 

I met up with Michelle (roomie) last night down in White Marsh to open my presents from her and to have a drink at a bar down there to celebrate both our birthdays.  She got me a bottle of wine she liked, a pint glass that says COOL MOOSE (:):):)) on it, some hula girl thing that's sweaty and has my face in it, a paintable window hanging thing with fishies on it, and a photo frame with a pic from spring break.  :)  It's nice to see some old faces again!
Today I finally found some bedding for my new apartment--I couldn't exactly stretch the twin sheets over my NEW FULL SIZED BED that I'll have at the ALL NEW Walker Avenue apartments :).  (Yes, that is a sand volleyball court right in the middle of our apartment complex. !!!) It was a lot more $ than I had expected, but I used birthday present money to cover most of it.  It's really pretty :), and blue of course. 

Now it's time for a delicious home-cooked meal.  Man, eating out all summer makes me really glad to have some of these.

Peace in, Hereford.

Another nice long update.  PSHAW.

Saturday after my birthday a bunch of us drove vans up to Napa valley and did the wine tasting thing.  Rob backed into a pole with the rental van.  gg :).  The first wine place was good, then we had a delicious lunch at a deli where we bought a block of fresh gouda cheese and some deli meats and a loaf of bread and drank some not so good wine.
Then we went to another wine place called merryvale, which was really bad.  I poured a lot of those tastes out, unfortunately.
The third place we went was very good.  Cakebread cellars?  And they let us keep a wine glass.  The glass made it home in my suitcase, amazingly enough.

Saturday night I went up to San Fran to go clubbing with Lisa, Rob, Nick, Kristen and Dragana.   We stayed at Lisa's friends' place downtown, which was really convenient.  We got on the guestlist for Ruby Skye and avoided the $20 cover for the really cool looking but overly techno dance club.  The people were dressed to impress and to attract attention, the music was so-so, but it was pretty fun.  Fred met us there.

We also went to a smaller bar called Gravity, which I personally found more fun because they played cheesey songs like Justin Timberlake and such.  I had fun dancing on their tiny sweaty dance floor there for a bit before they closed and kicked us out.  I was surprised SF closes their bars at 2 am too.. sad.  Then we had some pizza down the street and went back and had a glass of wine.  That was a lot of fun.  I had no hangovers, and haven't had one since I've turned 21, thank you so much everyone for not making me drunk and sick!

21.21.21.

Happy Birthday to me! :) Thanks to everyone who celebrated/will celebrate / contacted / sent presents to /with ME. 

Last weekend we flew out to Manhattan for a weekend of fun before a 2-day sweat-fest.  The flight was long, the jet lag was evident, but we spent a night shopping, saw an Upright Citizens Brigade show (improv comedy) which was hilarious, ate some good food in little Italy, and basically survived until Sunday around 2 when we rode the train to Armonk.
Unfortunately  I took zero pictures during those couple days.  Sorry :/

Our Armonk adventure began Sunday evening with dinner and demo-setting-up and extended until Tuesday evening when we took our 7 oclock flight out of JFK back across the country.  The food at the learning center where we stayed was pretty good.  There were 100+ extreme blue interns at the expo staying there from the four sites around the country (Raleigh, Almaden, Austin, Cambridge).  I watched dry runs of the presentations on Sunday night.  Monday I got up after about 5 hrs of sleep at 6 am to prepare for a 7 am breakfast, and a day chock full of executive speakers, 4-minute project presentations, 'music videos' from each site, project demos, 'networking' socials, interview/career meat markets, and a dinner with an assigned IBM VP. 
After that we went back to hang out for a few, slept another 5 hrs, and I was up at 6 again for 6 30-minute back to back interviews.  Some went pretty well ;).  I'm flying to Raleigh to check out a site for a possible future job opportunity (on aug 21). 

We had a visit from the CEO of IBM and he did a short talk and by 3:30 we peaced out and headed back to JFK for a 6 hr flight home to san jose. 

The day after we got back was my birthday!  I received some wierd 'cats in food' stuff and notepads about eggs from my sister and this fat animal thing that hangs from my key ring now.  My aunt Janet got me a book about a sloth which freaking rocks.  esp cuz it's a childrens book so I can read it.  my mom sent me a shirt, sandals, a bracelet, a necklace, and some special shampoo/conditioner stuff.  Not to mention the food care package last week :)  Thanks everyone!  I also received cards from my aunt Jeanie, my Grandma and Pop-pop, and Tony Chang. .. And a few post cards from Poseidon.

Wednesday we had an optional day of work so naturally I slept in, lounged around, took a bath, took a nap, opened my presents that I had to retrieve from the post office, and then went out.  A big group of us went to Gordon Biersch ( a downtown san jose beer brewery / restaurant / bar )  for dinner and drinks as a joint celebration for Kieran's engagement/going away on a 3 month hike party and for my birthday.  Thanks to everyone who bought me drinks and stuff, it was a lot of fun!  After dinner Rubani, Steve, Patrick E, Lisa, Tony and I went to San Jose bar and grill for some drinks, which was also a lot of fun.  However I got in by 12:30 and wasn't too bad off in the morning.  Sorry guys :). 

IM 21 ! :)

But I got free cake for my birthday, and the waiters at GB were cool.  They even signed my birthday card, which was a postcard Pat E found outside the restrooms at GB where they have free promotional cards available.  The front says "Be thankful for EVERYTHING for soon there will be NOTHING."  An uplifting promo for the movie 28 days later. :)

This weekend we're going to napa valley, and then I'm going up to san francisco to go out to a bar/dancing with a few people. 

Amazingly enough I'll be home in just over a week!  It's hard to believe the summer is almost over.  I hope all my friends back home can save a day that we can all go out and celebrate the end of summer / many of our legal drinking ages / going back to school / etc.  Let me know when you'll be home

I'll be around sunday night the 17th - when school starts which is august 27th (wed).  However the 21st I will be in Raleigh. 

peace out.......!

Eyyy. 
I'm leaving for New York tomorrow so I figured I'd update.  This past week has been kinda sucky, to put it in 5th graders terms.  One of our bosses/mentors/friends had to leave the company 3 weeks from program termination, which stinks. 

But as for things more jolly, last weekend I went kayaking in Elkhorn Slew? I don't know how to spell it.. but it's south of Santa Cruz near Monterey, I believe.  The day was gloomy but they gave us wetsuits and windbreakers and we paddled about for 2 and a half hours.  It was great because we got to see sea otters popping up out of the water near our boats and a ton of seals or something beached on the .. uh.. beach.. of the .. uh.. slew?  whatever.  They were awesome and fat and cool! 

Then we went to Santa Cruz and stayed the night in a hotel so that some of my friends could run the 6 mile Wharf to Wharf from Santa Cruz to Capitola beach.  Congrats to Yeming and Michelle, Eric and April!!

Personally I slept in later and met them at the end, after which we went back to Santa Cruz, ate a bad lunch and spent about an hr on the beach.  I also fell in the water and got full of sand which was gross but fun.  We finally played a little volleyball but we kind of sucked it up.  It was fun anyways:)

This weekend a lot of us extreme blue kids are going to NYC early, spending a couple nights in the sheraton in midtown manhattan, chillin in the city, and then we'll be heading to Armonk, NY by train Sunday afternoon.  Monday and Tuesday are the big expo--culmination of the program where the project teams make presentations and demos to big execs.  It should be exciting.  There will probably also be a number of interviews carried out there.  We'll see how it goes.  Enjoy your weekend everyone!

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