End of Day 3

After day 3, I've decided to update.
Rolled outta bed on Tuesday, my first day, showered and headed out to World Headquarters. We (all the interns that were starting on the 27th had to be there at 9 AM) all signed in at the main desk and stood around and waited a bit. Then some people from HR came to get us and they gave us breakfast at the cafeteria and then proceeded to take our tax forms. Then round 10:30 our supervisors came to get us. I was quite happy to hear that the creative department is pretty much free to do what it wants with its space, and also dresses pretty casually as long as its respectable. People I work with have also told me shorts are okay when it gets hot. This aint quite the case with the rest of the building. I've only seen people in the other business-y parts wearing their dress pants and button up shirts.
Walking through the building on my way up to the creative department was kind of depressing. At first I wasn't too excited seeing that everything was just one giant room after another full of cubicles, everything was gray, white, black, and dark. Then the creative department magically showed up around a corner and it was all color and it was sooo much lighter and brighter. Every body's cubicles are decorated and personalized and all the teams are seated near or around each other. Mine is next to my supervisor's, Joe, and apparently I've got one of the larger ones. I went out shopping for stuff for it cuz I was tired of the gray cubicle walls and I wanted to make it feel smaller, surprisingly.
All the people on the team I'm working with are great. I like they're accents, cuz they're kinda like a northern accent but kinda not. There is the one guy from Minnesota, and his accent is def northern and he says "Dontcha know" like a Minnesotan. He also knows the town where I used to live. We've also got three Italians. We've got a DeFranco, a Bucco, and I definitely forgot Tom's last name. Pretty much everyone on my team is definitely somewhere between 25 and 35 years old, but Joe turned 49 today, and Tom and Steve are both 38. I made Melanie feel old today when I told everyone I'm 20 and she realized that shes only 7 years older. I can already tell that this summer is gonna be a good one just because of the people I'm working with.
On my first day, Joe, Tom, and Joe said "Today for lunch, we're really going to impress you. We're gonna take you to somewhere off of Brookpark Road. We're taking you to Taco Tuesday." Wow. Taco Tuesday was somethin else. Ya see, Brookpark road is near the airport. So, you get all the 'fine' establishments that spring up near airports, like the Cat House, Foxxy, and the like. So Taco Tuesday was at a place that I've never ever heard of. It was at Capn' Taco's. There is a big sign on the front that says "Taco Tuesdays! 79 cent Tacos!!" Well, lemme tell you, when you pay 79 cents each for 3 tacos, you get what you pay for immediately as well as later. An upside, though, is that you get a lunch who's bill comes out to be like $2 or $3. Food really isn't too much of a problem at work. I had a decent lunch at the cafeteria for, I think, no more than $4. I can also get a good breakfast for even less. I was definitely happy when I found out today that I can get as much coffee as my mug can hold for 60 cents. That gets me all the way through to lunch.
On to my job.
The last three days have been full of training. Myself and the other intern in creative, Cassandra, who started the same day I did, have been learning aaaaallll about Freehand. What in God's name is Freehand, you may ask? Well. Freehand is old. Like OLD. Like I don't think its produced any more. I'm not even sure which version they've got, but apparently it is glitchy, and can't handle scaling an image AND rotating it afterwards. So, I've been told to do the scaling and rotating in Photoshop. Photoshop CS, that is. CS. omg. CS. I've been trying to do the stuff that I know how to in CS3, and Craig, the guy that's training the two of us, has to remind me every time that I'm in CS. We've also gotta name our files and all the components that go into those folders in an incredibly specific way. If we don't do it just right, the computers will explode, giant cracks will open in the parking lot and every demon known to man will spill forth. Or, the folder and card might just be sent back by TechCheck, the people (or software, I don't know yet) that check folders and everything in them are named and arranged correctly before the card gets sent to production. Quite the pain, but I've been assured it'll get easier as I keep doing it. My team is also trying to push a Wacom Pad on me. They say they couldn't go back to just a plain mouse any more without problems. I'll give it a shot, just gotta get one sent to cubicle. And I've gotta get all my password stuff and company email stuff figured out tomorrow morning. Should be fun. One of the tech guys was trying to figure it out today. I was on the phone with him and he had taken control of my computer. It was kinda funny and odd watching my cursor fly all over the screen, knowing that it was being controlled by someone probably on the other side of the building. Oh yeah. They gave me a G5. Be jealous.
I've met the other interns staying in my hotel, five or six of them, and they're all interning in one of the business departments or AmericanGreetings.com. We went out for dinner tonite, and I think we might be goin out somewhere tomorrow night. Should be fun. We're gonna start a carpool list and rotation, cuz gas up here is $3.95 a gallon. Runnin up my gas bill all quick like. I did pay $4.05 on the way up in West Virginia though.
Anywho.
Idlewild is on, and I've gotta do a few dishes so I can have my Honey Nut Cheerios in the morning. I'll try and get pictures up later, my connection is acting up right now and is being slow. Laterzzzz.

Friday on Monday

So I'm here.
All alone in my room.
My roomate aint here yet.
And I'm bored.
So, here is my trip here in a nutshell.
We (My brother Logan, Jen, Casey, and Sarah) left Cary at round 10ish on Friday. We stopped every few hours at rest stops except for lunch at an Arby's, where only Logan and I ate and the flat bread thingys are great by the way.
On the way through West Virginia I found out that my car abhors mountains. I dreaded any upward sloping roads, which would inevitably cause my car to slow down and start the nice and slow chug up the mountain. If there were any flat or downward sloping roads I had to accelerate a crap ton so that I could get carried up and over the top on the momentum allowed by an itty bitty car with suitcases in the trunk. Twas no fun. From what I saw, West Virginia was a bunch of mountains with trees all over them and occasionally a valley, and then along came Charleston and some coal plants, and then every once in a while there'd be a mine of some sort.
Then we crossed the Ohio River, and we were in Ohio. The way we took was relatively flat. And Ohio was the first state we went through that we actually saw some kind of police officer, be it a state trooper or just a car marked POLICE, which we thought was kind of odd. On the way north, we passed sings for the towns with some of the strangest names I had ever seen.

More to come after I get those pictures downloaded!

Remember to say "Nope to Dope" and to "Stand Strong Like an Elephant."
Because Zach obviously didn't.

First Things First

Since a bunch of people I know are away from home this summer and have blogs, in order to keep us peeps at home in the loop, I have decided to do the same.
But I'm going to start when I leave on Friday morning for good ol' Cleveland, Ohio.