It's alright; I'm better now, now that I've imagined your apology, as heartfelt as I imagine it must have been. You're forgiven.
When we last communicated via RSS, I was still in Port Orchard. It's fair to say much has changed. I don't really remember where I left off, and at the moment I don't actually have an internet connection, so I can't check, but suffice to say nothing all that important happened in my last remaining days there. Mostly it was packing, or stalling on packing. I really only finished about half, though I bet my mom would argue even less than that. A lot of it was stuff from my apartment at Western, and that stuff was never unpacked.
Sunday evening came, and I was supposed to visit my aunt and uncle in Bothel for dinner. I left about a half hour before we were supposed to have it, but my sister said she was running late too. We were supposed to meet at her apartment and then drive there in one car. I got a call while en route, but since I was driving, and it was past July 1st (July 6th to be precise), I ignored it. I was I-5 and couldn't really pull over. Apparently I'm one of the few people who takes that law even slightly seriously. I just know that I'm absolutely helpless on the phone. Today I was on the phone, sitting in my chair, and when I finished, I realized I was standing. Helpless and/or standing don't go well together with driving. I didn't much like getting on the phone while driving before the law went into effect, and now I have a valid, righteous excuse.
I got to her apartment and checked the message, which of course was to meet her at my aunt's, and hopped back into the car. I confirmed that it's about a fifteen minute drive from her place to my aunt's. You all can breathe easy now, or, at least easier -- there's still the unresolved case of the glove that didn't fit, unless such information was uhh... speculated about... in If I Did It.
So, I got there pretty late, after they'd already eaten. They gave me tacos while they ate their ice cream, and we talked. They also presented to me my graduation gift: a The NEW Super Mario Bros. lunchbox with an Arby's gift card in it. I don't know what they expected me to do with the gift card, but the lunchbox makes a great mantelpiece. William (or at least I hope that's his alias), my cousin, wanted to play Mario Kart with me, but I was pretty beat, and had my first day of work the next morning at 8:30, so we called it a night around 11:45.
On the way back I stopped to get gas, which freaked out my sister since I was no longer following her. It's probably about time I renamed her. Her name shall be Ashley. I suppose I could call her Travis for just as good of reason, but that might confuse our future audiences. See, had I been born a girl, I'd have been named Ashley. That was before they thought of the name-- very tricksy; ya almost got me, but I'm still one step ahead of you. And if she'd been born a guy after I was born a guy, her name would be Travis. So, as I said, it makes more sense to call her Travis than Ashley, but you understand. And if you don't, I suggest rereading this post from the start. You probably missed something important and entirely relevant in the second or third paragraph, which of course wouldn't make sense without having a complete understanding of the first.
Anyway, I got to Ashley's and Travis's apartment a bit later, where they freaked out at me a bit. I was about to get ready for bed, but decided first to make sure I wasn't forgetting anything. As it turns out, in order to fill out a certain form, I needed my passport, which of course earlier that day I had looked and decided I wasn't heading to Canada any time soon and left in my room. It was my turn to freak out. I called my mom who said she would have driven it to me, at least half way, had she not had a paper to finish that night for her Master's program. So, three hours later I got back to their apartment. On the way there, while I was still pretty stressed and on edge, worried about my first day of work and being awake for it, and not knowing what to expect, and whatever else, I really felt like God wanted me to go the speed limit the rest of the way home. How annoying, right? I don't go much over the speed limit, but I do consistently go five over. After a few minutes of arguing that it was my imagination, I gave in. I'm not sure what the reason was that God wanted me to, but I am convinced that he did. It very well could have been for no other reason than that it calmed me down. I get frustrated when people don't maintain their speed, or drive so that I can't pass them, or whatever else. Going 60 on the freeway allowed me to stay in the right lane the whole way. Sure I was passed, but that's what the left lanes are for, and I only had to pass a couple people, when there wasn't much surrounding traffic. I'm still not great at maintaining my speed in that car. I miss the van, though not as much now as I used to. The van was amazing for maintaining your speed, probably because of its mass, but also the gas pedal was somehow nicer.
Like I said, three hours later I got back to their apartment. They were sleeping on the couch so closely, it seemed like they were one body. I took their bed, which was scarcely large enough for one of me, and fell straight to sleep. (Okay, I think I've taken that far enough. Ashley will be singular again.)
I woke up around 6 the next morning. The night prior I had thought I was going to don my suit for the first day, but thought better of it while back in Port Orchard. I got to the campus, and actually into the building I was supposed to get to, around 7:00. I had expected traffic and to get lost several times, and allotted time accordingly. So I sat for an hour and a half. I played a little bit of my DS. I've been playing Phoenix Wright. It's a pretty fun game, and I highly recommend it to any DS-toting reader. It's certainly not a typical game, and like any software, it does have its quirks. I actually beat it tonight. It's irritating because even if you find a contradiction, you have to present the contradiction the game is expecting. For example in the last case, the witness testifies that someone was stabbed in the chest, when his autopsy specifically says he was stabbed in the back, but the contradiction they were looking for was that the murder weapon had a broken tip before entering the victim. (Gaul's nodding in recollection at this point.)
Around 8:00 they started handing out nametags to the thirty or so of us who had shown up early. I had been the first by about 10 minutes, then a couple more came and so on. Eventually there were 211 of us -- all starting the same day. I'm not sure it was absolutely necessary that I had gone home to get my Passport, but they did ask for it, and what's done is done. I made the right choice in not wearing my suit -- no one was. (I really doubt they'd fit in it anyway; I'm pretty thin.) Everyone was, however, dressed like I would for a church I've never been to: khakis or slacks and a nice shirt, so I fit in just fine. That's how we dressed the first day. The second day, everyone was in jeans.
So, for the first day and a half, we were in a program called NEO (New Employee Orientation). A woman lead the program/class. She seemed to go by her alias as much as her name. Aliases are basically what our email addresses are: <a lias>@micrsoft.com. We can apply to get a nice address like, <firstname>.<lastname>@microsoft.com, but no one does for campus email. She lead the class pretty effectively, giving us lots of information without overloading us, and taking breaks for guest speakers and tens, if not billions, of short movies. The first speaker on the first day was a vice president of something, who gave his speech on innovation.
