Today is the last day of August, and to me, September = beginning of fall. Don't get me wrong, I love fall. My birthday is in the fall! And it's rather romantic with the changing of the leaves and slight chill in the air and so on and so forth. It conjures up images of horse carriages and falling leaves and hot chocolate by the fireplace, apple picking and hayrides in the sunset, the sweet scent on cinnamon in the air.

But at the same time... fall means the end of summer. And this summer felt so very short. It only became warm just a few weeks ago it seems, and now it's cold again. I feel like I've been working so long and hard this summer, I barely got to enjoy it. I played softball thank goodness, or I don't know that I would've done much outside at all! I missed the entire season of Center City Sips. In fact, I barely made it into the city! Maybe a couple times to meet people, but not nearly as often as last year. It seems as though summer has come and gone and I didn't even realize until it was over. I finally went to Europe though! Spain! With Richard and his family. Good times good times.

It's funny, I read a couple of my past posts and one is all about how I love being an engineer and playing with numbers. I do, I still do. But work is definitely wearing me down a lot more these days. It's funny how happy and excited I still was just a few months ago. And now I'm a more cynical, jaded 1 yr employee. Haha kind of funny, because I was told this would happen, I just didn't realize how true and quickly it would happen. At the same time, I guess it's a good thing that they have me doing so many important and interesting projects. Definitely some great resume boosters! I also hadn't realized how long it's been since I've written. February is far away. So many things have happened since then.

My brother's going to college soon. I remember those days... and what amazing days those were. And it's very true what they say. I don't regret anything that I did, I only regret things that I didn't do. I suppose it's always like that though. There are only so many hours in the day, and one must pick and choose. There will always be things I didn't do, but at least I like that I did something in place of them.

I've been on my own, in my own place, with my own stuff taking care of myself for over a year now. Craziness. It's odd because on one hand, it doesn't feel any different from when I was in school. Maybe I'm just so resistant to change that I don't realize when something is different. Or maybe I'm just that adaptive. Haha who knows. It helps to have an amazing new group of friends though. I'm definitely glad I made the football team last year. And I'm making a lot of better friends that I work with this year as well. Things would've been much harder without people to fill work and after-work with fun and happiness. And of course, Richard is now in NY, so we see each other every week. Never a lonely weekend! My life is so full, sometimes overflowing with people and things, it's hard to believe that it's only been a year. Over a year.

At the same time, I can't wait to go home. Home home home. Home will always be home home. Whereas home here, is home. There's a difference.

That's something I've noticed... maybe I'm just bad at opening up? I'm very good at surface-y stuff. But the deep stuff? I don't know. I need to learn to be a better friend. Or something. Went to Jamaica with the Philly group! That was a nice long weekend break :) Reminded me of spring break, but with money haha.

Also, I'm developing allergies, it would seem. Stupid new city. I've heard of a lot of people developing allergies after moving here. Not cool, not cool at all.

I know, I know, I'm a huge dork. But the more I work in an industry engineering job, the more I realize how much I enjoy it! I love playing with numbers and words and figuring whether things work or not. I love playing with piping and water and other sorts of equipment and running experiments and getting to try out the numbers and words. I love making pretty graphs and organizing pretty sheets of data. Okay, maybe not so much the last part but I do wish I knew how to do more with Excel because it's so cool! I have had a couple research jobs, and gone into labs with scientists and while we had similar classes in college (Bio and Chem) I love that fact that I am an engineer on top of that. I don't think I would enjoy what I do as much in a lab as much as I enjoy what I do in my cubicle/manufacturing area. I know, I'm such a dork. But it's true, I love where my life has taken me. My older, "more experienced, wiser" colleagues say it's because I'm still in the honeymoon stage of my job. Which might be true. Despite some days where I have no idea what I'm doing and everything seems to go wrong and I just want to go home after being at work far longer than I feel I should've been... I still enjoy it. I think part of the fact is I enjoy what I do, I enjoy what my job stands for. Yes, I work for a company and yes, our main goal is to make money. Else we wouldn't exist. But it still warms my heart to think that I'm working hard to help people. That my job is helping us get medicine out into the world to people who need it. I know, it's expensive. I know, we charge and arm and a leg for it probably. Still, I like what I do and I like what it's going towards. I am an engineer and I love it.

We've come a long way in terms of gender equality and paternity leave and stay at home dads and such, but recently I've noticed something very interesting. A lot of the girls I know in New York have investment banker boyfriends. However, the investment banker girls I have heard of are single (except for two, and one is dating a fellow i-banker). And then I started thinking, why is this? And then I wondered, is it because as an i-banker, the girl would be making more money, have longer hours, and less time? Is it because girls are more willing/used to putting up with these types of things from guys? My boyfriend has said many times that he would never date a fellow i-banker because the girls are too aggressive and care about their careers too much. But isn't that a good thing? Isn't that exactly what he is? And it's not that he isn't proud of me or what I'm doing, but when it comes down to it he will always work more, be more stressed, and make more money. Is that why more career women are single? Is that why more women these days are single? There are guys who don't mind, and actually enjoy having a suger mama. But for the most part, guys still like being the bread winner, still like being able to say they work harder, longer, more. And for the most part, the girls don't mind. We come home earlier, we cook, we clean, we wait up (or sleep early in order to be awake when they come home). It's interesting though... It's not like this is anything new, but today hearing another girl with an ib boyfriend... definitely interesting.