Virginia weekend

Last Friday I had another interview with a company in Virginia that I used to work for as a summer intern. It's been several years since I was back there, but it was really nice to see so many of my former coworkers. I got a lot of, "Melanie! Are you back??" "No, just interviewing..."

Any nervousness I had about the whole thing disappeared after my conversation with the second person I interviewed with. I had asked what to expect in this process after my interview today, like when I should expect to hear back from them, and what would happen if I liked both groups I was interviewing with and they both liked me. His response: "Let me just tell you now - unless you punch someone in the face this morning, you're going to get an offer from us."

I convinced the company's travel office to let me stay until Sunday morning instead of flying back on Friday afternoon, so I got to spend the rest of the weekend with Josh. On Friday, we went out to dinner with Phil and Glenn at the Boulevard Woodgrill, then stuck around the area to grab a beer and then go to a party that Josh's friend was throwing. The theme of the party was white trash, and everyone got really into it, so we drank Milwaukee's Best and ate Slim Jims and peanuts. Everyone had dressed the part too. Everyone, that is, except us. It's remarkable how out of place you can feel in normal clothes when everyone else is wearing ripped up wifebeaters, ratty sweatpants or shorts, construction boots, and enormous hoop earrings. One girl even came with a fake pregnant belly.

Saturday was a lot less interesting. I worked on my thesis, Josh worked on his homework, we ran some errands, and we watched the final episode of Band of Brothers. I haven't started the book yet, but I think I have to retract my statement about the book always being better than the movie. First of all, this series is 10 hours long, so you don't have to worry about story lines getting chopped off or cut out because they don't fit into 2.5 hours. Second, there are some scenes (mostly gruesome ones) that just couldn't be conveyed as powerfully through words. There's a significant amount of narration throughout the series, but there are many scenes, particularly the ones where Easy Company is in Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge, where narration is completely unnecessary, and in many cases would have taken away from the impact of the scene.

After a long delay at the airport the next morning, I returned to Boston to get back to my boring life: grocery shopping, unpacking, post-interview thank-you emails, and of course, watching the OC episode that I missed from Thursday. :)