I received 3 surprising things today. A few days ago, the graduate student I am working with for research sent me an e-mail saying he had something cool for me. My interest was piqued, but I didn\’t want to seem TOO enthuastic. Could it be free tuition next fall? Maybe it was free food! Candy! And to my surprise today, he got me the NO I WILL NOT FIX YOUR COMPUTER t-shirt! I almost died (out of happiness), but I retained my composure. Although the t-shirt is too big for me (it seems like almost everyone who got me a thinkgeek t-shirt neglected my size, but that\’s OK), I was so pleased! Now I can add to the collection of the I\’M BLOGGING THIS shirt from Seth and the defunct DON\’T BLAME ME IT\’S A HARDWARE PROBLEM. from Shroom.

Then for some odd reason, my coworker suddenly became nostalgic. I was slightly irritated at his complaints about how he wanted school to be over and how he disliked work (how he wanted work to be over too). So I wasn\’t being particularly nice (*cough*) or attentive to his concerns. Suddenly over my focus on residents\’ computers, he asked me where I was going next year. I told him that I was going across country to Pittsburgh, PA. He reacted in a surprising way, since we never had never achieved that balance of \”friendship\”. He gave a sad look…for a second…\”so far away!\” he exclaimed. I raised my eyebrows and finished up the laptops I was working on. As I was about to leave, he told me to hold on a second. He wrote something on a post-it and told me to look at it when I needed it. I gave him a curious look and put the folded note in my pocket. I went to my appointment and when I had to wait to let the comptuer scan, I pulled the note out of my pocket. It piqued my curiousity–was he going to be indifferent as I was to him? was it going to be a silly note?

Instead, the note simply read, Be successful in all that you do! Love, Monty

After the appointment, I went back to the computing center and thanked him.

When I returned to my apartment, I saw a small box sitting on my desk. Definitely something that came in the mail. To my surprise, it had a Google sticker. I couldn\’t recall ordering anything online for the last few months. I opened the box and inside was a nalgene bottle with a Google logo. Then there was a note inside. Apparently, they had received my application for the human computer interaction internship, but they received over 2000 applications for 75 positions and couldn\’t accept several highly qualified applicants…like me? It was a nice gift, but it makes me wonder if all 2000 applicants received a bottle or just highly qualified applicants like myself.

Oh yes, lest we forget that my cousin Alan proposed to me today. INCEST!