The Centennial State.

I write tonight while sitting on my Ikea bed. It's the only piece of furniture in my bedroom, unless you count the cardboard box that I'm using as a nightstand. It's pretty cool.

I'm in Boulder, and it's pretty cool. If you've heard that it's a bit liberal, you're right; if you heard that it's full of hippies, that's true too. It's not a bad thing. Even the lame grocery store near my apartment (King Sooper's) has a huge natural foods section. I tend to prefer the normal processed foods, but I like the social awareness.

I've been at my internship for a week and a day. Some of the stuff I'd heard about it is true, some isn't. There are no cots laid out for people to collapse on when they've worked themselves to exhaustion. It's pretty normal inside. People have desks and offices and soccer teams on the weekends. I expected there to be a chocolate river. But there isn't one.

That said, I came home at 8 pm today and felt like it was getting home early. There's a big difference between this and other jobs, though. At other jobs I've always been counting down the minutes to 5 o'clock. Here, 5 comes and goes and you don't even notice. 6, 7, 8. By the time you look up the sun is going down, and you realize you'll have to pick up where you left off in the morning. I love what I do. What a great job.

This is one of those times where the reward for years of hard work is that you get to start all over again. I gave it everything I had through college to get here, and now I'm at the very bottom of the ladder (an intern... very bottom), looking up. That's cool, though. I've never turned down the challenge before.

Things are good.