You know the summer has "officially" started when you have completed your first full work week, as I will have done at 5 pm today. I'm employed by the same company as last summer, except this time with increased responsibility and a pay raise. holler. It has taken me all of last summer and about 10 days this summer to be able to solidly enumerate the pros and cons of working 40 hours a week in New York City, but I feel like I've got it down. Check it out:

Pros:
1) It's New York City. C'mon now. I'm from Jersey, the land which New Yorkers scorn, and working in Manhattan makes me wish I was from New York too. Shit, at least I admit it.

2) Good loot. And I'm in debt. It's helping me climb out.

3) Job experience. Resume builder. Relevant to my major.

4) Gives me something to do. If I wasn't working here, I'd be in Iselin reading all your blogspots and shit, wishing I had a car that actually went in reverse, since my minivan is a piece of shit.

Cons:
1) Traffic. Holler.

2) Taking the train home dents my pockets.

3) Food, albeit savory, is crazy expensive. That goes for about everything else in the city too. Cigarettes? $7.60 a pack. Fuck Mayor Bloomberg.

4) I've had no more than 6 hours of sleep the past 10 days. I'm even working overtime hours (which, I'll have you know, are unpaid for me since I'm an intern) to finish projects by deadlines. I get home, drink 4 beers and pass out by midnight. Hot times.

5) In New York, sometimes you'll be walking on the street, and you'll feel a drop of moisture land on your face or hand, and you look up and there's nothing to be found. You don't know if it's piss, spit, or what. My ma says that it's the coolant from apartment air conditioners. I want to believe her.

I'll probably come up with more as the summer goes on. Overall, this experience is great -- I feel like I'm all grown up and shit, getting dapper to go into the City of all Cities and working behind a desk with my own phone and computer and such. Plus, all I really do is talk online to yall anyway, so I guess it works out. The process will be complete once all you stragglers still in Michigan decide to come home to New York and live it up with me. Don't worry Megan, I'm not mentioning any names.