CMS offers a few different work schedules, an 8, 9 and 10 hour day. The 9 hour work schedule is the 9 hours Monday- Thursday and then an 8 hour day every other Friday, with the other alternating Friday being a day off. The 10 hour work day allows you to work only four days a week. I am working the 9 hour work day (well... that is what I am scheduled for..) so last Friday was my extra day off. So what better way to use a three day weekend than to go to New York City. I haven't been there since 8th grade when I got to go there for spring break. Not only that, but Amaris's dad lives in New Jersey so we stayed with him over the weekend. She doesn't get to see him very often, and I had never seen him.

The city was huge, as was to be expected. We were going to go to the Statue of Liberty, but the line was seriously a quarter mile long to get on the ferry, and we still wouldn't have been able to go into the statue... just stand next to it. So we took a picture and moved on. We saw Central Park, Times Square, Broadway Avenue, the Natural History Muesum, and the Empire State Building. I can't believe how much walking we did, but it was a nice day trip. Driving back to Baltimore after NYC almost made it seem like a tame little town. Crazy.

In other news, it looks like everyone hates their summer jobs. Ben and Lucas aren't wild about what they are doing. Even Ramey who was so excited about getting his job says that he wishes he went to Egypt. I am sitting here with no work to do... I have not had anything since last Thursday. Now, it isn't terrilby bad because all of the work that they are giving me is a tad tedious, so I am instead surfing the web all day for $13 and change an hour. And I have done valuable things with that time. Besides keeping up with Slashdot, Engadget, Digg and Google's goings on, I have studied for the Cisco Certified Network Assistant certification and found a new bank account. Good stuff.

Speaking of a new bank account, I was wasting my time one day looking at my bank statement, and I realized that I was getting paid 0.1% interest on my checking account, and .05% interest on my savings account (which means that I have been getting less than $1 in interest lately). So I decided it was time to move on. I found a online bank based in Massachsetts called Salem Five [http://www.salemfive.com/] that pays 5% interest on checking and savings accounts, and they have CDs where you can pull your money any time after an initial set of time (so non of those small windows where you can access your money). So I increased my savings interest rate by 10,000% and my checking interest rate by 50,000%. Plus they don't have as many rediculously high fees like US Bank. That was a no brainer.