A WEEK IN THE LIFE

It's been a long week. A long one, but a good one. Really good, in fact.

Without going into too much detail, this new job is pretty much perfect. The commute, not so much, but I think the work I'm doing will be making up for being on the road for at least 2 hours a day.

It's sorta like being back at school, which I loved, and I've realized that I really missed that. All the designers and materials people are in one big room, and the people that work there are pretty great. A good mix of young and old, of experienced and greenhorns. You get a great energy from everybody, which sorta fuels you. And since we work in the test facility, you get to see what you've designed being built. There's an instant gratification to it. Of course, I've been doing what the other materials people call 'The Fun Stuff', and they've warned me that it's not always as fun. But, whatever. I don't really care.

It has been a wake-up call as to how lax I've gotten in my design vocabulary and, really, my thought processes, too. I'm not nearly as sharp as when I left school. But, much like riding a bike, I've found that you never really lose it, it just sorta comes back. A little bit at a time, but it does come back. So cautious optimism is the mood I've chosen to go with. Which is cool.

Not so cool has been the driving. Don't know if you've heard, but we're in a bit of a drought, which means the land and everything on it makes for great tinder. A massive brush fire broke out the day before I got hired, but a little north of the road I need to drive on, so not too big of a deal to me. Just some smoke and such, but you could see the (pretty big) flames from the road. I figured that it would probably be down by the time I had to drive to work in 4 days.

The day before I started, another MASSIVE fire broke out north of where I work, which didn't affect me directly, but the wind that accompanied the new fire, was carrying smoke and heat farther south to where the old fire was smoldering. It turns out that after the brush had burned away, the 'muck' caught fire (kinda like a bog) and was building, and starting to flame up again.

So they decided to close the easier, faster route I need to take to work. I was 30 minutes late the first day, even though I left the house 2 hours before I had to be there. (Normally, it takes just under an hour.) The people there at work were totally cool, I called when I knew that I was for sure going to be late, and they just wanted to be sure that I was going to be safe. I found out that they were placing bets as to whether I would show up at all, or go half way, see the mess, and turn around and go home. Which never even occured to me.

Everybody on the road that first morning was FREAKING out, and the detour they had us on was WAY out of the way, and also under construction and through a very poorly laid out city with like 7,000 stop lights. Day 2 was a little less crazy, 'cause me and my good friend Google Maps found a different detour, which saved about 45 minutes. So I actually made it there on time. On Friday, they unexpectedly opened the road and I was 30 minutes early to work. Which didn't suck, so I'm thinking of leaving at the same time from now on. And can I just say that the SunPass is like the greatest freakin' invention ever! EVER! You don't even have to slow down to pay the toll! It's AWESOME! I heart SunPass!

Did I mention that I leave the house at 5:30 AM? And get up at 4:40 AM ish? It's been sorta rough. On Monday, I was in bed and asleep at 8:30 PM. I managed to make it to 9:30 PM the next night, and now I round if off to 10:00 PM. I haven't dozed off at work yet, but Wednesday was pretty rough. I think this week will be WAY better.

I have to try to get online more often. It's been like having a limb gone. I feel so cut off from the world. We have access at work, but I don't have the nerve yet. And I sit right in the middle of the room, so everybody can see what I'm doing at any given moment. Tried to check up during lunch, but don't have my links, so no go yet. I'm going to try and take Monday and Wednesday nights to catch up. Cause I miss the interweb sumpin' fierce.