365 #33 - First day at work

Monday, February 6

Today I am thankful for guts and clarity.


Work started at a normal hour today.  I showed up a few minutes early, and the parking lot was mostly empty. So I wandered around a took some photos to provide some physical context for Dutchess County, NY.

The office building is unprepossessing.  Another tenant recently moved out, allowing the office to double in size and go through a complete renovation.  It's the best-looking space I've ever worked in.  It is decked out to the hilt in TEL motif.  What, exactly, is TEL motif?  It's a ribbon of sky blue and a ribbon of bright (but not gaudy) green on a black background.  It's pictures on the wall that match that color scheme.  It's seeing the TEL and TEA logos everywhere.  Everywhere includes this sticker, placed on a mirror in a conspicuous place.

The office park is small - it's next to John Jay High School, sitting in the middle of forest.  The forests here look fundamentally different than forests in Oregon.  For starters, no green during winter.  No ferns, no grasses, no evergreen shrubs, no moss.  How deciduous trees ever beat evergreens to make a forest, I do not understand.  It is also commonly cold enough here to freeze the ground.  This is rare in the Willamette Valley, but out here, where 53 F is near the record high for Feb 6, the ground is frozen pretty hard all winter.  The photo at the above right shows the correct bodily proportions of legs to brains in yours truly.

The work day was very very busy.   I had 4 hours of meetings and 4 hours of variously trying to (and sometimes succeeding at) setting things up for my work accounts.  I can get into the timesheet program, I can use the HR self-service portal.  The calendar works on the iphone.  No mail on the iPhone yet, no access to some of the other intranet portals that I'll need soon.  But sufficient progress, it was.  I stopped by a house I may rent a room at tonight.  It would be a unique place to stay.  That's all I'll say about it - acceptable and unique in my life's experience.  

After that, I had run my sick body for 10 solid hours and it needed food and rest.  But no rest yet for me.  I passed by the Poughkeepsie Galleria mall and got a hankering for food court food.  It seems that wherever we are, Target is taking away good merchandise to make room for a substandard grocery section.  That's what the sign says, although I know you can't read it.  Lastly, here's a picture from today that I liked but did not fit well in my narrative.

There was a lot more to today, but I think this has to be it.  My work day starts at 6:20 tomorrow morning.