My first week on the new job.

I began work for the Office of the Indiana Attorney General this week.

The first day

I had to force myself to get up incredibly early after not being able to get to bed before midnight (even with the help of Benadryl). I wanted to work in plenty of slack to shave and get dressed up; naturally suiting up takes a bit more time than throwing on my usual t-shirt and shorts. I was scheduled to check in at my office at 8:30…although driving to Indy from Bloomington only takes roughly an hour, I left at 6:45 to account for possible traffic issues in downtown Indy as well as possible issues of getting lost since I hadn’t been there before (I landed this job through an interview held within our school). Sure enough, I arrive in downtown Indy a good 40 minutes early, and initially thought I overshot a bit. Then traffic got thick really quickly. Then I struggled to find the parking garage we were directed to, making me worry that I was actually going to be cutting it close. Then I finally found it and was turned away by a lady saying the garage was full, which compelled her to direct me to another one. Happily, she gave me wrong directions to an intersection that didn’t even exist. It now became really clear that I was indeed going to be late despite the fact that I had seemingly been cautious; I phoned in and apprised them of my situation before I ever actually got late. Eventually, after arriving to within a few blocks of my office 40 minutes early, I strolled in more than 45 minutes late, agitated as could be. Obviously I apologized profusely, and they did understand (especially given the unexpected parking issues that had plagued others as well). I was assured that no harm was done and that nobody I was working for would even realize I was late since I was just dealing with HR people for orientation initially, but it wasn’t exactly the auspicious debut I had hoped for either. Orientation is what it is. It’s boring no matter where you are, but companies have to do a certain amount of it. By orientation standards, this was an eminently tolerable day. They got most of that stuff out of the way, and midway through the day we were already assigned projects to work on and basically told, “Have at it. Tell me if you have any questions.” There wouldn’t be much else to say, except that a surprising twist took place during the second half of the day. 

Don’t worry, I haven’t left again yet.

Weekend got busier than expected and now I’ve started my new gig in Indy that will keep me pretty busy on M/T/W. First day was yesterday, and while first days are basically always long, it was still a successful day. Despite the pain of commuting between Bloomington and Indianapolis, this does look like a good gig. Will write more in a couple of days.

Nashville Trip Report (May 9th, 2011 — Canucks at Predators edition)

Well, I still intend on more general recapping, but as this is obviously fresh in my mind, I thought that people might enjoy reading it. My friend Drew (a fellow native Washingtonian) and I, in somewhat bandwagon-like fashion, have been enjoying the Canucks’ playoff run. Bandwagon probably isn’t the term since Vancouver has always been my team of choice, but my interest in hockey waxes and wanes. I always have thought that it’s a great sport, and when I have a team doing well (such as this year, or the Olympics last year), I really enjoy it…but I don’t always pay close attention to it. Drew and I were at the bar for game 7 of Canucks-Blackhawks in the first round, in a bar full of obnoxious Chicago fans…that description is kind of a redundancy, as I don’t know of many non-obnoxious Chicago fans to be in existence. I truly love the city of Chicago, but I detest their sports fans. They might be my least favorite sports city in America now as a result. Watching Vancouver score the OT goal to shut this entire bar up was such a sweet moment, and we immediately started planning for the possibility of going to a game in the upcoming series against Nashville. For one, I’d never been to a hockey game in my life. For two, I’m always looking for an excuse to head to Nashville since it’s one of my favorite cities in existence. Games three and four coincided with our finals schedule, so we just pre-ordered game six tickets and crossed our fingers that there would actually be a game six. This led us to some rather unfaithful thoughts during game five when the Canucks were trying to close things out, since we were really looking forward to our road trip.

Drew and I take off down the road to Nashville a bit before noon. The drive from here to Nashville is fairly lengthy and somewhat boring, but I threw together a playlist before taking off that we both enjoyed; he is decidedly not a country fan, so I largely left any and all country off the playlist with the exception of the Zac Brown Band. There’s simply no excuse for not liking them unless you haven’t heard them, and there’s becoming less and less excuse to have not heard them as time goes by either. (Link)

Returning to the blogosphere.

Well, if you used to read my blog, I’m sure you long ago gave up on me ever updating it again. However, I’m going to make my best attempt at resurrecting it. If I get views, then great; if I don’t, then I’ll probably end up stopping again, but blogging my thoughts is time well spent anyway I think. It’s a good time capsule and I’ve enjoyed going back through my blog and reading a number of my posts from the past.

I don’t know exactly where to jump back in, so let me just give an update and then get some reflective thoughts down from the last year and a half that I’ve spent away from blogging.

What I’m up to now