11-16-2000

Sitting in traffic yesterday morning, I saw a man flossing his teeth. It struck me as more than a bit odd, until I pondered the fact that he probably is stuck in this same traffic every morning. I suppose at least he's doing something productive with the time.

I was in traffic because I had to drive down to my company's corporate office yesterday. I got up early, thinking I was budgeting enough time to get there, but I hadn't counted on the accident that backed up traffic for nearly an hour right before the bridge. Luckily the only thing I missed was the presentation on what it's like to be a consultant at my company. Somehow, I have a sneaky feeling I already know what that's like...

I spent exactly the same amount of time on the road to get there as I did in interviews with three of the directors. The man who organized this called last week and gave me an impossible choice - either show up at this recruiting day for the interviews, or gosh, they might just find someone else and then well, they'd have to let me interview, but the unspoken part was that it would be moot by then. We're in the middle of the hardest and most crucial part of development on this project, but I left for a day, for this. It's not as if I had much of a choice - it just couldn't have come at a worse time. At least what it meant was that I did well enough in the initial phone interview that they wanted to see me again.

I think it went well, although it's always hard to guess when you're intimately involved in the situation. My manager called and left a message saying that the feedback she'd received was that I did really well. Of course there's the nice factor that could be in play here - they know that I'm one of her group, so they said it to be nice, but I think I'd rather pretend, at least for now, that it's true. I realized while I was down there that I'm once again trying to make a big leap in my career path without going through the proper channels...but why should I stop what's seemed to be a relative successful trend so far, right? And if these interviews amount to naught, at least some good came out of my taking the day to drive down there.

I managed to finally drop off my defective laptops (replacement #1 and replacement #2) so that the support guy could try to diagnose it face to face instead of over the phone. Several phone conversations later, he let me know that it's fixed. Finally. Five hours round trip in the car was worth that at least.

And because I managed to get home in early afternoon while it was still light enough to see, I swung by the lot on the way, and....

We have trenches! Yes! Holes in the ground marking out where our house. It's finally started! I sat in my nice warm car and watched several obscure machines, piloted by flannel shirted, bearded men, digging holes. They've finally broken ground! I sat there and excitedly tried to describe what I was seeing to Richard over the phone, but between my extreme lack of knowledge of what the heck these machines actually were, and the static of my oh-so-wonderful (NOT!) cell phone, but I'm not sure quite how good a job I did. It looks small now that it's marked out. I remember this from watching other things being built, so at least I'm prepared for it, and I know that once the walls are in place, everything will be just fine. Last night, we came back to take pictures, and to drag my mom out to see the trenches, and the mysterious piles of wood, and of course, the adorable little baby bulldozer (that would be the Bobcat, by the way), in the yard. And now that it's all laid out on the ground, one thing has become quite clear.

We are going to have one *huge* backyard. The builder says it'll take five months. Now that it's finally started, I can barely wait.