Summary of the week that was

[thrihyrne]

The good news is that my new employers and colleagues are quite happy that I'm there, and I'm glad to be there. I did start to have some obsessive thoughts last night when I couldn't drop off to sleep, but things will settle down in my head when I'm not trying to learn so much all at once. I did find out this evening that I will probably have training hours through the 19th, which means another week of getting up at 5:00 most mornings in order to be on a 6:20 bus. Not fun. The commute from door to door is very nearly 2 hours each way, which may get old quite quickly-- I have plenty I can do, and have been doing such (writing, reading, some knitting), but I'll be giving some serious thought to relocating closer so that I'm not spending such time either on public transport or waiting for it. Especially in the cold and wet. But I can tell I'll do well at the job, which is customer service as a part of assisting people with private health and dental insurance applications. I don't sell anything, thank goodness. I am learning how to pronounce all sorts of interesting diagnoses, however. ;) The only negative I really have (aside from being far away) is that this is my first experience in having so little control over my computer. I can't personalize anything on it (no access to system preferences and the like) and they have really strict browsing filters, so I'm not even checking my own email. I can get to it, but I figure I shouldn't do so until I'm much more comfortable with everything. I'm just not used to really thinking of a work computer as a work computer- they've always been extensions of what I use at home, but this is different. Still, unlike one other customer service position I had, I'm not expected to be logged in on the dot of any hour and breaks are when I need them and to be candid, it's simply novel to be working a 40 hour week once again. I'll enjoy being able to save up money for a trip again! I suppose the only other negative is that my days are quite long and at least at this juncture I tend to come home and just want to veg out. But I'll try to update more than once a week.

Wednesday was especially marvelous in that I was on my #20 bus heading back over the river from downtown and a couple of stops after I got on, I happened to look up from my book at the newest passengers, and one of them was my friend Jen! She'd come down from Vancouver to surprise me and just happened to get on the bus I was already traveling on. Pretty amazing. So we had dinner and talked and she headed back around 8:40. I'll probably go up there for the weekend next weekend.

I have a slew of movies to get from the library tomorrow, as well as a huge stack of books and movies to return. I'll probably also go by my favorite Goodwill store and then I'm meeting with a massage therapist friend of Julia's to talk about helping her get a website up and running for her in trade for a few massages from her. I hope we can make it work out! I definitely could use several intense, deep-tissue massages around now.