Life Is Such A Sweet Insanity.

Earl, Jamie and I have situated ourselves for the evening in the lovely town called Pine Grove, Pa. I don’t really know much about this place except that there is a nice Hampton Inn, we are close to an older McDonalds and we are at milepost 100 on Interstate 81 in Pennsylvania.

We are on our way to Florida for a week with our first night at the House of the Mouse being Sunday night.

This is how everyone should start a new job: work two weeks and then get a week off for vacation. My new company has been quite understanding about my existing plans. Speaking of which, the job is going along fabulously and I am LOVING it.

Earl has kindly done the driving tonight. I hopped in the backseat after dinner and promptly fell asleep; I woke up in Scranton, Pa. That’s quite the place to wake up.

Tomorrow we continue our trek south. I’ve heard that there may be wild weather between here and there. This could be quite exciting.

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We picked up a carton of orange juice at the local convenience store. It’s your usual (in the states) half gallon sized orange juice and it comes in a waxed cardboard carton. We usually use the returnable glass bottles but we were lazy this time around. The carton has a plastic spout drilled into the side of it.

I am curious about this.

For decades there was a marking on one end of the carton that had two little circles and it said “press here to form spout”. The task was as simple as implied; push in the correct spot with your fingers and the cleverly folded waxed cardboard will pop out into a convenient spout that allows you to accurately pour into the vessel in which the liquid is going to be contained. (How’s that for fancy writing!)

I fail to understand why we have gone from this cardboard spout setup and have decided to include a piece of plastic in this formerly easily recycled container. Has the dumbing down of the American public resulted in the failure to comprehend the instructions of “press here to form spout”, complete with two little pictures? Were people trying to do this on the wrong side of the carton? Will some lack of plastic throw of the delicate chemistry involved in the unnatural preservatives contained within, thereby nullifying the impossibly long expiration period? Was the simplicity of the carton not sexy enough? I miss that simplicity.

I’m going to remember the glass bottles next time.

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Selkirk Shores State Park is beautiful all year ’round. Here is a picture of the hiking trail we called “treach”. We used to zoom down this trail on our bikes, with Lake Ontario several feet below us as the trail went along the bluff. We found the trail to be treacherous on bike, hence we called it “treach” for short.

That’s Lake Ontario frozen in the background. The waves could be heard way off in the distance, about 100 feet from the shore.

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I received my first package in my new cubicle yesterday. It was a bit of a surprise as it was a beautiful plant from Earl, Tom and Jamie.

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One of the things that I didn’t expect to happen so quickly with my change in work schedule is my becoming a morning person so quickly. Did you know that every morning the sun rises in the east like a big ball of, well, sunshine and bathes the landscape in glorious light bringing the, well, light of a new day to all that are fortunate enough to behold it?

Wow!

My commute involves driving east in the morning and west in the evening so I get to do this whole ‘bathed in light’ thing in both directions of the commute. When augmented with my lunch break I have to say that I feel quite nice.

I have never been a morning person. I think it’s because I have always subscribed to the fact and insisted that I was a night person. My friend Dave from old work says it’s all in your head and I never bought into that, but I think he may be on to something. I now get up each morning at 5:30. I used to get up at 7:00. Now, I set my alarm each morning for 5:30 in an effort to make sure I get to work on time. But here’s the thing. Starting on Wednesday, I awoke before the alarm. Yes, I woke up at 5:24. Now, I don’t know if there is a plane flying over at that time or if Tom is ramming around the house or if it’s my own circadian rhythm getting in sync with my desires but ’tis true, I am now waking up my own at 5:24.

It is Saturday as of this writing. I went to bed last night around midnight.

I woke up at 5:24 this morning. I tried to nap and I did for a little bit but I couldn’t sleep past 7:00. As a result of this two thoughts come to mind: I have either officially become a morning person or I am getting older. I have always equated getting up early with older people because that’s what they do.

Whatever the reason, I think it’s pretty nifty seeing the sunrise each morning.

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So I’m sitting in the Jeep during my lunch hour. The forecast I caught on the way into work this morning said we’d be getting snow showers. It’s currently around 45 degrees and sunny. This sneak peek at spring has done much to accentuate an already brilliant day.

My body is slowly acclimating to the new schedule. I found it a little bit easier to get up at 5:30 a.m. than yesterday- though I went to bed relatively early last night. Let’s see how I do after Daylight Saving Time strikes in a few weeks.

The second day at the new job is going along well. I work in a busy group so I’m doing all I can to go at it on my own when others are busy. They hooked up my phone today and gave me some other doodads for the cubicle; the model phone I now have is the same that I had back when I enjoyed working at the other job except in black. Apparently I’m lucky to have a brand new phone. Everyone has been very nice and very helpful. I am already feeling comfortable with my coworkers. I think this will be a good gig.

I’m still working out my daily routine and trying to figure out when I’m going to blog and take care of household business and all that. Towards the end of my tenure at my last job I was in the habit of just shuttling back and forth between the office and house at lunch time, but my commute now longer allows that so now I’m finding other ways to amuse myself. While today is quite nice, I’m excited for when the weather breaks and I can drink in some sunshine during my lunch hour.

Technology allows us the opportunity to maintain with those that have become part of our past. I’m exchanging e-mails with my friends back at the old job and of course updating folks via Facebook and Twitter and all that. It’s good to use technology for these purposes. That’s what social networking is all about – reaching out. It’s like letting your fingers do the walking, but with pictures.

Speaking of which, I’m going to try to do a little bit of night photography tonight if the weather conditions permit. I’m really enjoying the new camera. It’s a good creative outlet.

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As I strive to acclimate to my new schedule, I will keep this short and sweet tonight. But as I said to Earl over dinner when he asked me how my first day at the new job went: “I’m set for life.”

I know I can rise to the challenge.

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I tried to get Tom to look at the camera but he was having none of it.

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Earl, Jamie and I have been in Buffalo for a good part of the weekend. We were here to see the Buffalo Bandits take on the Philadelphia Wings in a lacrosse match at HSBC Arena. The cheering was divided last night as Earl was cheering on the Wings and Jamie was cheering on the Bandits. I would utter “go S U” from time to time because the orange clothing was confusing me. Buffalo lost and Earl ended up with a tub of popcorn turned upside down over his head. He found popcorn in his underwear this morning.

We stayed at the Embassy Suites in downtown Buffalo. Jamie stated that this is one of the nicest hotels in Buffalo. The suite was nice but the breakfast buffet was a little bit of an experience.

When there was food there were no plates, when there were plates there was no cutlery, when there was an omelette chef there was a line and when there was oatmeal and it was extra watery.

Oh, and there wasn’t a set of tongs to grab the bread to make toast. This sort of bugs me. Now, it’s not because I’m some sort of germophobe because that is hardly the case (though I have been known to douse people in Lysol if they seemed pukey to me), but I think that if one finds themselves in a buffet like environment without the appropriate utensils to grab food, you have two choices.

1. Ask for the appropriate utensils and use them when they arrive.

2. If you’re impatient (like me), grab a napkin and use that to grab the bread or the muffin or the fruit from the serving area. I don’t recommend this approach with salad items, soup or chili.

So there was a stack of bread in the little bread holder and this woman with really big hair in line in front of me. The smell of Aqua Net did not go unnoticed. Faced with the dilemma described above, she opted for her own approach.

With her bare hands, she grabbed a handful of bread slices, counted out how many she wanted, and then threw the rest back into the bread box.

Ewwww. Actually, I think I uttered a “Wow” that went relatively unnoticed. I don’t know where her hands as been but I certainly knew where they had just gone. I didn’t like that.

Not to be deterred, she jammed her pawed up bread onto the conveyor like toaster and watched it make it’s way through the little heater. I walked around her, grabbed a napkin and found some unpawed wheat bread (she predictably went for the white bread, noticed the snob in me) and loaded to pieces of wheat bread on the conveyor. Her toast plopped out the bottom of the machine at the same time and she heaved a sigh of disgust at the tanning of the bread so she put it through again and cranked the heat to high. I could see my wheat bread getting uncomfortably warm as it made it’s way through.

“I don’t think it’s charcoal season yet”, I said wryly, as I turned down the toaster to a reasonable level. I always have to interject a little humor before I fly into hysterics. Think of my humor as a warning shot across the bow. You can usually tell the difference between a true attempt of me being funny versus the use of humor to control my temper. She gave me an icy glare and blew some Aqua Net fumes at me.

My bread plopped out the bottom of the toaster a few moments later and I extended courtesy and cranked the heat back up.

“Bon appétit”, I shared with her, trying to be courteous.

The effort went unnoticed.

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So today at 5:00 p.m. I shut my computer down, grabbed the belongings in the box that was sitting next to my desk, and walked out of the half of cubicle for the last time. My time at the job I have had for roughly the past five years has come to an end.

It was a bittersweet day for me. I was taken out to lunch by the manager of the group; I had a lengthy exit interview with one of the VPs and the President of the company shook my hand and visited with me a number of times throughout the day.

I think I did good for the company. I hope they enjoyed my stay as much as I did.

My new job begins Monday morning. It is finally sinking in that I have a new job and I will have a new cubicle and new co-workers in an entirely new environment.

I’m stoked.

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