easier than writing by hand…

from kevin:

Gym membership? I though you were walking or biking to work or something. In fact, I think you should walk to work every day… stopping at the Tullys for a treat each day.

yeah, the plan is still to ride my bike to work regularly, but that presents the problem of showering before i roll into the office covered in sweat, leaving me chilled to the bone and forcing my officemates to smear menthol paste under their nostrils. that’s actually a big reason for the gym membership. i was shown the shower on our floor and you actually have to go thru a door that says “women” to get to it. you go thru that door and enter a small antechamber with the door to the left leading to the women’s bathroom and the door in front of you to a room with a single shower in it.

it’s really hard to get this next sequence with a damn camera phone. cant get back far enough to get it all in the frame.

when scott told me of the existance of this penicillin breeding ground, he suggested that i wait until most of the people in the building had went home before i made a foray behind the door marked “women”, lest somebody see me exist the outer door and get the wrong idea of what i was doing back there (i assumed).

you can see that these are litterally right behind door number 1. it’s not like it’s down the end of a long hall here.

of course, i negleted to heed this advice and lo and behold, right after a very quick and clandestine peek behind the door to the shower, as i turned around to walk out, some chick walked in behind me and saw me standing there. first she did a double take at the door, just to make sure that she herself hadn’t screwed up and went in the wrong one. i got skurred! i stammered something like, “uh, so there’s a shower behind this door, right?” to which she replied “yes” and gave me a scowl as we tried to manuvuer around each other, while i held the door and she figured out how to get in there without opening the inner door to the bathroom with me standing there.

more clandestine camera work. taken after 6PM.

only after that did it occur to me that maybe the shower was only actually meant for women (an idea that scott retorted with “but that’s why it’s a single unit! so anybody can use it!”). that seems kind of unfair to me, but then, when i was in eighth grade and checked out the girls locker room at the litchfield park elementary/middle school, it struck me as unfair that they should get individual stalls with curtains when we had to do the whole communal shower thing. i value my modesty after all..

i should probably tell that whole story sometime.

i signed up for a gym membership at the place next door this afternoon.  then i went and got a pumpkin cheesecake bar at the tully’s across the street from the place, because that’s how i roll.

word. 

first day.

as i drove to work and then home again over the last few days of my employment at boeing, fighting despair at the prospect of another 45 to 60 minute commute, the only way i kept from going apeshit, hopping the median and driving north in a southbound lane was by consoling myself with the knowlege that today, finally, i would be able to enjoy the glories of only working 10 minutes from home. and then i had to drive to freakin bellevue this morning (on the otherside of the lake across the perpetually clogged WA-520 floating bridge for those of you not from seattle) to go to the HR company that ventripoint contracts with to handle payroll and benefits.

i figured since today was my first day, i probably should try to make an effort at a good first impression and not, for once, show up in my regular jeans and a t-shirt ensemble. with this in mind, i went downtown yesterday and bought some new dress shirts and pants. when i materialized today in a brown button down shirt and charcoal pants, i think there was a mild bit of well disguised shock and later when all 5 of the ppl in the office (i.e 71% of the current company) were standing around kinda joking about it and i was basically told not to dress like that again. i just looked to damned good i guess. but seriously, this is a start up after all and we are in seattle. if you show up to work in a dress shirt and slacks, you either work at a bank or you’re a pretentious bastich and i dont think anybody in this town owns a evening jacket that’s not made out of goretex.

sorry for the lack of updates. i shall try and be more regular. or rather, i shall try to post more regularly, lest there be some confusion there.