QOTD: "A politician is a man who can be verbose in fewer words than anyone else." - Peter DeVries
Reading: Douglas Mawson, The Home of the Blizzard (only about 40 pages to go!)
Listening to: Paris Combo
Decluttering accomplishments: organized various crafts supplies
Before I talk about my new job, I had a couple of notes of other things I wanted to mention. Several weeks ago, I jotted down "Halford McKinder - theory of the heartland." I'm sure I intended to write something very intelligent on that subject, but about all I can remember now is that it has something to do with homeland security. If your curiousity is aroused, I'm sure any of the usual search engines will be more coherent than I am.
The other item I have is a clipping from a Colorado newspaper from a couple of weeks ago. The item does not involve Colorado, though. It has to do with the coast of England. Apparently, a dolphin has been trying to lure female swimmers out to sea in an effort to have sex with them. The part I found most amusing was the statement that "women have been warned to stay away from him." Do they put up "Caution: Dolphin Rape" signs or what?
As for what I've been doing, I flew out to D.C. on Monday. Tuesday was spent dealing with infrastructure stuff. A morning staff meeting was followed by trying to get my email working, which took longer than one would have thought possible. My voicemail fiasco was even more severe, as they just sent a slip with the voicemail extension, but not the exchange. The exchange turns out to be different from the one that everyone else in this field office uses, so the number we thought I was supposed to forward things to was getting some random fax machine. It took until Friday to get that straightened out. I still need to clean up stuff on this end. I don't think my email is being forwarded, for example, and my voicemail box here is still active. On the plus side, both my time card and my pay stub successfully showed up in the D.C. office.
I had time on Wednesday to look around the area some. I really like the Courthouse area of Arlington, but it is pricy. There are a couple of other areas I am considering - essentially at the Virginia ends of the Metro lines. The Bethesda-Rockville area of suburban Maryland is also possible (Metro being vital to a sane commute). The most significant conclusion I reached is that I do need to rent for a while to figure out where I want to live.
Thursday and Friday were spent actually working. Which meant mostly hanging around getting to know the people I'll be working with. There's some chaos there, in that one of the two Air Force officers is leaving soon and the other will be leaving in the fall. So I'll have new people to deal with. Then there are two contractors. One guy does the budget stuff, while the other is more technical. I suspect techie guy wanted my job, so there are issues there, though he's certainly amiable enough on the surface. At any rate, I have strong background in some areas that he admits not knowing anything about, so I think I can handle any rivalry that comes up.
Overall, I think the job will work out well. For now, though, I'll just be happy when all the infrastructure stuff is working and I'm fully moved out there.
Copyright 2002 Miriam H. Nadel