8/5/08 National Night Out

Our neighborhood has an association that participated in the National Night Out tonight. A firetruck stopped by (one of about 12 stops for them tonight), and we got treated to a little concert by, of all things, a ukelele club. Turns out, two neighbors across the street belong to a ukelele club, which treated us to a performance! Gabriel was excited to see this and brought out our ukelele too, but it wasn't really the right forum for a jam session.

That's a city Fireman joining in the hula (behind the guy in the red jacket).

We met more neighbors tonight too, a mixture of empty-nesters who've lived here for decades, and young families. Boy, I'm going to be sad to leave this neighborhood, I really like it here!

That said, I'm starting to get tired of this actual house. We truly have nothing to complain about, but I do miss our insulated rooms, a larger office, more spacious bathrooms, having two stories, and especially, a place where I can set up my scrapbooking.

Back to work today. An auspicious start...I attended what I thought would be an informational meeting, and was introduced to someone I didn't know. All in the room were surprised (shocked?) that I didn't know a top-level VP. He even said, "you've never seen my picture?" Uh, no, if I'm going to look at pictures of celebrities, it'll be George Clooney.

It turned out to be a feather-stroking meeting about cancelling a major engineering project and deciding to limp along the old stuff for a while longer. They said they needed a network architect to decide what the network should do, and for business development to decide what the company wants to be -- but the big word missing to me was 'customer'. What do they want? "I've never written a business plan," I piped up, "but I'd think the first three words should be 'Our customers want...'"

Well, if I was at all worried about them insisting on me hiring on as a full-time employee, I think I took care of that today!

It's so darned cold and dark in that office. I took a walk today, just to get out, and thought sadly about Katrina. I missed her, and felt like crying as I walked along a busy noisy avenue in an industrial area, thinking of her giggling with glee as she tries to run in circles, her fluffy blonde hair bouncing behind her. What a contrast to dingy office life.

But this is still too good an opportunity to pass up, for now. I've got to cut the umbilical cord eventually, but as overloaded as we are with remodeling, I need to coast, even unhappily, for now. And when our little bunch are all a little older, and we're past the tyranny of toddlerhood, then I'll be braver about breaking out on my own, somehow. Or fed up with office life.

It took me 50 minutes to drop everyone off this morning and get to work, and strangely over an hour to pick everyone up and get home. With the three pickup locations being roughly equidistant, it doesn't seem as druderous though. Let's see if I still feel that way in another few weeks!

8/5/08